My regular Avoidable Contact column this week at R&T was entitled Why Diesel Needs To Die. It was primarily a discussion about how the European focus on CO2-as-a-pollutant led them to deliberately overlook the well-known health risks of diesel emissions.
The Internet being what it is, I’m not surprised that at least a couple of people took this as an opportunity to post the usual LOL BARUTH AND HIS KID ALMOST DIED IN A TOWN CAR LOL. I was mildly surprised to see that one of the loudest voices was someone who is, at least nominally speaking, a colleague of mine.
Ross Rapoport is an “editor” for Roadfly.com. I have to confess that I hadn’t heard of Roadfly until today, but is it a real website, albeit one with an exceptionally small reader base. Alexa places it much closer to jackbaruth.com than to Jalopnik or TTAC or even the next level of small automotive blogs like TFLCar.com. If all of you clicked on Roadfly today, you’d probably double their traffic.
Nor had I heard of Ross until today. The number of balding, low-bench-press, awkward Aspies who think they can become famous by standing in front of end-of-life press loaners and making videos about them considerably exceeds my absolutely nonexistent ability to sit through said videos. No matter. I’m aware of him now.
I have to admit that this fellow has damaged my calm a bit. It doesn’t bother me when people make fun of me or criticize me for mistakes I’ve made. Certainly I’ve made enough of them to keep anybody occupied for a long time. Given that I was not the primary victim of this crash, however, I think joking about it smacks of cruelty. To give you an example, I’m aware of several incidents where a relatively prominent journalist went into the trees at high speed during a lead-follow road drive. One of them was the thing with Motor Trend‘s Scott Evans doing a half-gainer in an ATS. Scott was unhurt and it was all in good fun so I duly took a swing at him. In another incident, a writer’s spouse was injured pretty badly. So that one is going to stay under wraps.
The January 2014 crash fractured nine of my favorite bones and also resulted in the trimming-by-laser of my spleen, whom I now call “Mr. Stubbs” as he valiantly but ineffectively attempts to keep me safe from additional bouts of pneumonia. I don’t sleep very well any more and I have a fair amount of peripheral neuropathy. I gained forty pounds, only twenty-one of which I’ve lost. But I was back on a racetrack less than ninety days afterwards and I went on to win the debut AER enduro on August 1st of that year. Since then, I’ve traveled the world and done everything from jumping a small box at my local skatepark to driving the K-PAX World Challenge McLaren.
On the other hand, it’s no secret that my passenger in that January crash has undergone close to a dozen surgeries to address her injuries. I’m happy to report that she’s back to work and doing very well. She’s healthy enough to ride bicycle trails with me and my son. Having rehabilitated from a few major injuries in the past myself, I remain thoroughly impressed by the dedication and bravery she’s displayed over the past twenty months. But it’s been a long, hard road.
I have too much to look forward to in the upcoming months, starting with a triple race in my reanimated PTE Neon at Mid-Ohio this weekend, to devote too much more thought to Ross Rapoport. It’s probably best to close the topic with this: You can throw as many stones as you want in this world if you are certain your house isn’t made of glass. But life has an odd way of turning stone to glass when your back is turned.
Jack, need to lighten the mood here a bit. As immature as it was (and probably for that reason), this was my favorite response to your article:
“Hey Jack say the following words really fast. I am we tall did.”
The number of times the word “retarded” appears in the comments should probably tell me something. 🙂
“Ignorant” appears quite a bit as well.
In both cases, I think the commenters don’t quite understand the words they are using.
Obvious they’ve never been in Europe in traffic for any length of time. If there was ever something to convice people that diesel is awful, that would be it, nevermind the governments over there promoting it via absurd taxation.
I’ll also chime in with everyone else saying what a dick that guy is, and probably isn’t worthy of response.
“You keep using that word…I don’t think it means what you think it means.”
Hi Jack, ignore the a-hole-troll.
I won’t comment over on R/T but will say it here:
The only reason Diesel is competitive for passenger cars in Europe is a relatively big tax advantage for diesel fuel vs. gasoline. The tax advantages were started by the member states, not the Eurocrats in the EU Commission. There was a time, when all in all, Diesel cars were cleaner than gasoline. That was before catalytic converters which got mandatory in Europe only in the 80s.
A few years ago, the Commission proposed legislation to do away with the tax advantages for Diesel. It got shot down by the national governments of the member states (the EU Council), who wouldn’t want to upset their voters invested in Diesel cars.
I think that is an inaccuracy in your article, with which I otherwise agree.
So his ploy worked. Best to ignore these folks, JB - all you’re doing is enabling them, and encouraging further bad behavior. Not that you asked for my advice, but there you go.
Best put down ever, from Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead” :
“Toohey: “Mr. Roark, we’re alone here. Why don’t you tell me what you think of me? In any words you wish. No one will hear us.”
Roark: “But I don’t think of you.”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/316798-toohey-mr-roark-we-re-alone-here-why-don-t-you-tell
Bit of a tangent here… But I’ve lately l noticed Max Prince doing quite a few of the high performance articles on R&T.
I like his writing so far. Do you know much about him? Is he the real deal, or just using go fast words?
As far as the haters go, let them throw their resumes into the ring if they want to have their opinions valued. Until then, fuck em.
