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Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

nytimes.com

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Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#41

Post by justin66 »

helloworld wrote: post #3

This is certainly an interesting case study in the pitfalls of behavioral design, but one important detail that the story glosses over is how rare these incidents are: More than two dozen people [have been] killed by carbon monoxide nationwide since 2006 after a keyless-ignition vehicle was inadvertently left running in a garage. On average, that's two deaths a year in a country of more than 260 million passenger veh…

> On average, that's two deaths a year in a country of more than 260 million passenger vehicles.[1] These accidental deaths are tragic, but it's actually impressive how infrequently they occur.

The deaths and injuries are utterly avoidable with decent design. Also, this is a feature that isn't prominent yet. The number of deaths is only going to get higher until the cars are built to turn the engine off under the right conditions.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#42

Post by TheForumTroll »

tzakrajs wrote: post #5

My 2015 Ford automatically shuts off after roughly 15 minutes of being without the key whether you start it from inside or outside of the vehicle.

That is a good thing since some newer Fords leak CO into the interior. I'm sure they wouldn't have added it if they could've gotten away with doing nothing.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#43

Post by emodendroket »

lisper wrote: post #33
emodendroket wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, when I first got the car I have now I had trouble telling whether it was running because it was so quiet. It also has engine noise piped through the speakers, I guess to make it feel sportier.

> engine noise piped through the speakers LOL! What kind of car is it?

A Volkswagen GTI, but BMWs do the same thing.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#44

Post by NegativeLatency »

kemitche wrote: post #12
helloworld wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a reasonable point, and I don't mean to trivialize a serious issue -- carbon monoxide poisoning caused by keyless cars -- but in comparison, bathtub drownings are far more common: about 335 a year.[1] [1] https://www.seattlepi.com/national/article/Someone-drowns-in...

Ah but what's the ownership rate of bathtubs compared to keyless start cars?

You’d also have to consider bathtub usage (I shower daily, but only take a bath every couple of months)

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#45

Post by TheForumTroll »

lisper wrote: post #33
emodendroket wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, when I first got the car I have now I had trouble telling whether it was running because it was so quiet. It also has engine noise piped through the speakers, I guess to make it feel sportier.

> engine noise piped through the speakers LOL! What kind of car is it?

Many US cars have it. Ford F-150 for one.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#46

Post by hndamien »

karl11 wrote: post #40

I would bet that collectively the time wasted due to mishaps exceeds time saved by this feature. For me personally, I don’t think I will ever make the time up in my lifetime - I have accidentally killed a battery once because the car was in ACC mode and I didn’t realize it, and another time I drove away without the key because I was dropping the owner of the car off at the airport.

These problems are not as bad with an electric car like a Tesla. I have left AC on but the battery was fine. I have been dropped off while the driver had no key, and it posed a slight issue once they stopped the car and got off the seat. Obviously, no CO poisoning.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#47

Post by dredmorbius »

helloworld wrote: post #3

This is certainly an interesting case study in the pitfalls of behavioral design, but one important detail that the story glosses over is how rare these incidents are: More than two dozen people [have been] killed by carbon monoxide nationwide since 2006 after a keyless-ignition vehicle was inadvertently left running in a garage. On average, that's two deaths a year in a country of more than 260 million passenger veh…

Not all 260 million vehicles are keyless.

The incident rate per keyless vehicle is likely an order, possibly two, of magnitude higher.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#48

Post by hangonhn »

I had a pretty scary run in with CO from my car once and it had nothing to do with the keyless fob. My car with gasoline direct injection had two bad injectors fail while I was driving home. It went into limp mode. When I got home I inserted the OBD2 scanner to diagnose the issue in the garage. Because it was in limp mode, the engine was running rich and I guess producing a lot of CO in my garage. In the roughly 5 minutes it took me to start the car, get the code, and shut it off, it had produced a dangerous level of CO. I left the garage and went inside. About 30 minutes later while I was in bed my Nest smoke/CO detectors alerted me to CO in the hallway connecting my house to the garage. I ventilated the entire house and garage and the alarm stopped. I did get a light headache from the short exposure.

Moral of the story, never run a car inside the garage with the door closed and always have CO detectors throughout the house. Nest probably saved my life that night from my own mistake.

If we want a more general solution, we should look beyond the keyless fob and just make CO detectors a requirement. You don’t need fancy ones like Nest. Cheaper ones that cost 20 dollars still works.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#49

Post by emodendroket »

oh_sigh wrote: post #26
emodendroket wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd think some drivers prefer the current behavior. Like if you don't have a garage and live somewhere with cold winters you probably want to be able to start it and walk away.

Sure, but 30 mins is more than enough time to warm up in situations where externally powered heaters aren't required. Surely there must be some safe ground that would not drastically affect most drivers, but still save lives

Yeah, that's fair. I drive a manual car, which makes it very hard to absent-mindedly leave your car running (at least if you park it in gear, but I think most people do).

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#50

Post by Retric »

helloworld wrote: post #3

This is certainly an interesting case study in the pitfalls of behavioral design, but one important detail that the story glosses over is how rare these incidents are: More than two dozen people [have been] killed by carbon monoxide nationwide since 2006 after a keyless-ignition vehicle was inadvertently left running in a garage. On average, that's two deaths a year in a country of more than 260 million passenger veh…

Keyless cars are a tiny fraction of overall vehicles.

The net befit is also minimal, so if they became popular you would expect a ~hundred deaths per year for what? Do save 20$ per car because they lack CO detectors?

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