The owner of a Tesla Cybertruck was driving on the highway when they encountered an alarming display of aggression from a truck driver. The other driver threw rocks at them and sprayed them with thick black smoke, a practice commonly known as coal rolling.
After capturing the incident on video, the Cybertruck driver shared the footage on Reddit, where it was met with disgust.
"Can we all just collectively agree to not be a******* on the road?" one person lamented.
This is unfortunately a somewhat common experience for EV owners of models that stand out, as they frequently find themselves the targets of anti–electric vehicle sentiment from gasoline and diesel drivers.
In addition to coal rolling, these opponents of EVs have been known to cut the cables or entirely destroy chargers to prevent EV owners from being able to refuel. They even target cyclists and pedestrians, whom they group into a broader category as people opposed to dirty energy sources that power gas and diesel engines.
But, as one person said, "That is not an excuse to throw rocks. … You can't just be violent because you don't like something."
It's incredibly frustrating behavior to encounter for drivers who are simply going about their day. "I report on these quite often," one Redditor said in response. Another shared a link to the page where people can report this behavior in Utah, where the video was filmed, but not every state has such a resource yet.
The adoption of electric vehicles will work toward a safer, cleaner future for everybody, including the current internal combustion engine (ICE) drivers. According to expert researcher Hannah Ritchie of the University of Oxford, the world mines roughly 16.5 billion tons of dirty energy sources yearly. By comparison, it only mines 7.7 million tons of lithium and EV-related minerals each year, approximately 0.05% of the fossil fuel number.
So even if ICE owners are reluctant to make the switch, they should be appreciative, not hateful, toward the people making consumer choices aimed at creating a cleaner planet and driving down the demand and prices of gas and diesel. At the very least, the old mantra of "don't let it bother you" should apply.
Bottom line? Nobody deserves to have concentrated exhaust spewed at them, and "nobody deserves to have rocks thrown at their vehicle," one person emphasized.
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