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Toyota Plans to Deploy Automatic Engine Shut Off and Automatic Park Features to Vehicle Line Up
Starting with most Model Year 2020 vehicles, Toyota will provide additional features such as automatic engine shut off or “Auto Shut Off” with an enhanced audible and visual warning to its Smart Key System* (SKS). The Auto Shut Off feature will automatically shut off the engine after a pre-determined period of time in the event the vehicle is left running.
His keyless car killed him while he slept. New legislation could save others
Patricia M. Fish and Russell Fish were married 46 years when he died in his home by carbon monoxide poisoning from his Toyota Forerunner inadvertently left running in the attached garage.
Toyota Has the Most Keyless Ignition Related Deaths, But Takes no Action
Last month, Dr. Sherry Hood Penney, 81, and Dr. James Livingston, 88, died of carbon monoxide poisoning. The couple had inadvertently left their keyless ignition 2017 Toyota Avalon running in the attached garage of their Sarasota condo. The car ran until it was out of gas and its battery died.
Toyota has the most keyless ignition carbon monoxide deaths. It had the first publicly acknowledged deaths and, now the most recent deaths. Yet, Toyota has done nothing to implement a simple, inexpensive software solution that some other major automakers introduced seven years ago.
Too Many Children Die in Sweltering Cars, and a New Push Aims to Find a Fix
Late last month, at a news conference in Washington, Miles Harrison tearfully related how he had caused the death of his son, Chase, in 2008.
He was there to promote the Hot Cars Act of 2019, but he had told this story many times before: to the court that tried him for manslaughter, and to Gene Weingarten for a Pulitzer-winning article in The Washington Post in 2009 that helped alert the world to how children can overheat and die in vehicles.
Front & Center: Popular cars come with hidden, dangerous blind zones
Blind spots are becoming bigger and more dangerous in millions of popular cars. Those blinds spots aren’t to the sides or behind those vehicles either. Most drivers have no idea they even exists and they’re directly in front of them. For the past nine years, an average of 58 kids have died each year from crashes the KidsAndCars organization calls “frontovers.” “People truly believe that they can see what's directly in front of their bumper and unfortunately, that's just not true,” Amber Rollins, the director of KidsAndCars said.
