Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

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 minutes it took me to start the car, get the code, and shut it off, it had produced a dangerous level of CO. I left the garage and went inside. About 30 minutes later while I was in bed my Nest smoke&#x2F;CO detectors alerted me to CO in the hallway connecting my house to the garage. I ventilated the entire house and garage and the alarm stopped. I did get a light headache from the short exposure.<p>Moral of the story, never run a car inside the garage with the door closed and always have CO detectors throughout the house. Nest probably saved my life that night from my own mistake.<p>If we want a more general solution, we should look beyond the keyless fob and just make CO detectors a requirement. You don’t need fancy ones like Nest. Cheaper ones that cost 20 dollars still works.

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:<p><i>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.</i><p>On average, that&#x27;s two deaths a year in a country of more than 260 million passenger vehicles.[1] These accidental deaths are tragic, but it&#x27;s actually impressive how infrequently they occur.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Passenger_vehicles_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Passenger_vehicles_in_the_Unit...</a>

&gt;Toyota models, including Lexus, have figured in almost half of the carbon monoxide fatalities and injuries identified by The Times. Toyota says its keyless ignition system “meets or exceeds all relevant federal safety standards.”<p>That&#x27;s quite significant, and I wonder why that is?<p>I have a hypothesis:<p>Personally I&#x27;ve had problems with Toyotas (specifically, Prius GenIII and Camry XV50) where trying to shut off the car <i>too fast</i>, eg using &quot;muscle memory,&quot; results in the car not shutting off.<p>At first glance (and according to the manual), the steps to shutting off the Prius &#x2F; Camry <i>appear</i> to be:<p>1. Shift the car into Park.<p>2. Press the ignition button.<p>3. Exit the vehicle.<p>Simple, right?<p>Well, it&#x27;s not. If you don&#x27;t <i>wait ~1 second</i> between step 1 and step 2, the car has a race condition where it doesn&#x27;t realize that you already put it in Park, so it displays a &quot;Shift to Park&quot; message and fails to shut down. To fix, you have to shift the car into Reverse (or really, Anything-But-Park), shift it <i>back</i> into Park, and press the button again.<p>This sequence is extremely confusing, especially if you don&#x27;t notice the error message. Neither conventional shifters nor conventional key-based ignitions make you wait -- when you put it in gear, it&#x27;s in gear!<p>Toyota&#x27;s system has <i>hidden state</i> that&#x27;s related, but separate from the physical movements of the shift lever and the start button (unlike a conventional key and shifter).<p>So if you want to reliably shut off the car, here are the <i>actual</i> steps to shutting down a Prius &#x2F; Camry:<p>1. Shift the car into Park.<p>2. Wait a beat (for the vehicle to realize it&#x27;s in Park).<p>3. Press the ignition button.<p>4. Exit the vehicle.<p>The proper way for Toyota to do it would have been to buffer the inputs in order, so the same sequence of actions always results in the same result, and the mere act of speeding up one&#x27;s muscle memory doesn&#x27;t result in unexpected operation (ie, acting just like the old, more-easily-predictable physical controls).

35,000 people are being killed in the US every year by cars, but <i>now</i> suddenly it&#x27;s &quot;Deadly Convenience,&quot; now that 2 people a year are dying from CO poisoning?

Another issue negated by electric cars. No burning fossil fuels, no carbon monoxide in my garage.<p>Ironic that the only mention of EVs in this thread was about how Teslas turn themselves off and lock automatically. It&#x27;s like everyone is complaining about having to do wiring at colos and some techs getting accidentally electrocuted, while I spin up another instance on AWS.<p>BTW, my two Nissan Leaf EVs have the a keyless fob thing, and like the ICE cars, they beep if you leave with the car on. It seems like manufacturers just can&#x27;t come up with a sensible and intuitive way for the keyless fob and car state to interact. Maybe the idea of putting a physical key into the ignition was a better paradigm.

Is it not normal for a keyless car to beep like crazy when you leave the car with the key inside?<p>My car does this. As soon as it detects the key is not inside the car it will beep and remind you the car is on. The other problem this solves is that you don&#x27;t want to be driving somewhere without the key either, eg when you&#x27;re dropping off your wife and she happens to have the key.

I would bet that collectively the time wasted due to mishaps exceeds time saved by this feature. For me personally, I don’t think I will ever make the time up in my lifetime - I have accidentally killed a battery once because the car was in ACC mode and I didn’t realize it, and another time I drove away without the key because I was dropping the owner of the car off at the airport.

