Lying Car Companies

LockH

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Lying Car Companies Would Rather Poison You With Emissions Than Build Cleaner Cars:
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/03/20/lying-car-companies-rather-poison-emissions-build-cleaner-cars/

Starts:
CleanTechnica often uses information from the Union of Concerned Scientists as the basis of our stories. That’s no surprise, since we both share a common goal — avoiding the looming existential crisis associated with climate change and a warmer planet. A few days ago, Seth Michaels, a communications officer for UCS, alerted us to a report filed with NHTSA and USDOT by the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. That report offers reasons why the federal government should weaken fuel economy and tailpipe emissions standards put in place by the Obama administration.

:cry:

https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=NHTSA-2017-0069-0176
 
LockH said:
Lying Car Companies Would Rather Poison You With Emissions Than Build Cleaner Cars
Oh please. That's about as valid as all those evil solar panel companies who would rather poison you with toxic chemicals than build cleaner panels.

Of course they want looser regulations; they will make more money that way. That's their motivation. No one wants to poison anyone.
 
Hehe... Was joking w/a local police officer recently... and was asking him how far folks would drive their cars powered by fossil remains where the engine exhaust pipe exited into the passenger compartment. He was getting a chuckle over answers like 10 miles? 20 miles?
 
Yes they do want to poison people... And for money!
Volkswagen is one glaring example... Installing cheater software in the cars to bypass diesel regulations has definitely lead to increased deaths, just to they could wring out more profits while they're figuring out electric cars.
Chevy not fixing the key switch in their cars that they knew for a fact was causing cars to shut off and crash on the highway was another fine example of the calculations they make between how much the death lawsuits will cost vs. fixing the cars, and choosing the deaths.
Going further back, the major car companies knew of the devastating damage lead in gas was causing, and dragged their feet on removing it until forced to be legislation, to drag out every last dollar they could.
Industry world wide is littered with examples of mass trauma caused by some board of directors far removed from the problem making money choices that they know are going to poison, maim, and kill many.
The chromium in the water from the Erin Brokovich story, Union Carbides Bophal India chemical plant explosion, the lead in the water in Flint Michigan, the list of times money was put ahead of life is pretty bottomless... And when told people where going to get hurt, somebody asked, "well how many people are we taking about?" instead of asking how do we prevent it.
 
Hehe... ESB "Search found 77 matches: "follow the money"". :)
 
That's a reckless disregard for peoples' health or safety while pursuing profit. It's still callous and wrong, but the motivating factor was never to hurt anyone.
 
It's way past reckless disregard. I'm not speaking in a strictly legal sense, but a human moral one. Just like with cigarettes, maybe you didn't set out to design a deadly product, and your deadly product doesn't kill everybody who uses it, just a good portion of them. You get solid scientific evidence of this, but you hide it for years. Leaks come out, and you go in front of Congress and lie about it, and secretly pay lobbying groups to delay inevitable legislation to protect the public health from your product, and from the lies about your product. (thats how it went in America anyway)
At some point along that path, you're selling poison to people, and you know it, and you lie to the world while you do it. Whats even worse in a way with the car companies is that they would still be very profitable even with the costs of safer products... but they're not going to let poisoning millions get in the way of a tiny bit higher profit.
 
D'they still have pretty ladies at car shows to promo their merchandise?
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Shocking!
 
The model is a little too Eastern European villainess for me.. but that bike is damn pretty. Aero with the battery up high so it doesn't make the handling sluggish...mmmm.

blackike2 (800x485).jpg

Sure looks like they just ziptied the chain on for the pic... but still eyecatching. The headlamp is removable for use off the bike too.. hope it locks!
 
LockH said:
Hehe... Was joking w/a local police officer recently... and was asking him how far folks would drive their cars powered by fossil remains where the engine exhaust pipe exited into the passenger compartment. He was getting a chuckle over answers like 10 miles? 20 miles?
Probably. I wonder how long people would be willing to ride electric bikes if the battery current had to flow through their bodies?
 
Thats a silly example, as you can make an ebike or car where the electric current is safely contained during operation... but you cannot build an internal combustion engine that safely contains its emissions, and no matter what smog reducing catalyst technology you have, on the most modern engine, being trapped in a closed room with one will kill you... and pretty quickly.

