I wonder if these vehicles wouldn't benefit from an onboard CO detector? Automatic shutoff if the vehicle is stationary and CO hits a given threshold.
There's indubitably a bunch of reasons not to do it that way...
There's indubitably a bunch of reasons not to do it that way...
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221133551...
True, but making the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards requiring the $5 sensor in that $10 detector in every vehicle equipped with keyless start (or perhaps, every vehicle) would lead to nearly 100% deployment as the vehicle fleet is replaced.
By comparison, despite decades of passing laws and funding public education campaigns, only 33% of households ("occupied units") having a working CO detectors[1], and 40% of "working" detectors failed to alarm in hazardous levels[2]. So overall, just 20% of households have adequate CO protection.
FTA:
> From news reports, lawsuits, police and fire records and incidents tracked by advocacy groups, The Times has identified 28 deaths and 45 injuries since 2006, but the figures could be higher.
Let's estimate they found 1/3 of all cases, for a total of 56 deaths and 135 injuries. Estimating $6m per statistical life and $3m per injury (some injuries, like brain injuries, can be more than $6m for lifetime medical care and lost productivity, but this estimate is intentionally conservative). That's $61.75m annually, compared to the average of 13,532,750 annual vehicles sold in that time period[3], so about $4.5 of harm reduced per vehicle.
So economically it seems like a wash, and it prevents awful tragedies. Sounds like a good idea to me.
[1] https://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/h150-07.pdf, pp14
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222366/
[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/199983/us-vehicle-sales-...
The failures prior to 5 years in that test are disturbing, but they're not statistically significant on their own so it's hard to be sure how serious that would be in practice.
It's a trade-off, like everything else.
That those $5/$10/$50/$100 components add 10x their cost to the vehicle in terms of R&D, testing, supply chain, warrenty claims, etc. All that gets passed down to consumers. Increasing cost increases replacement interval and increases the age of the average vehicle. The result is that incremental progress that improves safety takes longer to trickle down through the market.
But if keyless start isn't available (and gives a warning message) when the ambient CO levels are borderline hazardous ... isn't that a feature, not a bug?
Now that you mention it, it would be nice to get a warning light during driving as well. Or better yet a PPM reading.