There are certainly a large list of reasons a car should be automatically shutting off without the keys present, but I feel it&#x27;s also important to put the article and the figures they use into perspective.<p>Check out the GM Ignition issues where the cars lose electrical power because the key ignition moves out of the &quot;on&quot; position. The owners own key ring adding additional weight increasing the chance of this happening. This literally created the opposite problem... Keyed ignitions causing accidents.<p>We are so used to vehicles that it&#x27;s so easy to forget that they are large and heavy machines. Just driving the car to work every day puts you at risk.<p>The article reads like... complaining about the rain while a tornado is heading your way.<p>Anyhow. Don&#x27;t get me wrong... getting out of your car with your keys should certainly make the car yell at you and then automatically shut itself off after a period of time. With the option for the user to manually turn these things off of course. (I am a firm believer that one should be allowed to shoot themselves in the foot if they explicitly go out of their way to make it possible). I am just a bit irritated at the article. :)

I wonder if these vehicles wouldn&#x27;t benefit from an onboard CO detector? Automatic shutoff if the vehicle is stationary and CO hits a given threshold.<p>There&#x27;s indubitably a bunch of reasons not to do it that way...

If you&#x27;re reading this and you don&#x27;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.<p>I&#x27;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.

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&#x27;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.<p>The car then automatically wakes up as you approach it. Sit in, put on your seatbelt, and put it into drive to go.<p>It&#x27;s certainly VERY easy to leave an internal combustion car running (even a keyed one) if you are used to that!

I feel like I read sometime last year &#x27;DannyBee saying that modern cars were efficient enough that it was unlikely they&#x27;d be dangerous running in a garage.<p>Found it:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14705990" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14705990</a>

Not mentioned in the article, but I imagine that this could be exacerbated by the fuel-saving &#x27;auto engine off&#x27; behaviour of newer cars... you arrive home, engage the brake and the engine turns off automatically.<p>... only to automatically restart 15 minutes later when the engine sensors detect the oil temp is dropping.

I&#x27;d rather see people install CO detectors within their homes as it is a more general solution to this problem. CO poisoning can occur with any fuel burning appliance in your home. It would be better to cover all sources instead of each one individually.

&gt;a software change that it said could be accomplished for pennies per vehicle. In the face of auto industry opposition, the agency let the plan languish, though it says a rule is still under consideration.<p>Why the car industry would oppose such a minor fix is beyond me. If it does not even hurt the bottom line, why not make that change.

It’s horrible that people have lost their lives... but I don’t see this as an issue with the car. I actually think it calls for having more CO detectors in homes (along with fire alarms ).<p>I have a key less ignition car, and if I leave it running... I want it to stay running. With or without the key. However, the audible alert seems like it would be valuable. What about having the Fob vibrate periodically when outside the car and the car is running ?

My 2015 Ford automatically shuts off after roughly 15 minutes of being without the key whether you start it from inside or outside of the vehicle.

Air quality sensors that would detect this any many other potential hazards would likely cost $5 or less. Even if lawsuits resolve this issue its interesting to see how its only resolved post harm.

Sounds to me like a big part of the problem is that these cars are too quiet. (I call that a nice problem to have.)<p>My car beeps at me pretty loudly when I get out with the engine running.

&gt; Despite years of deaths, regulatory action has lagged.<p>In California at least, all new homes and all rentals are required to have CO detectors. It seems like that would be a good regulation to have nationwide, which would help with this problem as well as other CO related issues.

I suspect if they looked at attached garages and their toll when cars are left running the incident will be higher. How many people have died because of attached garages? Folks can help mitigate this by having carbon monoxide detectors in their garage and in the house. Car manufactures tho should have this built in, if the car is not running and the CO level inside get&#x27;s too high, shut it off and sound the car alarm. The only challenge is that CO sensors seems to need replacing more than the life of the car and of course the price of car will go up and those without the need will be upset.

Why is the default is to leave the engine running with the fob out of range of the vehicle? I&#x27;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.<p>Maybe that should only be available with the &quot;remote engine start &#x2F; preheat &#x2F; precool&quot; option, which would include interior and exterior CO detectors.

Has anyone compared the rates of carbon monoxide poisoning with and without keyless ignition? I could actually see an argument for keyless being safer: if people can leave a car and completely forget to turn it off, they can certainly do that and forget to take the keys with them. At least with the keyless ignition you have the _possibility_ of being alerted to your mistake (my Toyota beeps so loud that it would be pretty much impossible to ignore).

Here&#x27;s the thing: leaving a car running and unoccupied is, from an engineering perspective, completely stupid.<p>Running a car on idle for a long time basically slowly degrades it. It&#x27;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.<p>You don&#x27;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 <i>easily</i> add this to prevent idling.<p>Now consider the non-technical reasons not to let it idle. One, someone can steal it. Two, it&#x27;s wasting gas. Three, it&#x27;s pumping harmful gases into the atmosphere and creating smog. Four, someone could die from carbon monoxide.<p>The solution is simple. The default should be to turn off the car if the keys are gone after idling for 10 minutes, <i>with an override switch</i> to let it idle for, let&#x27;s say an hour. After an hour you have to flip the switch again.<p>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&#x27;t switch into or out of park or reverse without depressing the brake. You can&#x27;t remove the keys without being in park. Your can&#x27;t operate Bluetooth controls while the car is in motion.<p>So it&#x27;s not like these changes are new or difficult. Automakers add them over time as they see the need. But when they don&#x27;t act, it&#x27;s up to us to pass legislation to require them.

