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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

#91

Post by peterwwillis »

Here's the thing: leaving a car running and unoccupied is, from an engineering perspective, completely stupid.

Running a car on idle for a long time basically slowly degrades it. It's just sitting there getting hot and wasting gas. Without adequate cooling, the engine will overheat. And if you have multiple catalytic converters, the car can explode from built up gases. Many manuals explicitly state not to idle the car for more than 10-20 minutes.

You don't even need to idle it. Many cars today have automatic engine shut off and start when the car is stopped at a red light. New cars could easily add this to prevent idling.

Now consider the non-technical reasons not to let it idle. One, someone can steal it. Two, it's wasting gas. Three, it's pumping harmful gases into the atmosphere and creating smog. Four, someone could die from carbon monoxide.

The solution is simple. The default should be to turn off the car if the keys are gone after idling for 10 minutes, with an override switch to let it idle for, let's say an hour. After an hour you have to flip the switch again.

Regardless of whether you think this is necessary, there are hundreds of such modifications already that add up to make cars safer and more reliable. You can't switch into or out of park or reverse without depressing the brake. You can't remove the keys without being in park. Your can't operate Bluetooth controls while the car is in motion.

So it's not like these changes are new or difficult. Automakers add them over time as they see the need. But when they don't act, it's up to us to pass legislation to require them.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#92

Post by twblalock »

perl4ever wrote: post #57
dnautics wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've forgotten to leave with the keys, several times. Not so bad at work, which is in an office lot in suburban sleepytown, but kind of scary when I get back from paying a social call in a higher-petty-crime area like the Mission district.

My car (a Honda) won't lock with the button on the door handle if the key fob is inside, so I don't forget it.

My Prius also has that feature. As far as I know, they all do.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#93

Post by hedora »

13of40 wrote: post #75
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…

Huh - how about a CO detector on the air intake of the engine that shuts it off if the concentration is too high.

It is a little tricky to get right. For instance, it shouldn’t trip if the car is in motion.

Even harder to get right (and very likely to increase the current, extremely low accidental CO death toll), it definitely shouldn’t trip if the car is stuck in stop-and-go traffic in a tunnel full of idling cars.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#94

Post by kps »

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…

Many places in North America, it is forbidden to park a car on your property in front of your house except on a driveway leading to a garage. The result — unsurprising to anyone except an urban ‘planner’ — is houses whose face is almost entirely garage.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#95

Post by yock »

romwell wrote: post #80
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…

You are asking the wrong question here. The right question to ask is how many CO deaths from accidentally leaving the car running in the garage were happening before the introduction of key fobs vs. now. The difference amounts to the multitude of easily avoidable deaths that lie entirely on the auto manufacturer's shoulders. A dozen people is a dozen people too many. Stopping the engine when exiting the car with a fo…

> ...how many CO deaths from accidentally leaving the car running in the garage were happening before the introduction of key fobs vs. now.

The great thing about the free market is that information spurs innovation. News stories like these make consumers aware of risks they couldn't recognize before. Now we, as informed buyers, can seek out these safety features in the products we buy.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#96

Post by MBCook »

hedora wrote: post #85
Retric wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

CO detectors would make sense (as long as they don’t false-positive on the road, which is also dangerous!) I suspect keyless entry systems have prevented multiple deaths of children in parking lots, but there’s no way to track that.

It would be easy enough to only use the CO detector when the car is in park or the emergency brake is on. That way it could never activate while driving.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#97

Post by sgtmas2006 »

kps wrote: post #94
jessaustin wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Many places in North America, it is forbidden to park a car on your property in front of your house except on a driveway leading to a garage. The result — unsurprising to anyone except an urban ‘planner’ — is houses whose face is almost entirely garage.

Huh, interesting. I've never actually known this. I live in an extremely rural area (300 people population, only ever lived in a larger city curing college) and it's pretty common for cars to be parked wherever (one of mine has been parked in the lawn diagonally for sale.) Never made the connection.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#98

Post by ars »

hedora wrote: post #93
13of40 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh - how about a CO detector on the air intake of the engine that shuts it off if the concentration is too high.

It is a little tricky to get right. For instance, it shouldn’t trip if the car is in motion. Even harder to get right (and very likely to increase the current, extremely low accidental CO death toll), it definitely shouldn’t trip if the car is stuck in stop-and-go traffic in a tunnel full of idling cars.

I agree that halting the car could be very dangerous. But an alarm might be worthwhile.

And if the car has not moved in say, 15 minutes, then shut it off (but allow it to be restarted - no lockout).

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#100

Post by dlhavema »

kps wrote: post #94
jessaustin wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Many places in North America, it is forbidden to park a car on your property in front of your house except on a driveway leading to a garage. The result — unsurprising to anyone except an urban ‘planner’ — is houses whose face is almost entirely garage.

Isnt that mainly because of HOA regulations? They are very prevelant in newer neighborhoods.
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