And if you directly parse the headline, it doesn't say car companies want to poison you. But given the choice between making cleaner cars for smaller profit margins or having divisions of their companies devoted to coming up with ways to cheat on the tests (lying) to stall as long as possible the true reckoning of their poisoning for continued higher profits... well, yes, they would "rather" do that. And they ARE doing that.. right now! It's not a maybe situation...
 
Voltron said:
Thats a silly example, as you can make an ebike or car where the electric current is safely contained during operation... but you cannot build an internal combustion engine that safely contains its emissions, and no matter what smog reducing catalyst technology you have, on the most modern engine, being trapped in a closed room with one will kill you... and pretty quickly.
Not so much any more. A lot of people have discovered recently that car exhaust is so clean and so reduced that the old "run a car in a garage to kill yourself" doesn't work any more. Car exhaust nowadays is mainly CO2 and water, and CO2 first gives you a headache and then a VERY strong compulsion to leave the area. And since cars idle nowadays very efficiently, the natural air exchange in a garage is generally enough to prevent deadly levels of CO2 buildup (even if you can somehow force yourself to stay there when ten million years of evolution is telling you to leave.)

The reason "car running in a garage" was once a good way to kill yourself was due to the carbon monoxide older cars emitted.

(I know, doesn't support the meme that the car companies would rather poison you, but that's life.)

And if you directly parse the headline, it doesn't say car companies want to poison you. But given the choice between making cleaner cars for smaller profit margins or having divisions of their companies devoted to coming up with ways to cheat on the tests (lying) to stall as long as possible the true reckoning of their poisoning for continued higher profits...
Well, except cars ARE cleaner. Way way cleaner. (See above.) So they ARE making cleaner cars for smaller profit margins. And yes, there are people who try to cheat (like VW) but fortunately they get caught - and the fines are so massive that it's a good deterrent for others who would try to do the same.
 
If you believe the fines deter that sort of behavior you're not paying attention to their real life profits from the lying. And their whole industry has tried to claim it can police itself about that sort of thing despite repeated proof to the contrary. They sure didn't voluntarily make cars cleaner either. They had to be forced by the neck to give up a little profit to protect the common good, including the spillover damage to humans who don't even own a car.

So far it's Volkswagon, Mitsubishi, Fiat Chrysler, Peugeot Citroen, Daimler and Renault that are all been caught with defeat devices...


And I sure didn't say wandering into a drafty garage with a car will instantly kill you. But being trapped in an airtight room with one, esp a diesel where the bulk of the cheating is, will, despite trying to spin it differently. When you suck the breathable air out, whether you replace it with carbon monoxide, or carbon dioxide it won't keep you alive.

"(even if you can somehow force yourself to stay there when ten million years of evolution is telling you to leave.)"

Ten million years ago during the Tortonain age of giant mammalian megafauna, just moving away from a poison source might work for long enough to breed. But we live in the modern age, where we have recognized with our advanced brains that filling the world up with poison that surrounds every creature and that there is no escape from on our closed system planet is a bad idea.
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/business/energy-environment/bmw-diesel-emissions.html
FRANKFURT — Prosecutors in Munich searched BMW’s headquarters on Tuesday as part of their continuing investigation into an emissions-cheating scandal that has badly damaged other German carmakers.

BMW, which is known for its sporty luxury cars, had until recently been relatively unscathed by the matter, which has cost Volkswagen billions of dollars, prompted investigations of the luxury carmaker Daimler and depressed sales of profitable diesel models across Europe.

The raids on Tuesday, in which about 100 investigators targeted BMW offices in Munich and an engine factory in Austria, suggested that all of Germany’s top domestic automakers may have evaded emissions rules, although perhaps not to the same degree as Volkswagen.

And they call us ebikers cheaters...
 
Voltron said:
And I sure didn't say wandering into a drafty garage with a car will instantly kill you. But being trapped in an airtight room with one, esp a diesel where the bulk of the cheating is, will, despite trying to spin it differently.
Being trapped in an airtight room WITHOUT a car will also kill you, so I don't think that's much of a caveat.
Ten million years ago during the Tortonain age of giant mammalian megafauna, just moving away from a poison source might work for long enough to breed. But we live in the modern age, where we have recognized with our advanced brains that filling the world up with poison that surrounds every creature and that there is no escape from on our closed system planet is a bad idea.
Agreed. But water isn't a poison. CO2 can indeed poison you, but its problem comes not from its toxicity (because of our evolving to deal with that) but due to is effect on climate.
 
" CO2 can indeed poison you, but its problem comes not from its toxicity (because of our evolving to deal with that) but due to is effect on climate."

