Minneapolis, Minnesota Mayor R.T. Rybak and his fellow commissars on the Minneapolis City Council have passed legislation making it illegal to idle a car's engine for more than three minutes.
This, in a state where after parking my manual transmission-equipped truck outside overnight in the winter, I regularly had to warm it up for close to ten minutes before I could even put it into gear, because the fluids were so thick with the cold. I suppose people will have to now just force their cars into gear, regardless of whether it is ready to do so, or be ticketed as lawbreakers. Residents also can now look forward to adding the "idling police" to the ever-expanding list of officious bureaucrats lording over every aspect of their lives.
Yep, gone forever are the days when one could keep their engine running while they ran in to pick up dry cleaning or return a library book, so that Grandma and the kids wouldn't freeze solid in sub-zero temperatures. Frostbite is a small price to pay for a cleaner environment!
It will be interesting to find out if government vehicles will be subject to the same restrictions.
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2 comments:
I'm pretty sure there are whole bunch of intersections in Minneapolis where you are now going to have to turn off your vehicle while waiting your turn.
But I shouldn't complain...RT knows best and has all the answers.
BTW, there's another good reason you didn't stick around. I betcha your truk doesn't run on ethanol, does it?
Cool. My solution is to heat the garage--I'm sure the thousands of therms I'd burn doing so would impact the environment less than a few ounces of gasoline to properly warm my manual transmission truck up.
Be glad you've got the old style clutch cable, BTW, and not the new style hydraulic clutch--with a switch that forces you to push it in before the engine already starts. That can be a workout at 20 below! (it's like a thermometer; I can tell it's < 10 below when it stiffens)
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