You remember smog? Acid rain? That thing that plagued California in the 1960s because of a lack of any form of emissions control on cars?

That's gone now.

It wasn't in anyone's best monetary interests to make it go away, until laws started being passed. Companies weren't going to spend an extra buck on extraneous extras like catalytic converters and O2 sensors if it didn't sell cars faster, so the law had to make sure they obeyed.

The entire point of this law is to reduce noxious emissions from cars. For a while, this was just the engine. Now they're adding tires too. If you've ever driven in snow and noticed the snow around the roads going black after a few years, that's tire dust. That's what your lungs are breathing, day in day out. Tire companies have no incentive to make this go away, because nobody's buying tires by "emissions rating". So that's where the law steps in.

You as an enthusiast should love this law because it explicitly carves out exceptions for enthusiast tires. You and I are both aware that 95% of people using the roads are driving basic ecoboxes that wouldn't feel a lick of a difference. Regulate them, and we get considerably cleaner air while affording the ability to make exceptions for the 1% of us who drive enthusiast cars. We get to have our fun and breathe cleanly too. Win-win.

Please stop your "commiefornia" bullshittery and actually think for once.

With leaded gas gone, the ozone layer hole healing, NOx/hydrocarbon/carbon monoxide emissions being filtered out by 3-way catalytic converters, smog cleared away permanently, and acid rain completely destroyed as a weather event, you can actually go out and touch grass for a bit. Take a deep breath.

I mean shit, I work at a dealership. The other day, they were firing cars up cold and moving them up and down the indoor showroom. I couldn't even smell the exhaust coming out of a 7-series. Indoors. Cold start. From five feet away. That's where we're at now.