Say what? Are you saying the humans are evolving to deal with higher CO2 levels? Or that at some point in human evolution CO2 was even less breathable than it is now with our modern evolved lungs?

"Carbon dioxide levels in the blood can increase, causing shortness of breath and sedation, resulting in carbon dioxide toxicity."

"Treat people with carbon dioxide toxicity as follows:

Administer fresh air or oxygen"

The treatment gets tougher when there is no fresh air left is the problem.
 
billvon said:
CO2 first gives you a headache and then a VERY strong compulsion to leave the area.
Just to clarify, do you mean CO or CO2?

I know that CO causes headaches, often very quickly; CO2 might too but I don't have direct personal evidence of that (for instance, due to oxygen deprivation if it's displacing the O2 in the air; CO2 "pools" in volcanic sites have been known to kill those that wander into them by accident; I don't know if there were headaches involved or not).
 
Flu like symptoms are usually described for both.. headache, nausea, dizziness and rapid breathing are usual signs. One big difference is carbon monoxide is deadlier in that it binds tightly to red blood cells, so even after moving to fresh air sometimes it still takes too long for it to clear out of the hemoglobin.

But separately, it's not just direct poisoning from the gasses, but the long term lung damage from companies lying about soot particulates, lead damage, smog formation etc that affects peoples live and health.
 
amberwolf said:
billvon said:
CO2 first gives you a headache and then a VERY strong compulsion to leave the area.
Just to clarify, do you mean CO or CO2?
CO2. It will give you a headache and very quickly make you feel like you are suffocating, at levels far below fatal levels. CO is much, much worse - not only does it give you a headache but it binds to the oxygen receptors in your blood, thus preventing you from taking in oxygen. i.e. CO poisoning can be fatal even if you get the person out of the affected area quickly.

If there's enough CO2 to displace all the oxygen you'll die of course, but it won't happen without a lot of warning. Nitrogen and other inert gases will kill you the same way (by displacing all the air) but without the warning signs you get with CO2.
 
billvon said:
LockH said:
Hehe... Was joking w/a local police officer recently... and was asking him how far folks would drive their cars powered by fossil remains where the engine exhaust pipe exited into the passenger compartment. He was getting a chuckle over answers like 10 miles? 20 miles?
Probably. I wonder how long people would be willing to ride electric bikes if the battery current had to flow through their bodies?

Dunno. How many amps?
Van+De+Graaff+Generator.jpg


Usually don't go above 100,000 volts... One of those new one million volt bikes? Scary...
 
But they tested it on monkeys :shock:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/business/energy-environment/bmw-daimler-volkswagen-diesel-monkeys.html

FRANKFURT — The German carmakers BMW and Daimler said on Wednesday that they had taken action against executives involved in an organization that sponsored emissions experiments on monkeys, as the companies tried to squelch a public outcry that threatens to tarnish the image of Germany’s most important exports.

The research took place at the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in Albuquerque in 2014. Researchers there exposed one group of the monkeys to exhaust from a late-model diesel Volkswagen; a second group was exposed to exhaust from an older Ford diesel pickup truck.

Using monkeys as experiment subjects was not illegal, but it has angered animal-rights advocates and others who say the tests lacked the usual justification for research on primates, which is to advance medical science and protect human lives. In this instance, the monkeys were being used to try to help the companies sell diesel cars by showing that emissions were less harmful than many scientists had maintained.

The research suffered from procedural flaws and had not been published by the time the E.U.G.T. folded last year.

Right, like probably the monkeys died.
 
Curious... Is it illegal to test using Execs from BMW and Daimler? Just curious, as always...
 
As i said earlier but obviously i may have been wrong but more than 1 person needs a nap and needs to go outside and enjoy the free fresh air. Hopefully you can breath it without blaming someone on polluting it as living in a country like the usa we can make our own decisions. If you do no like it do something instead of crying on a forum and make a change in your own environment. I am looking forward to warmer weather so this forum goes back to semi- normal. Cabin fever affects all of us. Good luck and ride on. If this offends someone well get over it. Time to grow a pair a move on. Good day and hope everyone gets out and rides.
 
Hope this doesn't offend of course, but as an American I hope a few more of us wake up from our naps, get our truck nuts out of the way, and do something about leaving some free fresh air for the next generation...
And when you're out there making those American decisions like what car to buy, don't you want to know the truth about what it does, instead of being fed corporate lies?
 
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