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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

#61

Post by forapurpose »

I assume people start their cars to warm the cabin. I expect there are much more efficient ways to warm the cabin than using excess heat from an internal combustion engine under the hood. Perhaps the solution is to provide a way to warm the cabin (including seats and steering wheel) very rapidly when the car starts, or provide a way to warm the cabin without starting the engine.

The latter solution requires an energy source. Perhaps a hybrid car's batteries are it - not an option until recently, but hybrids are now relatively common - and the energy could be used efficiently: Ambient air heaters, of course; plus heaters directly in seats and steering wheel to warm them more efficiently than the ambient air would; plus of course sensors to shut down heaters when things are sufficiently warm.

OT: Did the NY Times change their layout recently? For the first time, IMHO, it's gone from functional to appealing.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#62

Post by cornellwright »

forapurpose wrote: post #61

I assume people start their cars to warm the cabin. I expect there are much more efficient ways to warm the cabin than using excess heat from an internal combustion engine under the hood. Perhaps the solution is to provide a way to warm the cabin (including seats and steering wheel) very rapidly when the car starts, or provide a way to warm the cabin without starting the engine. The latter solution requires an energy…

This was one thing I really liked about driving an electric car in the winter - you can start the heater remotely through the app. Since it's an electric heater it warms up way faster than ICE. If it's plugged in, it will not even drain the battery.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#64

Post by toomuchgov »

jaggederest wrote: post #63

I think this is actually a stronger argument for sealing the garage off from the house, detached if possible. There are any number of bad things being stored in many garages that make it useful to seal your garage well away from the house.

Or, at least in the US, not have the A/C handler in the garage.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#65

Post by tadfisher »

hangonhn wrote: post #48

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 mi…

Yep, that's my rule even with properly-running engines: The car won't start until the garage door is open.

If I could hack up some sort of ignition interlock such that an Arduino or Pi could broadcast a killswitch signal while the garage door is closed, I could more effectively enforce that rule.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#66

Post by schiffern »

ashleyn wrote: post #51
kemitche wrote: post #15

I wonder if these vehicles wouldn't benefit from an onboard CO detector? Automatic shutoff if the vehicle is stationary and CO hits a given threshold. There's indubitably a bunch of reasons not to do it that way...

Possible? Trivially. Doable? Not really, because cost margins are tight on cars. Remember, you're talking about the industry that once viewed it as cheaper to pay out lawsuits than to fix a dangerous fuel tank.

If it were a FMVSS requirement, it would solve the Prisoner's Dilemma of the manufacturers. All vehicles would get more expensive by Z dollars (where Z * annual_vehicles_sold < annual_harm_reduced, in the non-futile case).

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#67

Post by tialaramex »

schiffern wrote: post #56
joshvm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a side note, it's a legal requirement in some countries to having a working CO detector in the home, certainly for rented properties in the UK. Also in some (30+) states by the looks of it [1]. A $10 detector would have probably saved the gentleman's life. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221133551...

>A $10 detector would have probably saved the gentleman's life. True, but making the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards requiring the $5 sensor in that $10 detector in every vehicle equipped with keyless start (or perhaps, every vehicle) would lead to nearly 100% deployment as the vehicle fleet is replaced. By comparison, despite decades of passing laws and funding public education campaigns, only 33% of househol…

Note that the scarily high 40% failure is heavily biased by people keeping units long past their design lifespan. If you have a 5 year old Carbon Monoxide detector, buy a new one.

The failures prior to 5 years in that test are disturbing, but they're not statistically significant on their own so it's hard to be sure how serious that would be in practice.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#68

Post by tropo »

schiffern wrote: post #56
joshvm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a side note, it's a legal requirement in some countries to having a working CO detector in the home, certainly for rented properties in the UK. Also in some (30+) states by the looks of it [1]. A $10 detector would have probably saved the gentleman's life. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221133551...

>A $10 detector would have probably saved the gentleman's life. True, but making the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards requiring the $5 sensor in that $10 detector in every vehicle equipped with keyless start (or perhaps, every vehicle) would lead to nearly 100% deployment as the vehicle fleet is replaced. By comparison, despite decades of passing laws and funding public education campaigns, only 33% of househol…

You can buy them new and they don't work. I've come to assume that the commonly available (typical retail store) CO detectors are a fraud.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#69

Post by jessaustin »

hangonhn wrote: post #48

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 mi…

Attached garages are really a terrible misfeature, which will be emblematic for future generations (as they already are for those overseas) of our poor taste and judgement. No matter how ugly the house, it would be a lot more pleasant without the garage. In addition to the dangers cited here, garages make houses less effective at their primary purposes: controlling the movement of air, moisture, and heat. The garage door itself is a big part of that, since every time it opens and closes it opens the house completely to the outdoors. Automobiles bring moisture, dirt, heat, and noxious chemicals into the garage and thence into the house. I've never rented a house and been sorry there was no attached garage. If I ever build my own house it won't have one either.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#70

Post by throwaway5752 »

jessaustin wrote: post #69
hangonhn wrote: post #48

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 mi…

Attached garages are really a terrible misfeature, which will be emblematic for future generations (as they already are for those overseas) of our poor taste and judgement. No matter how ugly the house, it would be a lot more pleasant without the garage. In addition to the dangers cited here, garages make houses less effective at their primary purposes: controlling the movement of air, moisture, and heat. The garage…

I completely disagree with you. It's an enormous convenience in poor weather, with very minor risks that are easily mitigated (I can't believe there is anyone that doesn't have a CO detector and smoke detector at least on every floor, it should be illegal not to have them) and they can be very easily insulated. I have had both and I'd never have a place without a garage or carport.
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