Special Reports

9 Investigates: Keyless vehicles blamed for deaths

By Jason Stoogenke, wsoctv.com
By Jason Stoogenke, wsoctv.com

Story highlights:

  • Keyless start vehicles accidently left running can poison people with carbon monoxide
  • Auto industry does not requre automatic cutoffs for keyless ignitions
  • Society of Automotive Engineers doesn't have any recommendations on the danger

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — More new vehicles are being built with keyless ignitions. Push a button and they start, nice and easy. But it can be easy to forget that the vehicle is on, even in your garage, and that can be deadly.

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People have driven into their garages, gotten out of their vehicles, forgotten that the engines were still running and died from carbon monoxide poisoning.

"It didn't occure to me that I'd lose my dad this way"

Ray Harrington was a softball coach, airman, police officer and college professor at Pfeiffer University in Stanly County. In 2012, he came home one day, parked in the garage of his Davidson townhouse, walked inside, went to sleep and never woke up.

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Harrington's car had a keyless ignition, and apparently he left it running in the garage by accident and died from carbon monoxide poisoning.

"It didn't occur to me that I'd lose my dad this way," his son, Alexander "Xan" Harrington, said. "It was the most tragic event in my life. Every day I think about my dad and what I'm missing."

  • RAW CLIP -- Alexander Harrington reflects on losing his father:

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More local cases

In March, a Mooresville family experienced a similar incident. The fumes were so bad that four police officers were hospitalized after responding to the scene. The officers and the family survived.

But Bill and Woo Thomason did not. In 2013, the Greenville, South Carolina, couple had just celebrated 50 years of marriage and had renewed their vows. Their son, Will, believes that the couple's car ran all night in the garage.

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"By the time they were found, they were essentially brain dead," he said.

Action 9 tests different vehicles

Action 9's Jason Stoogenke tried a half-dozen vehicles with keyless ignitions to see if they would alert him that they were still running. Each time, he started the engine, got out of the vehicle and took the key fob with him.

Three of them beeped. The new Honda Pilot was the loudest. The other vehicles didn't warn him at all. He just kept walking, wondering if something would alert him to go back. Nothing did.

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"See, that could be in your garage all night and you wouldn't know. It's just spewing fumes," Stoogenke said.

Official response

Channel 9 asked the Auto Alliance, a well-known national group that speaks for the auto industry, what car companies are doing to make sure people don't leave their keyless vehicles on by mistake, or if they do, that they don't get sick or die because of it.

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The Alliance said it's doing everything that the Society of Automotive Engineers recommends in that situation. But the SAE said it doesn't have any recommendations on the danger.

The best advice -- Three ways to be safer:

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  • Pay attention
  • Take the key fob with you, if your vehicle is one that beeps
  • Make sure you have working carbon monoxide detectors

The federal government isn't requiring any changes either, even though records show that it's been studying the danger for at least four years.

Harrington wants the feds to require the warning beeps, or something more -- including an automatic cutoff.

  • RAW CLIP -- Alexander Harrington advocates for automatic cutoffs:

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"This is a correctable problem," he said. "I think the technology exists today to be able to create automatic shutoffs that prevent what happened to my dad from happening to anyone else."

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