Ruminations

Deadly Technological Advances

"After 75 years of driving, my father thought that when he took the key with him when he left the car, the car would be off."
"The plants inside the house lost their leaves [from the effects of the carbon monoxide level]."
"My dad isn't going to be the last one who passes away from this [mistaken belief that a vehicle has been shut off when it is still running]."
Doug Schaub, Florida

A keyless ignition pictured in this 2004 file photo.
Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images

The level of carbon monoxide that flooded Fred Schaub's Florida home when his Toyota RAV4 was left for the night in the garage attached to his home registered 30 times what humans are known to tolerate. He left his garage, entered his house holding the wireless key fob to his vehicle with the impression that his car was no longer running. It took twenty-nine hours for the carbon monoxide to overwhelm him and he died in his sleep.

With the technological advance in vehicle design where a keyless-ignition car runs so smoothly and silently that people are unaware it is still running when they believe they've shut it off, car owners inadvertently exposed to lethal amounts of carbon monoxide when the gas oozes silently and with no warning odours into their home, have suffered grave injuries, many with brain damage, and in worst-case scenarios, have died.

The introduction of the new key-less ignition technology took place in 1997 when Mercedes-Benz filed its patent, introducing it as a featured advance in its German-produced vehicles a year later. It is a feature now common in many vehicle brands, where drivers carry a fob to transmit a radio signal to start a car with the touch of a button. Elderly drivers in particular have a tendency to believe that a car has stopped running, after a lifetime of the ritual of turning and removing a key to shut off the motor.

The serious issue of believing a car is no longer running and leaving it to leak poisonous gas into the interior of a home was addressed by the Society of Automotive Engineers seven years ago when it recommended that features such as a series of beeps would go a long way to alerting drivers their vehicles were still running though their key fob was neither in nor near the car. Another recommendation was to have the engine shut off automatically.

A regulation was proposed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the United States that would require a software alteration that would cost mere pennies for each vehicle. The agency failed to press the matter when the auto industry came out opposing any such change, leaving regulators to rely on car manufacturers to incorporate warning features voluntarily in their products. Some automakers have incorporated the suggested features, while others have failed to.

Toyota, for example installed a system of three audible signals outside the car and one inside as an alert to drivers exiting a vehicle that the motor is still running. The company chose to reject a recommendation from its own engineers that more robust warning signals were required, such as flashing lights or a unique warning tone. Models produced by Toyota, including the Lexus, have been involved in almost half the carbon monoxide fatalities and injuries on record.

In its defence, Toyota states its keyless-ignition system "meets or exceeds all relevant federal safety standards". In contrast, Ford's keyless vehicles incorporate a feature to automatically turn the engine off after a period of idling exceeding 30 minutes if the key fob is not in the vehicle. There is a modest expense involved in retrofitting older vehicles to reduce this hazard; $5 each vehicle to install the automatic shutoff mechanism for General Motors.

Exposed to a proliferation of such cases, a Florida fire chief undertook his own solution, by handing out carbon monoxide detectors to drivers. One might think logically that car manufacturers would respond positively to the upgrade recommendations, given the mounting litigation.