God, you learn something new (and depressing) every day, don't you?
Apparently, there is a thing called "coal rolling" or " rolling coal", whereby idiots (almost exclusively young white idiots) illegally modify their pickup trucks to by-pass their pollution controls, so that they spew out 40 to 100 times the exhaust of a standard vehicle, pumping out black smoke in the process.
The jolly wheeze then is to form a kind of blockade on the road in front of electric cars or bikes and engulf them in black plumes of diesel exhaust, because, you know, they're clearly environmentalists or lefties or whatever. Women may also be targets of this obnoxious prank, as may any kind of progressive political protests (e.g. Black Live Matter, police repression, gun violence and trans rights rallies have all been targeted).
As well as creating a public nuisance and excess pollution, they are also causing visibility problems for the others drivers or cyclists, potentially putting their lives at risk. One 16-year old in Texas ended up ploughing into a group of cyclists while rolling coal at them, sending six of them to hospital (the kid was only charged after a public outcry against him).
It's all part of an increasingly aggressive and entitled American conservative movement, which is happy to take the law into its own hands in order to make a political statement (although the perpetrators may be hard-pressed to explain their political point). It has developed into a kind of counter-culture, boosted by the likes of (illegal) reality TV sensations, the Diesel Brothers.
A real head-scratcher.
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