As an engineer I did think you played a wee bit fast and loose with this line, “diesels tend to emit less CO2 because they tend to have less power because diesels have traditionally been weaker and slower”.
I agree that diesels in small car usage are generally particulant belching clatter boxes… But by any specific output or VE metric diesels are vastly more powerful than their Otto cycle equivalents.
I’ll speak plainly, and maybe, just maybe, out loud for those who don’t want to get muddy
This Ross guy appears to be a real fucking dickhead, and to add insult to his injury, looks like a blind tree frog born near a not-very-compliant nuclear power plant.
I try to avoid saying anything on the Internet that I wouldn’t say to someone’s face, on the odd chance that they had the skills and inclination to find me, and I wholeheartedly agree with you. What a fucking hump. May the OEMs gaze upon his ugly visage and provide him loaners no more.
trolls ~ meh .
Carry on Jack .
-Nate
I deal with guns a lot…obviously. There’s this idea that accidents with guns only happen to stupid people, this despite the fact that I can cite a whole bunch of very experienced, well trained individuals who have either had or witnessed an accident with a firearm. The more exposure someone has, the higher their chances of experiencing something bad. Sort of like skydiving…do enough jumps and sooner or later you’ll experience a chute that doesn’t open right.
So become immediately squinty-eyed when I see something like the post quoted above. It usually tells me I’m dealing with someone who doesn’t know what they don’t know. It’s useful in the same way that seeing a bottle of Valtrex in a woman’s purse at a bar is useful.
According to his author page on Roadfly.com, it doesn’t look like he’s done any work there in a few years…
December 2013 was his last review. And he looks awkward in shorts.
http://www.roadfly.com/author/ross-rapoport
Am I the only one that thinks Rapoport looks high in that photo? Squinty, bloodshot and dilated eyes. Reminds me of my driver’s license photos.
I thought I was having a rough time with comments to a post yesterday and then I read the responses to Jack’s diesel piece. Tough room, though it was sort of humorous to read how inaccurate their presumptions about JB were.
“But life has an odd way of turning stone to glass when your back is turned.”
Wisdom of the ages.
Hopefully we get a write up on the Neon’s performance this weekend? You may have covered this before, but did the 2.4 ever happen?
As for this guy, I heard he and M5Power were allegedly involved in some sort of indiscretions.
I understand wanting to respond to what this guy said, and I’d even say you did so eloquently and reasonably. But given the way he talks about your accident and, similarly, about Magnus Walker’s, I can’t help but feel that the ultimate goal - simply getting attention by openly mocking the driving mistakes of people that are well known, and riling up their groups of supporters - has been achieved. Plus, obviously, the unavoidable general stench emanating from his sense of superiority about these matters.
But after watching some of his videos… hey, the guy definitely sits in the trunk of Porsche better than most I’ve seen.
A sleazeball and a coward. Mocking someone who had a bad accident, and loved ones who were hurt, too? I repeat, sleazeball.
An yet the app peeple gets $7 million and we think it’ll get better.
I don’t want to sign up at R and T so here it is. Ignore those who are using your accident to try and further their point on an unrelated subject.
On the diesel thing. I think they have their place but passenger cars are not it.
The diesel particulate and the lean-burn stench of most tiny four cylinder cars I’m behind makes me long for the slightly-leaded smell of V8s of yore; at least you knew you were just going to go crazy and die like some Roman nobleman. Perhaps if they just ran the diesel turbines on peanut oil or french fry oil, they’d at least smell nice.
The guy in the photo looks like an intoxicated version of David Lee Roth’s cousin - what’s with not focusing for a photo?
Europeans have leaned toward diesel for the same reason that they have taxed the stuffing out of fuel from the start — they are import-dependent and wish to import as little oil as possible. If a diesel can reduce net fuel consumption, then that’s a bit less dependency on foreign oil producers.
Agree with Pch101 - Diesels aren’t more economical because they’re lower in power (they do have less horsepower but more torque which makes them nicer to drive than the horsepower would indicate) but because they are more efficient (at the cost of NOx since they’re basically running lean all of the time).
You’re also confusing particulates and NOx - the particulate filter does solve the black smoke (and by the way, the GDI engines emit more soot than diesel with particulate filters!) - but the the NOx can only be solved by adding Urea/SCR which is costly - that requirement will in effect kill small/medium diesels as you wish.
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Jack, sorry you missed my earlier post, in which I agreed with your take on diesels and even defended your piece against another TCLer’s characterization of it as “bad journalism.” Here: http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?7252206-Baruth-%28presumably-to-anger-TCL-ers%29-Time-to-ban-diesels&p=88388659&viewfull=1#post88388659
As for the comment about your accident, I’m sorry that it upset you. That’s the best thing I can say. When we share serious and possibly controversial things, we take the risk that people won’t always understand how sensitive the subjects of the story are. Now that I better understand those sensitivities, I’ll try to be more respectful. Especially since I just found a picture of you wearing an Iron Maiden t-shirt. Hopefully you weren’t just doing it to poke fun at all the mouth-breathing “Aspies” who like Maiden.
And to the others re: my eyes looking ‘high’ and such…no idea what you’re talking about!