If the key leaves my KIA while the engine is running, an alarm sounds. Works perfectly well and if you ignore alarms without knowing what they are about... Well, then no system can help you.<p>So the real issue here, is that some cars do not seem to have such an alarm (probably should become mandatory) and that many owners don&#x27;t know how to properly use their cars. After all, there is a reason why you need a license to drive those things.

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.<p>Cheap petrol in the USA means that people are in the habit of doing things like starting their car remotely to &#x27;warm up&#x27; or &#x27;cool down&#x27; before they then have a shower, brekkie and what not before finally getting in their car. Usually the car is on the driveway and not the garage in these scenarios, however, that is something that would not happen in the rest of the world, where petrol costs real money in part because a U.S. dollar has to be bought in order to buy the oil that is always priced in petro-dollars.<p>Given that people do suicide themselves by connecting some hosepipe from the exhaust to the interior of a car I am actually surprised that there are not rules regarding CO detectors already. CO can not just kill the occupants, you could have a big pile-up on a motorway due to CO poisoning. This happened a few times with police cars last year and 3&#x2F;4 of all CO deaths are due to vehicles, not central heating or other sources.

Another problem solved by electric cars. The transition can&#x27;t come soon enough.

A City Car Share used to park behind my house and I had to call the company a half dozen times because someone left the keyless hybrid running after they dropped it off. I had them unlock it so I could turn it just so there wasn&#x27;t a running car next to my back yard. This was exasperated by people who weren&#x27;t familiar with the car but it was a real enough problem that I knew to listen for it.

I guess one advantage of driving a manual car is you won&#x27;t make that mistake after violently stalling your car a few times.

I assume people start their cars to warm the cabin. I expect there are much more efficient ways to warm the cabin than using excess heat from an internal combustion engine under the hood. Perhaps the solution is to provide a way to warm the cabin (including seats and steering wheel) very rapidly when the car starts, or provide a way to warm the cabin without starting the engine.<p>The latter solution requires an energy source. Perhaps a hybrid car&#x27;s batteries are it - not an option until recently, but hybrids are now relatively common - and the energy could be used efficiently: Ambient air heaters, of course; plus heaters directly in seats and steering wheel to warm them more efficiently than the ambient air would; plus of course sensors to shut down heaters when things are sufficiently warm.<p>OT: Did the NY Times change their layout recently? For the first time, IMHO, it&#x27;s gone from functional to appealing.

Lexus is noted in the article as being one of the problematic cars, but mine beeps fairly insistently if you get out of the car with the keys with the ignition still on. I get that people are mentally on autopilot sometimes--I certainly am often--but I feel like what it does already should be enough to snap you out of it.<p>The line has to be drawn somewhere. I think it&#x27;s unreasonable to count on computers to warn and protect us about every possible mistake people might make.

I wonder how many deaths there are per year due to remote start. A kid (or another key in your pocket) presses one button on the dongle twice, and the whole household dies.

Something does not add up in this article unless I am missing something. So safety features such as alert tone if engine kept on running for some time might be missed by older people who might have difficulty to hear but I assume that if a home has a garage to park the car then it should have and usually has a Carbon Monoxide alarm inside the house as well. Would not it start making loud alert noise when CO is increased at harmful levels?

I think this is actually a stronger argument for sealing the garage off from the house, detached if possible. There are any number of bad things being stored in many garages that make it useful to seal your garage well away from the house.

Pretty easily solved with a $15 carbon monoxide detector. They are required by rental codes around here, and are just a plain good idea. Unlike smoke detectors they rarely fault out due to smoke from toasters&#x2F;etc.

I&#x27;d think this would be more common with remote start.

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.

How do you not know your cars engine is running?

NY Times loves to run articles on secret dangers of modern conveniences.

Let&#x27;s talk about real killers, which kill far more. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;on.cc.com&#x2F;1hCMleQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;on.cc.com&#x2F;1hCMleQ</a>. Falling Coconuts kill dozens of times more people but no one is seriously looking at active countermeasures.

I&#x27;ve certainly often forgotten to turn off the Prii [1] I&#x27;ve used.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;content.usatoday.com&#x2F;communities&#x2F;driveon&#x2F;post&#x2F;2011&#x2F;02&#x2F;toyota-prius-prii-prium-priuses-plural-james-lipton&#x2F;1" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;content.usatoday.com&#x2F;communities&#x2F;driveon&#x2F;post&#x2F;2011&#x2F;02...</a>

While tragic, I don&#x27;t want my government protecting me from myself. I mean, where does this end? What about leaving the stove on? What about using my barbecue indoors?<p>There have been cases where government intervention to help may have actually been worse than that original problem, such as the rise in cases of forgetting children in rear seats on warm days after laws were written forbidding car seats in the front where parents find it harder to forget their child.