[MrBuddyCasino]

Nothing will change until there are prison sentences, and the very deliberate system of shielding managers and corporations from responsibility is changed.

It was known for decades that Asbestos and cigarettes causes lung cancer, that adding lead to gasoline is a terrible idea, that burning oil warms the atmosphere. The truth was suppressed through intimidation, lawsuits and bribes. Regulatory agencies are corrupted by the revolving door system. You cannot trust these organisations.

[DoingIsLearning]

I mean NO2 from diesel exhaust is provably reducing longevity i.e. killing people sooner, still no prison sentences happened for any of the heads in VW. [0]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal

[KennyBlanken]

I wish people would stop acting like this was just VW. Every major manufacturer in Europe was found to have either emissions-cheating code, or to have emissions levels wildly higher than what the manufacturer claimed, because the EU regulators just trusted manufacturers to test and report CO2 and NOx figures. Shockingly, they all lied.

And if you live in America, diesel pickups have to meet a far less stringent set of emissions standards.

On top of that, many people who own duramaxes, powerstrokes, and cummins diesels strip out the emissions control equipment and run modded firmware on their ECUs to not throw a code...spewing far more pollution than these "dirty" diesels.

[goodpoint]

Serious question: why people obsess over Volkswagen? Other companies are even worst offenders. See chart:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal

[DoingIsLearning]

Fair criticism.

It was VW's "off-the-chart" emissions that led investigators and regulators to review the claims of all other manufacturers. [0] So it is natural that the media focus on that manufacturer.

[0] https://www.autoevolution.com/news/meet-the-engineer-who-exp...

[KennyBlanken]

If you think that US and EU investigators / regulators didn't know that every manufacturer was cheating on their emissions figures, I have a bridge in London to sell you.

Do you think EU politicians didn't know exactly what they were doing when they gave responsibility for reporting emissions figures to automakers and then blindly trusted them?

It's been an open secret for decades among 'chip' tuners that manufacturers have been cheating on emissions almost since microcontrollers were used for engine management...the extra code and extra lookup tables are there plain as day when you dump the roms.

Why do you think many tuners have functions that allow you to switch between a stock engine program and a tuned one, so you can pass emissions, by pushing various buttons on the dash or actuating the cruise control stalk in a certain pattern? Because those features are how OEMs activate the emissions cheating tables and code in their ECUs

Did you notice that there hasn't been any discussion on steps EU or US regulators have taken to detect this cheating?

[DoingIsLearning]

> Do you think EU politicians didn't know exactly what they were doing when they gave responsibility for reporting emissions figures to automakers and then blindly trusted them

Most medical devices will carry out private bio-safety tests. Most electronics will perform private EMC tests. I agree it's crap but automotive is not some special case or part of a conspiracy.

A lot of regulated industries self-regulate. The regulatory bodies trust the results documented by manufacturers because they realistically have no money/time/expertise to do it themselves.

Post diesel gate "The new rules, finalized in 2018, give the Commission the right to carry out compliance checks on vehicles, order bloc-wide model recalls and slap fines of €30,000 per car on cheating producers. The EU's science wing, the Joint Research Centre, has spent €7 million on two new testing facilities that will perform snap checks, a Commission official said.". [0]

[0] https://www.politico.eu/article/new-eu-car-rules-aim-to-stop...

[goodpoint]

> automotive is not ... part of a conspiracy

A group of people secretly breaking the law is exactly a conspiracy, by definition: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conspire

> A lot of regulated industries self-regulate

Not so easy. Traffic engineers, meteorologists, environmental agencies and other [EU-funded] organizations monitor the air quality constantly and have detailed statistics on how many cars of each model are on the road.

You can easily do the math and see that the numbers do not match expectations.

You cannot tell which brand is cheating but you can tell that the pollution is much, much higher than expected.

[londons_explore]

I support no prison sentences for VW... The engineers were meeting the letter but not the spirit of the rules, just as so many other companies do.

You probably have done the same when you did revision just before a geography test at school - you probably only learnt the syllabus rather than going to the library and learning everything in the geography section.

The VW engineers made a car that had only 'revised' enough to do well in the test, not to do well in the real world. Here is another example of engineers doing the same in a different industry[1].

[1]: http://omattos.com/2021/11/11/appliancegate-the-energy-effic...

[DoingIsLearning]

I know HN rules but this is apologetic bullshit.

The firmware actually detected if it was in test chamber conditions and ran in 'eco' mode. Outside these conditions it went full performance/full polluting mode.

This is text book fraudulent behaviour with complete lack of duty of care for anyone breathing the air near those exhaust pipes in city centres across the world.

[pretendscholar]

Lol no it is not like studying for a test and doing well on it. It is like cheating on your med school exams and then taking that license and killing people through malpractice. What they did was highly illegal and unethical.

[fnimick]

And anyone who has done the same to cheat the tests in other industries should also be penalized accordingly. I can't believe you're excusing deceptive behavior and test cheating because "everyone does it!"

[mechanical_bear]

I can’t believe you are using grade school bad behavior to justify polluting.

[goodpoint]

Add to that the toxicity of DDT, many car companies using emission test defeat devices, and thousands more examples.

What's worse is that for demanding accountability for such crimes you get called "environmental extremist" or something similar.

[londons_explore]

There are lots of countries with lots of governance models, yet none as far as I know would have proactively banned any of those things early on.

I suspect that means there is a flip side we aren't seeing. It means there is a huge disadvantage to banning some probably harmful chemical. For example, if you were a small island and you banned imports of everything containing any PFAS, you'd end up in the technological stone age - there are no PFAS-free iPhones, food, paper, or shoes. So, unless you have your own shoe factory, your people will have to go barefoot...

[DoingIsLearning]

Huge logic sleight of hand.

It is a very different piece of legislation to apply a cautionary principle to any substance in cookware, food containers, or in contact with human skin, versus a full out ban on iphones because some processor inside it used a PFAS lubricant at some point in the supply chain.

[goodpoint]

That's a false dichotomy. There are many other alternatives other than toxic materials VS stone age.

Also we are way way beyond "probably harmful".

[pitaj]

The huge disadvantage is many people dying because, in the long process of vetting a new chemical or drug, it was not available for use.

[IYasha]

I totally agree with you, but it should be noted that not all kinds of asbestos are harmful. One safe type is used today in apartment building with no measurable consequences.

[coryrc]

There's no use for asbestos in residential without a safer substitute.

[heartbeats]

What they really need is a system that puts the fear of God into them. Simply prohibiting chemicals after we've found them to be dangerous is unhelpful, and regulating them before we've found them dangerous is impossible.

Why not have a serious system based on punishment instead, after the fact? For example-

"If a company is found to be responsible for a material environmental disaster, whoever was employed by that company during the relevant period shall be sentenced to life in prison and a fine of 100% of their net worth. No liability should apply for occupations which can be conclusively demonstrated to be unrelated to the activities of the firm, such as janitors or security guards.

The statute of limitations shall equal the duration of life of the concerned natural persons or the victims, whichever is longer."

This would cause people to self-regulate, based on whatever informal information they hear ("3M is doing really dodgy stuff, I wouldn't work there if I were you"), rather than having to wait for regulation. It would be much better suited, and would allow for the government to scrap other bothersome regulation.

[NullPrefix]

>The statute of limitations shall equal the duration of life of the concerned natural persons or the victims, whichever is longer."

A strong incentive to finish off the victims

[heartbeats]

Probably it's superfluous; you can still be sentenced as long as you're alive. What I meant was just something to the effect off, if the plaintiff dies, financial damages can be recovered from their inheritances on a pro-rata basis, as long as at least one victim is alive.