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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

#111

Post by kylec »

abootstrapper wrote: post #106

Keyless ignition over complicates the solution to a simple problem. I’ve never liked them on those grounds alone, and I hadn’t even considered the risks for injury. Then again I’ve always felt that more bells and whistles on a car are just more opportunities for breakage and repairs.

Most keyless systems have a physical key backup in case stuff fails. So if the system breaks you're no worse off than a car that has a physical key. Also, in my experience, keyless systems are pretty reliable, I've never had one fail on me or anyone in my family.

I also really like the convenience they provide in being able to lock, unlock, and start my car without needing to take anything out of my pocket. If I can help it, I'll never buy another car without a keyless system.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#112

Post by samcheng »

Tesla handles this quite well. You stop driving, then open the door. This puts the car in park and engages the parking brake. Other stuff happens like the door handles present and the stereo volume turns down. Then when you close the door (if nobody is detected in the driver's seat) the car shuts off, much to the chagrin of any children sitting in the back seat listening to the music. As you walk away, the car locks automatically.

The car then automatically wakes up as you approach it. Sit in, put on your seatbelt, and put it into drive to go.

It's certainly VERY easy to leave an internal combustion car running (even a keyed one) if you are used to that!

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#114

Post by intopieces »

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…

The ratio to study is not how many deaths per vehicles, but cost-of-implemenation per vehicle vs deaths. The article mentions that the feature can be implemented "for pennies per vehicle." If you could save 1 person's father for $.01 per car, why not?

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#115

Post by MereInterest »

yock wrote: post #95
romwell wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, no. Humans are awful at estimating any low-probability event. That's why seatbelts and air bags took so long to catch on, despite being positive changes.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#116

Post by awat »

oldcynic wrote: post #110
chemmail wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this will have to entries into the Darwin awards. If you are careless enough not to double check, there are consequences. I drive an electric car, so this will never happen, I however always make sure everything is locked, all lights are off, and plugin every night.

Nice to be so perfect (or is it overchecking via OCD?) to never have forgotten your keys/specs/coat, ever left a light on or been distracted by an interruption.

Just like OPSec it’s only perfect until it isn't.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#117

Post by mantas »

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…

Try living where it's freezing rain, snow and what not every year for a significant part of the year. Garage is damn awesome.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#118

Post by spc476 »

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 live in a house with an attached garage. Opening the garage door does NOT leave the rest of the house exposed to the outdoors, as there's a door which leads to the inside of the house (and it's the same construction as the front door).

Secondly, it's about a 50/50 chance in our neighborhood that the garage will be used to store vehicles. The other half of the time I've seen garages used for general storage, or for a workshop of some kind (my girlfriend has a ton of wood working equipment in the garage).

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#119

Post by rpcope1 »

justin66 wrote: post #41
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 rig…

> The number of deaths is only going to get higher until the cars are built to turn the engine off under the right conditions.

I assume implicit to this statement, is that some heuristic algorithm needs to be created to turn the car off. This seems like a grossly over-complicated (and failure prone) solution in comparison to just using a key for the ignition instead. If you can do something easily with a strictly mechanical simple solution, why reinvent the wheel?

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#120

Post by kalleboo »

MBCook wrote: post #96
hedora wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or how about CO detectors in garages rather than in cars?
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