This article popped up on the NY Times today about keyless cars and the carbon monoxide risk they post to people.
In spite of years of evidence of the risk of these vehicles filling houses with exhaust, Nate Dogg and Warren G. have yet to regulate.
This just got me thinking that a catch-all regulation topic might be of interest here. What are good regulations? What is government overreach? What’s the boundary between consumer protection and stifling the business climate? Where do you draw the line with personal responsibility vs. inherent safety risk (or financial/other risk), etc.
Anyhow, this particular one with keyless cars hits close to home because my Mom’s best friend died about 6-7 years ago while napping when her husband returned from the grocery store, pulled the car into the garage, forgot to turn it off (keyless), and the house filled with CO. He barely survived and ended up being somewhat healthy after undergoing extensive hyperbaric treatment at Duke.
Or on the vehicle itself? That way the solution kind of travels with the problem. Certainly there are other reasons to have carbon monoxide detectors in the house, though.
I think that these days some of the cars come with apps that allow you to start them remotely so that they can warm up before you have to take your precious self out into the cold. I’m not sure, though, because both of our cars are 5+ years old. Our Prius has a system wherein it turns itself off if the key is not inside the car. However, since you don’t insert the key into anything in the car (it can be in your bag in the trunk, your pocket, whatever…) it’s easy enough to forget it in the car, at which point the car won’t turn off.
How do people manage to do that? These cars usually notify you rather loudly if you open the driver door with the engine running.
As to starting the car remotely, you’d think they could have a failsafe if the car isn’t shifted out of park within 5 minutes or something.
I suppose going forward, they could tie this feature to automatically turning the engine off if you shift into park. My wife’s Jeep does that when you stop at a traffic light.
My car beeps three times sort of slowly when I get out with it running. It’s hardly a warning at all. I left it running accidentally outside of a restaurant once, I’m glad it wasn’t in the garage instead.
This has been asked about for some time, actually. There have been thefts of vehicles where people get out with their fob and leave the car running, someone hops in and can go literally as far as the want before turning the car off or it runs out of gas. The distance or time away from the fob while running really needs to be mandated.
I can tell you because I’ve done it. My car idles extremely quietly. I can imagine some are even more quiet than mine. On more than one summer day I’ve taken my wallet/keys/phone in hand while wearing shorts with no pockets. Then a quick park, get out, go inside somewhere and realize I only have my wallet and phone. There is no beep or alert, the keys are literally in the car.
Thankfully I figured this out and try to avoid it, but it’s far too easy to do. There is no alert as with previous vehicles when you open the door with keys still in the ignition.
The entire second season of The Uncertain Hour is about government regulation, from peanut butter to opioids. And the people and organizations who are for or against the whole concept.
Or what about if garage door openers had CO detectors? That would open the door and signal an alarm ?
I mean adding it to a car an option as an alarm, but it should never cut off the engine.
Many a times I’ve been driving on the road and a big truck or POS older vehicle in front of me has released one of them death clouds from their exhaust directly into the front of my vehicle/inside the cabin. I wouldn’t want my engine turning off because it sensed someone else’s exhaust cloud of death.
That’s mentioned in the story. One of the car companies started to investigate this problem when one of their engineers drove to Chicago and realized after he arrived that his key fob was still in Detroit.
I also saw a Top Gear where they were in Utah somewhere at a diner and Clarkson snuck out, turned on Hammond’s supercar (while Hammond was having lunch inside), and then drove it far enough away before it turned off due to leaving the proximity of Hammond’s key fob.
Also,my father almost did this recently, too. Left his Prius on in the garage. I guess they were lucky it was a Prius, and it switches between gas and engine when on idle, but it was still close. They caught it within about 30 minutes, and then opened all the doors and windows to vent the house.
CO sensors seem to me to be overthinking it. Why does a car need to be idling for more than a few seconds? Is there any good reason not to automatically cut off the engine if it’s been idling, stationary, for say 5 minutes? There are certainly very good emissions related reasons to do so (hence the Jeep functionality mentioned above). If it saves lives more directly too, all the better.
