[potato3732842]

That guy's continued breathing is a testament to how good NYC's surveillance dragnet is or at least how good people think it is.

I can't imagine doing what that guy does at the scale he does. Like you can only wrong so many people until you run across the guy for whom you are the final straw. Though I guess that might be why he mostly runs a ring these days instead of being on the street.

[woodruffw]

Nobody is going kill someone for reporting idling trucks. The drivers of these trucks don't care; the company tells them to idle and swallows the fine (typically bartered down in bulk).

[potato3732842]

If you go around doing it you'll make a name for yourself. Couriers, ubers, delivery drivers, they all have social media. Eventually you'll run across the guy who "wrong pedals" you.

I wouldn't risk it.

[woodruffw]

The idling law in question is for commercial vehicles, meaning trucks. It has nothing to do with couriers or delivery drivers.

(The city has other, unincentivized, idling laws for other classes of vehicles.)

[potato3732842]

I mean delivery like box truck, not delivery like doordash.

I was imprecise to lump them all together like that.

[woodruffw]

Sure, I suppose it could happen in that case. There's no public evidence of any such occurrence, however; most of the city's truck traffic is big companies, and I don't see why any driver would risk prison time to stave off an idling ticket that Amazon, etc. is just going to negotiate down in court anyways.

[potato3732842]

You live in different worlds.

Pretty much everyone who depends on small business in NYC hates the government and law enforcement of NYC and sees them as revenuers (Louis Rossman covers this in detail on his youtube channel, to mention someone who's respected here on HN). The idea that someone would help them for a cut is incredibly disgusting to most people who live in this world.

It's incredibly foreseeable that some guy in the cab of a box truck who's distracted with his dispatch iPad looks up to see some guy taking pictures, puts two and two together and puts the truck in drive. They don't hire middle class techies to drive these trucks. Your morals don't translate to onto some 20yo guy from Newark. And they also don't translate into his hotheaded 16yo helper who runs with a less than law abiding crowd and you didn't see come out of the building just behind.

Like I said, the risk ain't worth my life.