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Carbon Monoxide - Latest News
SILENT KILLER: Keyless ignitions linked to more than 2 dozen carbon monoxide deaths
Key fobs have changed the way we start our cars. Instead of fumbling around for keys, you just hit the start button. But that convenience can come at a cost because just as easy as it is to start your car it’s just as easy to forget to turn it off with the key fob in hand. With the car still running and the garage door shut, that’s when it becomes a silent killer. An average of 430 people die each year in the U.S. from carbon monoxide poisoning, according to the Centers for Disease Control.Deadly Convenience: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll
Weaned from using a key, drivers have left cars running in garages, spewing exhaust into homes. Despite years of deaths, regulatory action has lagged.
It seems like a common convenience in a digital age: a car that can be powered on and off with the push of a button, rather than the mechanical turning of a key. But it is a convenience that can have a deadly effect.
KEYLESS IGNITIONS MAY BE CONTRIBUTING TO DEATHS ACROSS THE UNITED STATES
General Motors Quietly Installs Keyless Engine Shutoff
The Preliminary Information technical bulletins to GM service technicians inform them that “Some customers may comment that the engine stops running after extended idle with shifter in Park.” No repair is required, the bulletin states – just educate the customer about the existence of the extended parking feature. So, customers didn’t know, the dealership techs didn’t know, GM’s Safety and Field Action Decision Authority apparently didn’t know. And what does NHTSA know about this? If they’ve been paying attention, they know from the TSBs that GM filed with the agency How many other automakers have secretly added this countermeasure?
CO and Cars: Unfinished Business
In 1975, the auto industry began to equip vehicles with catalytic converters to meet the emission limits of the Clean Air Act of 1970. Sitting unobtrusively between the engine and the muffler, the “cat” changes the noxious gases in automobile exhaust into harmless nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and water. The result, according to the National Institutes of Occupational Health, was an 80 percent decline in the number of unintentional vehicle-related deaths caused by the most dangerous byproduct of combustion engines: carbon monoxide.
