Nothing Radicalizes You Against Dirty Diesels Like Riding A Motorcycle

Zero recently dropped off an S for me to test, and now that put a few hundred miles on it, I have to say, it really is a great daily ride if you can get past the $15,000 price tag. It has about 150 miles of range around town, which so far has been plenty for my needs, and despite being a powerful naked bike, it’s proven both comfortable and far easier to ride than its 97 pound-feet of torque would suggest. But the more I ride it, the angrier I get about all the dirty, deleted diesel trucks I’m forced to share the road with. 

Now, I’ve been riding for nearly 20 years, so it isn’t like the Zero is my first time on a bike. I’ve just spent the majority of my riding years living in cities, where Pedestrian Crusher 9000s aren’t nearly as common. Now that I don’t live in a much more rural area in the South, however, it’s something I run into on a near-daily basis. And while you can agree it’s bad to illegally modify vehicles to dump more pollution into the air we all breathe from inside a car, you’re also insulated from the problem when you’re in an insulated box with a climate control system that also filters the air you breathe.

On a motorcycle, though, you can actually smell the coal they’re rolling, and there’s often no escaping it. Back in California, I’d be legally allowed to lane-split and pass the douchebags stinking up the road, but here in anti-motorcycle Georgia, that’s not the case. So, unless I want to break the law, I often find myself stuck, stewing in my anger and frustration as I watch black smoke pour out of their exhaust pipes.

Admittedly, I’m one of those DEI-loving Panican commies, or whatever the current term is for people who believe the things they see with their own eyes. But let’s pretend I couldn’t care less about human-caused climate change. The noxious clouds these illegally modified trucks spew still smell awful, and I already have a limited sense of smell due to a traumatic brain injury I suffered a while ago. If you have a regular sense of smell, I can only imagine it’s worse. 

This also isn’t one of those situations where you know something’s bad for your lungs, but that something still smells kind of good. It’s objectively a terrible idea to inhale gasoline fumes, but I’m also pretty sure most of us could agree there’s something nice about how it smells. The stuff these dirty diesels shoot out, on the other hand, is just bad across the board. It’s bad for the planet, bad for you and, most relevant to my point here, smells like it’s actively poisoning you the moment it hits your nose.

Because of that, even if you’re the most pro-Trump Harley rider imaginable, I don’t know how anyone on two wheels doesn’t absolutely despise these drivers. Polluted air may be too abstract a concept for those riders to care about, but they’re being personally victimized by these dirty diesels, too. After all, they also have noses, and I assume theirs work at least as well as mine does. 

Unfortunately for all of us, motorcycle riders or not, it also doesn’t feel like anybody cares. At least not anymore. The Environmental Protection Agency went after a few illegal tuners under the last administration, but two months ago, it announced plans to eliminate a huge number of regulations, while the EPA administrator continues to gut the agency’s ability to enforce anything. And it isn’t like more local authorities care any more than the current EPA, either. Of Georgia’s 159 counties, only 13 require emissions testing, and let me tell you, Madison, Oconee, and Oglethorpe sure aren’t on that list. Even Athens-Clarke County doesn’t care, and it’s as blue as this area gets.

It also isn’t like regulations on motorcycle emissions have historically been super strict, but I also don’t remember the last time I saw a literal cloud of black smoke pouring out of a motorcycle’s exhaust. Meanwhile, it’s so common with trucks, I could probably start my own YouTube channel dedicated specifically to shaming the owners. That seems like a great way to end up on the wrong end of a Browning in a county where no one would bother to investigate my sudden disappearance. 

Maybe in the future, things will change, but for now, it’s just demoralizing. It would be great if you could just submit a clip from your helmet or dashcam to local authorities, and that would be enough evidence for them to test the truck and then crush all the illegal ones, but that isn’t happening anytime soon. So instead, I guess I’m just stuck holding my breath or wearing a mask any time I go for a ride. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.