'Rolling coal' drivers fighting 'War on Coal' by purposely releasing more exhaust into the air

How far will some people go to protest government regulations? A trend that has quietly gained steam, to a large extent in rural areas, is called rolling coal, "in which truck drivers spend thousands of dollars altering their rides to produce ever greater amounts of smoke" as a form of political protest, Ryan Grenoble writes for theHuffington Post. (YouTube image)

"Modifications include a variety of components that increase the amount of fuel entering the truck's engine. When there's so much fuel that it fails to combust properly, 'it leaves the engine as soot,' according to an article on DieselHub.com, a website dedicated to diesel truck owners," Grenoble writes. "That soot, which coal rollers call "Prius repellent" in online videos and forums and on decals on their trucks, can then be channeled up through 'smoke stacks,' where it exits onto bystanders (or a Prius following too closely) in a thick, pollutant-heavy black cloud."

One seller of smoke stack kits told the Post, “I run into a lot of people that really don’t like Obama at all. If he’s into the environment, if he’s into this or that, we’re not. I hear a lot of that. To get a single stack on my truck—that’s my way of giving them the finger. You want clean air and a tiny carbon footprint? Well, screw you.” (Read more)