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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

#141

Post by Cthulhu_ »

twblalock wrote: post #90

If you're reading this and you don't have carbon monoxide detectors in your home, please go buy some. They are generally integrated in modern smoke detectors, and the standalone units are pretty cheap. I'd recommend having one in the garage if you have a gas water heater. But you should definitely have them in the house no matter what.

And doubly so if you have a caravan or trailer.

Source: Old heater in a caravan broke, bit too much fuel in it during ignition caused a small explosion that blew the chimney (?) pipe off. We got away with a collective headache at least.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#144

Post by frankus »

peterwwillis wrote: post #91

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 ca…

I was thinking the same thing. My car shuts off if you come to a stop in D, but for some reason it doesn’t when you shift to P, even though there’s even less reason to leave the engine idling in Park.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#145

Post by Theodores »

rascul wrote: post #79
Theodores wrote: post #39

This would never happen in the UK or Norway as petrol costs too much and people just would not have a house big enough that they would not notice an automobile engine chugging away right next to them. Cheap petrol in the USA means that people are in the habit of doing things like starting their car remotely to 'warm up' or 'cool down' before they then have a shower, brekkie and what not before finally getting in thei…

> CO can not just kill the occupants, you could have a big pile-up on a motorway due to CO poisoning. Do you have a source for this? I would be interested in reading about it.

There are many stories, Google 'carbon monoxide police ford explorer' to start. Holes drilled in the vehicle for the flashing lights and other accessories were given as the cause in those police incidents, of which I think there were a few.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#146

Post by Animats »

Why is the default is to leave the engine running with the fob out of range of the vehicle? I'd expect that the default would be to turn off the engine. If you really want to leave the engine running with the vehicle empty, that should take special action to set up.

Maybe that should only be available with the "remote engine start / preheat / precool" option, which would include interior and exterior CO detectors.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#148

Post by gambiting »

Animats wrote: post #146

Why is the default is to leave the engine running with the fob out of range of the vehicle? I'd expect that the default would be to turn off the engine. If you really want to leave the engine running with the vehicle empty, that should take special action to set up. Maybe that should only be available with the "remote engine start / preheat / precool" option, which would include interior and exterior CO detectors.

Why would it not be the default? You started the engine, but you never stopped it - so it should keep running,no? As for the fob in range issue - the keyless system is not perfect and I've gotten a warning(while driving!) That the key is missing , even though it was sitting safely in my pocket - shutting the engine down based on that is not ideal.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#149

Post by ghaff »

chrismcb wrote: post #129
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…

Stopping the engine when one exits the car is NOT consistent with the old physical key behavior. One had to actually turn the car off. I'm not sure how that is different today. Before you removed the key, nor you press a button. But you still had to take an action. It wasn't automatic

Maybe it’s just because I’m used to physical keys but the reflex seems different. I’ve caught myself forgetting to turn off rentals that don’t have a physical key. But I’m open to chalking it up to different habits.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#150

Post by JepZ »

Animats wrote: post #146

Why is the default is to leave the engine running with the fob out of range of the vehicle? I'd expect that the default would be to turn off the engine. If you really want to leave the engine running with the vehicle empty, that should take special action to set up. Maybe that should only be available with the "remote engine start / preheat / precool" option, which would include interior and exterior CO detectors.

> I'd expect that the default would be to turn off the engine.

That would be very dangerous. For example, think about the following scenario:the co-driver has the key within his pocket, he leaves the car and the driver wants to drive around the corner to find a parking spot. So the driver accelerates and after a few meters the engine would turn off and his breaks would be completely manual.

That could cause some serious accidents.

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