A 2-year-old girl has died after her father left her in a hot car in Arizona, where residents are enduring triple-digit temperatures, according to authorities.
The father was running errands with his daughter, and when he returned home Tuesday afternoon, he allegedly knowingly left the 2-year-old in the car, Marana Police Capt. Tim Brunenkant told ABC News.
He left the car running and the air conditioning on, Brunenkant said.
The dad went into the house, and when he returned to the car between 30 and 60 minutes later, the car was off, Brunenkant said.
Most modern cars have an auto-off feature. Some have a button to temporarily disable it.
Mine is one such car but it only turns itself off while in drive to save gas at stoplights and such. It doesn’t turn itself off when running while in park.
You’re thinking of the auto start-stop feature. That is a different feature which aims to save gas while you press the brake pedal.
What others in the thread are talking about is a feature that will fully power off the vehicle after it has been sitting idle for a longer period of time. This includes turning off the engine and any of the electronics that normally continue to run during the auto start-stop.
Could be but it must have a very long timeout. My wife frequently opts to wait in the car while I go run an errand, but I’ve admittedly never timed it. 30min would definitely be on the high end though. If I ever made her wait 60 I’d probably be divorced.
My 2020 VW Golf definitely turns itself off when in park, but also has the button to disable it.
It will even require a manual restart if it’s been parked long enough, which gets annoying when I spend a little too long dropping off/picking up something, and don’t notice the message, put it in drive, see the message and try to start the car, but can’t until I put it back in park. /rant
I do hate that you can’t permanently disable the feature. Disabling it has (mostly) become a standard part of my startup procedure, but every once in a while I get in a hurry and forget. It makes me unreasonably irritated when I do and the car turns off at an intersection even though all I have to do is slightly lift my foot on the brake not even enough to release the brake. Then I get irritated at myself for forgetting and again for getting irritated so easily.
My car tracks how much idle time it has saved and after 3 years I’m still at something like 10 seconds…
IMHO, you shouldn’t be able to permanently disable it. We are in a climate crisis.
It’s fine for 95% of use cases, but sucks for the rest. But having anyone restrict my ability to make choices for what is best for me and my situation puts a black mark on my book.