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Comment by justin66 | Hacker News Reader

> On average, that's two deaths a year in a country of more than 260 million passenger vehicles.[1] These accidental deaths are tragic, but it's actually impressive how infrequently they occur.

The deaths and injuries are utterly avoidable with decent design. Also, this is a feature that isn't prominent yet. The number of deaths is only going to get higher until the cars are built to turn the engine off under the right conditions.

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> The number of deaths is only going to get higher until the cars are built to turn the engine off under the right conditions.

I assume implicit to this statement, is that some heuristic algorithm needs to be created to turn the car off. This seems like a grossly over-complicated (and failure prone) solution in comparison to just using a key for the ignition instead. If you can do something easily with a strictly mechanical simple solution, why reinvent the wheel?

> I assume implicit to this statement, is that some heuristic algorithm needs to be created to turn the car off.

If you say so. I'm pretty sure just turning the car off if there's nobody sitting in any of the seats and the key is not in the car would be a good start.

Have you never turned your car on before you left to heat up the passenger compartment?

Uhm, apart from the fact that it's actually forbidden, no. Idle takes ages to warm up the engine, it's better to just start driving.

If you live in a cold climate, you often have to let your car idle for a few minutes to heat it up, or your windows will be all foggy and you don’t see a thing.

It's also really hard on the motor if the fluids are cold, as you're more likely to induce wear because of boundary lubrication and similar effects. Additionally, like on my truck, the synchronizers on the transmission are really cranky when they're cold, and it's hard to get it moving without warming up a little bit.

You kinda need the car running for the heaters to work.

Forbidden how?

I'm not sure why remote-start exists if it's forbidden to use it.

> Have you never turned your car on before you left to heat up the passenger compartment?

With the remote start system I have a passing familiarity with, if you remotely start the car and warm it up with no person and no key in the car, the car automatically shuts off fifteen minutes after it has started if someone doesn't get in with a key. Seems to be compatible the simple guidelines I mentioned.

"Key not in the car" should be condition enough. I'm having a hard time thinking of a scenario where you NEED to have the key away from the car while the engine is running.

That would lead to far more accidents where people leave kids or animals alone in a car in direct sunlight, assuming the AC will keep them cool. But as they step away from the vehicle, the engine and AC turn off, leaving anyone in the car to die from heat stroke.

Those people don't need to take the car key with them, but with a keyless car you don't think about the key (that's the entire point of keyless cars). The key is just one of many things in your pockets.

Isn't keeping a car running with children inside incredibly dangerous? What if they release the breaks or shift to drive? I'd think taking the child with you should be safer than leaving them in a running car.

For animals that's different of course. But wouldn't an override be enough?

When I was a kid, I was at my babysitter's house waiting to be picked up by my parents. Another kid's parent showed up, parked her car, and put one of her kids in the front seat. Her other kid ran in the house, and she ran after him. The first kid let the e-brake off, and the car went rolling down the driveway and hit a tree. It didn't roll very fast, so there was no damage and nobody was hurt. But the mom was freaked out as she came back out 10 seconds later and saw the car rolling away...

This was in the late 80s. The car wasn't running. It was a mechanical e-brake. I know a lot of cars have electronic parking brakes now, but most probably still don't.

On another note, I can't think of a single car that will let you take it out of Park without a foot on the brake, or without using an override.

AC could fail for many reasons. Leaving a child in a car where they were dependant on AC for their life would be criminally negligent.

My car key's battery suddenly gives out mid-drive once and I had to listen to a warning tone every few minutes but at least it got me home. It would be incredibly frustrating if the car just decided that it doesn't see the key and shuts it off.

It also breaks the backup mechanism for no-battery situation where you can tap the fob on where the ignition lock would be for key cars to start it up.

Even simpler. If two of three conditions are met, switch engine off:

* Rising Carbonmonoxide levels * No weight on driver seat for 3 minutes * No driving activity for 3 minutes

The first factor alone should already prompt a shutdown though. It wouldn't even matter if the key was in the car, that might happen by accident and isn't a terribly good indicator.

I don't think this is actually simpler. I was deliberately trying to give an example that didn't require any new sensor tech. I don't think the cars have monoxide detectors right now.

Determining whether anybody is in the car doesn't sound trivial beyond the driver seat. The seatbelt warnings are triggered by weight, but people frequently store stuff on their seats, and occasionally that stuff has a weight plausible for a human

Why not just start an alarm 10 seconds after the key is out of range? Or automatically shut off the engine if the key has been out of range for more than 5 minutes. That still prevents accidents while driving (there were cases where children threw keys out of the window) but should be safe otherwise. And programming that timer shouldn't be a lot of work. The detection already exists anyway.

The cars need to work when the key battery is dead. My LEAF has an inductive charger near the start button that allows you to "charge" the key just enough to do the security exchange and then start it.

It's quite possible, even likely, that more than 2 people per year would die from environmental exposure if we programmed cars to not work if the key battery dies (as a proxy for "key out of range"). (Drive out to a deserted location, shut down, enjoy the day, get back in to find a dead car key battery. You want to be able to get home rather than stay at the trailhead.)

An alarm would still be fine though? Maybe with an option to deactivate it. I'd want to know when the key gets removed from the car, not having any notification appears wrong.

Mine gives an alarm when you take the key out of the car already. "key not detected" or some such.

My car displays something on the screen, but I don't recall it making a noise.

I've left the car running while stepping into a store because someone was in the passenger seat. If I get too far, my bluetooth music stops, but the air-conditioning keeps going without the key.

All of this still sounds unnecessarily complicated and Rube Goldbergian in comparison to just using a regular physical key.

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