Deadly Convenience: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

[Ed Pawlowski]

For one thing, I back into the garage so if there is a big dark thing where it should be open space, I'm not going forward.

I imagine people have backed into closed doors but is seems hard to believe anyone would put a car in reverse and move without looking first but I'm sure some would.

Getting back to the CO problem, I know people that always leave their keys in the car. If you do that in the garage it would be easier to not turn the car off as there would be no beeping on exit. While it may be handy, it would be poor practice even if the garage is locked. If you go to the store, you would still want to take the key with you when you stop. I keep my key in my pocket when driving and on a shelf in the house when home. That said, once when I used valet parking the fob was in the cup holder and I did forget and leave it there when we got home. Lesson learned.

[trader_4]

It happens all the time. You've never seen it happen in a parking lot, for example? A friend of mine just had it happen to him, he was stopped at the local supermarket and a car backed out and hit him. I've seen cars start backing up while I'm walking behind them too. In the parking lot case, people can back up 6 feet or more before hitting something. In the typical garage, you have what, 2 ft? It's not unusual in my experience to see people put a car into reverse, start to move just a bit and then look what's behind them. There could be reasons why you want to use the remote from inside the car to open the garage door. All I'm saying is if it's your practice to open it with the wall switch, see it move, hear it move, before ever getting in the car, it seems to me you have an additional habit there that makes it less likely to wind up backing up into a closed door. And same thing with closing it, if you're using the wall switch, instead of doing it from inside the car, it seems to me that you'd be more likely to realize that the car is still running and something isn't right when you push the wall button.

[gfretwell]

It sounds like a self solving problem with little impact on the community at large so I would just write it off as education. Back into your garage door a few times and you might start using your mirrors. As for going into the house, my FIL did use the wall mounted button. He did not hear he car running because he was distracted by the phone call. The FOB was taken inside but the car still "saw" it so he did not get the warning beeps. The range is around 15 feet and might even be more than that since it is essentially blue tooth.

I said earlier, a product that would stop all of this cold would be a switch controlled module on the garage door than sent the turn off signal to the car when the door closed and would not let you start it until the door was open. Just program it to the car like an additional fob. Quick! Call Ron Popeil

[trader_4]

The problems of course come when it fails to work perfectly, eg the car won't start because the system thinks the door is closed. You would think they could have cars programmed to shut off after say 15 mins of idling with the car stopped. It could give an alert a few minutes before, saying it's going to shut off unless you push a button that indicates you want another 15 mins. Many places you're not supposed to be idling cars unnecessarily many places anyway. Only downside I see would be if you wanted to run it for an hour to charge a dead battery that you just got jumped, or similar problem. But even then as long as you reset it every

15 mins you'd be OK.

[Ed Pawlowski]

With all the technology in cars today, it cannot be that difficult to do. as for charging the battery, minor inconvenience for the few that would have to do it.

With no fob sensed, it couldjust shut down. A warning is needed if the fob is present. I can see people at the GW bridge not realizing the car may shut down if they don't do some action. Given that people do leave key in the car, it would have to be able to shut down anyway but even stuck in traffic, in 15 minutes you probably hit the brake peddle of jiggle the steering wheel.

[Mark Lloyd]

On 05/14/2018 01:33 PM, Ed Pawlowski wrote:[snip]

[snip]

Once the car is started, the battery is charged better while driving.

[snip]