How do you respond?......

When someone raps on your window and tells you to turn your vehicle off?

Happened to me for the third time today. Only one of the three have been pleasant about it, and the dick today was actually pretty threatening. Each time it has caught me off guard. So the first time I was coming home from work. It was dark, pissing rain and I was exhausted, soaked to the skin and freezing. I was waiting in a ferry line up with the motor running and the heat blasting. A guy stepped off the sidewalk and banged on my window. The only person around in that weather. He did not get a good response from me. And the truck stayed running.

Second time was a warm summer day. I pulled into a rest stop to plug some directions into my gps. It may have been a three minute stop start to finish but it only took a minute for some young earth lover to come and ask nicely for me to turn my truck off. Not because it was affecting him, but because it was bad for the environment. I laughed and drove off. Then today. I pull up in front of a pool to pick up my kid. He is waiting for me and coming out. I am in five minute parking in a ROW of idling vehicles. NOT in front of a door or people. (Cold and snowing) this guy with a thick eastern european accent (recently moved from a country with zero environmental controls perhaps?) pounds on my window and demands I turn my truck off. Because of the environment again. Singled me out of a row of idling vehicles. He told me to turn it off or else. So of course the truck stayed running. And then my kid came out and that defused the situation.

So I don't idle my truck for long periods. I wouldn't pump exhaust into a doorway or a crowd of people. I even shut it off quite often at railroad level crossings. I'm not a dick about it, and for the record its a clean well maintained late model diesel. But I didn't sign on to the whole love the environment thing. I will make my own decisions about how large I want my carbon foot print to be and its none of anyone elses berkeleying business.

Thoughts? Anyone else run into this or is it a made in vancouver- the greenest city in the world-where the mayor cycles to work and owns an organic juice company- thing? Or am I the dick for not turning off the key every time the wheels stop rolling?

Must be a Vancouver or BC thing!

I would politely ask them to mind their own business.

Illegal in Vermont to idle over 5 minutes. And, unattended vehicles idling illegal regardless of time.

Is it a diesel? While I doubt anyone would give a damn about me idling my Grand Caravan, my 12V Cummins could wake up the dead idling in my driveway. Two towns over on a cold morning. A straight through exhaust is like that... Unfortunately, it really needed to warm up for a bit before it was happy moving.

My polite reply would be,"No." If they were non-threatening, I might even explain why. I'm cold and wet, or I'm just plugging in GPS coordinates.

If threatening, "Don't bang on my window. Do it again, and you'll be spitting Chicklets."

If someone had the stones to tell me to turn off my truck my response would be, "I'm trying to diagnose my horn problem" and when they inevitably open their mouth to reply I would sound the horn for as long as their lips were moving. If they speak again, more horn.

Turn off my truck? I've been asked if I can roll coal, but never asked if I would turn off my truck!

EastCoastMojo wrote: If someone had the stones to tell me to turn off my truck my response would be, "I'm trying to diagnose my horn problem" and when they inevitably open their mouth to reply I would sound the horn for as long as their lips were moving. If they speak again, more horn.

I like it! I always think of a clever response far too late, and when someone tells me to do something I get my back up.

Ok, I have sat in a Ferry line before and I don't know how it is in BC, but down in Washington, they have signs everywhere saying "No Idling, Please Shut Off Engine". I don't know if they are more lenient in the winter, but they don't like it.

For everyone else, I'd say stick it in their ear, because that's not for someone else to tell you to do unless it is a police officer and there is a law.

In reply to EastCoastMojo:

I watched some crotchety old guy tell some firemen to turn their truck off. They ignored him the first few times and then turned on the sirens. He yelled louder so one of them got on the loudspeaker and said "sorry I can't hear you over the sirens". The world was much more fun before every pain in the ass had a camera on them all the time.

