Elderly Couple Killed At Home. And The Murderer Was…Their Keyless Car

Automologist MAC is worried that he is next. 

In a sad twist of fate, an octogenarian couple from Florida has fallen victim to the very technology that is supposed to make us that little bit safer in our cars. Ms Penney, a retired university chancellor, and her partner Mr Livingston, a retired physicist, have been found dead in their home, having been poisoned by carbon monoxide gas after leaving their keyless car running in the garage that adjoins their house

The murderer in question was a recently purchased Toyota Avalon equipped with the most up-to-date safety sensors and other advanced features, such as the keyless ignition that has become ubiquitous in so many current models from all manufacturers. The Toyota Avalon is considered a safe vehicle and, according to reports, Mr Livingstone had recently told his daughter this very fact.

But for Ms Penney and Mr Livingstone, it was the simple issue of getting out of the vehicle and forgetting to turn it off that proved fatal as the exhaust fumes from the car slowly filled their house, ending in their somewhat untimely demise.

Now, here is the rub. I, too, own a vehicle with the keyless ignition system and I too have been guilty of leaving the car running. And not just on the rare occasion. You see, for us oldies, when you get out of your car with the keys in your hand, you instinctively know that the vehicle is turned off. Only now, sometimes it is not. Sometimes you hear the shopping mall announcer tell everyone that some dunderhead has left their car running. Yup, I have had to make that particular walk of shame more than once.

It would appear that it is not just me who, without the motion of physically turning a key, neglect to switch off the engine. Some car owners—and not just the really old ones—do too. The thing that gets me about it is you cannot start the car unless the key is in range but the car will keep running when the key is no longer in range. This has to be a safety issue that needs to be addressed.

If you think that perhaps I am being a little premature in my condemnation of the keyless system, then perhaps you need to know that according to research conducted in the US of A, there have been at least 36 similar deaths since keyless tech became popular. And this includes seven in the first half of this year alone. There are also a large number of individuals who have been injured, including a few with brain injuries.

America’s road safety administration, the NHTSA, seems to have spotted this possibility back in 2011, when it proposed a one-second audible alarm to warn drivers that their vehicle was still running. Unfortunately, the car industry lobbied to stop the law on grounds of the cost to them and the proposal never became law.

The Toyota Avalon does, in fact, have a warning system that beeps once internally and three times externally should the driver get out of the vehicle and leave it running. But in this unfortunate example, these proved to be inadequate. And just so that you have no misunderstanding, the Avalon does indeed meet or exceed all of the prevailing safety standards. Perhaps then we need to push car manufacturers to adopt technology that would automatically switch off the car after a period of extended idling.

Ford already has an auto cut-off in its keyless cars and Toyota has announced that it would introduce such technology from 2020 onwards. Let us hope they do, but currently half of all vehicles sold have a keyless ignition system. And they will be out there for a number of years potentially killing people as they sleep.