Three nights a week I have to go wait outside the dance studio to pick up my daughter. She never gets out on time. I've waited as long as an extra 30 minutes before she was dismissed. So there I am with 6 to 10 other parents waiting. Most of us pull up and park in the no parking zone in front of the place. I'll be sitting there waiting and some mom in a full size SUV will pull right in front of me headlights blazing right in my front windshield. There will be three dad's in pickup trucks with no lights on engines off, and 5 Moms in full size SUVs or minivans, engine running, face buried in a cell phone, headlights blinding someone. Yes I've said something, and its never been in a nice tone.

This is new to me here in SoNE. But regardless, unless it's an actual law enforcement officer ordering me to shut down, I'd say "bugger off," or some such comment ... maybe not belligerently, but definitely not politely. Nobody's damn business but my own.

tr8todd wrote: Three nights a week I have to go wait outside the dance studio to pick up my daughter. She never gets out on time. I've waited as long as an extra 30 minutes before she was dismissed. So there I am with 6 to 10 other parents waiting. Most of us pull up and park in the no parking zone in front of the place. I'll be sitting there waiting and some mom in a full size SUV will pull right in front of me headlights blazing right in my front windshield. There will be three dad's in pickup trucks with no lights on engines off, and 5 Moms in full size SUVs or minivans, engine running, face buried in a cell phone, headlights blinding someone. Yes I've said something, and its never been in a nice tone.

Start carrying a mirror with you for those moments.

Headlights in the face is a different thing, unrelated to the "environmental" issue. But I understand. That would irk me.

The diesel noise is probably why you were singled out. Although, ironically, a diesel will probably put out less emissions and use less fuel while idling than a gas engine.

I like the horn idea, though we don't generally have that type of folk running around here in Texas. Heck, anyone banging on a somebody's window like that is likely to get a bullet.

Wall-e wrote: In reply to EastCoastMojo: I watched some crotchety old guy tell some firemen to turn their truck off. They ignored him the first few times and then turned on the sirens. He yelled louder so one of them got on the loudspeaker and said "sorry I can't hear you over the sirens". The world was much more fun before every pain in the ass had a camera on them all the time.

I've never understood when people get pissed off at Firemen and what they do with their Fire Trucks. Yes it's tax dollars, but they have to take them out and run them, they spend most their life sitting.

I remember a video someone made of themself yelling at firemen for using the fire truck for getting groceries or picking up food or something. Just made the guy look like a douchebag.

I've never experienced this issue. I've lived in a lot of places, but not one where people felt entitled to have an opinion on whether my car is on or off.

Now that we have an infant again and my wife is breastfeeding, we spend a lot of time in an idling car. If someone told me to turn my car off, i'd tell them to go pound sand. Of course here in winter wisconsin, every work day, every gas station has a line of empty idling cars in front of it from the drivers getting coffee and breakfast sandwiches.

I'd probably get my ass beat, but I can't come up with a scenario where my response would be to do what some random window tapper wants.

I have been in California all my life and I have never heard of or seen such a thing.

I did hear one of the loud diesel pickups in a parking structure recently and it was really loud, as in almost painful.

Something tells me your truck is louder and stinkier than you realize.

A Cummins churning away at idle can be a really unpleasant thing to be around. With a DPF delete they are an eye watering scourge

Hmmmm.

Lets see here. Push button for line lock, select drive and roast tires untill annoying person runs away or chokes to death.

In reply to Jumper K. Balls:

Not necessarily. Some people feel it's their life's mission to enforce these laws. We have a woman who complains about buses are idling outside her apartment at the end of their route. She takes pics out her window of the buses sitting there with their lights on. We've observed them many times and almost every time they have the engines off but lights on so customers can see in when they board, then they start the engines just before they drive off.

If you constantly blip the throttle up to about 3K RPMs or so, technically it couldn't be considered idling...

As the voice of dissent, I've never been asked to shut off my car or truck but I have requested that others do so exactly twice.

Both times at our local drive in. Nice warm summer evenings in which lots of people are enjoying a quiet movie under the stars and these two ass hats are sitting in their vehicles idling away. One 12 valve diesel and one E36 M3ty Subaru with a squealing serpentine belt. Both people seemed genuinely surprised that their actions might have an effect on the people around them and complied when I explained the situation to them.