idling cars in the driveway

[girlbug2]

I happen to walk my dog at about the same time of morning that people seem to be about to leave for work. I am surprised at how often we walk past unattended vehicles sitting there with the engines running. It can't be coincidence that we pass by just as all these people realized they forgot their mocha lattes and dashed back into the house for "just a sec" to get them. Conclusion: they must be warming up their engines.

Three things wrong with that:

1. Any car made in the last 20 years only needs 30 seconds or less to warm up in idle. The best way to warm an engine is to drive it at low speeds for a few minutes.

2. A car with the engine on and nobody in sight is an opportunity for theives. Even if one lives in a "nice" neighborhood.

3. What a waste of gas!

And keep in mind, this is the Summertime. Temps already in the low 70s or high 60s by that time of morning.

I would like to do something to educate people better about this, particularly the people we pass by several times a week. But I don't know them personally. What can I do?

 

[mook jong man]

Not only that some one could hide in the back.

 

[shesulsa]

Makes more sense in winter than summer ... perhaps to cool off the interior? :idunno:

It's been said by the AAA club that warming up your engine, even for a couple of minutes, can significantly lengthen the life of the engine ... I don't know if it's true or not, but I can tell you my parents were in that practice and my mother's old 1972 Impala is still banging around somewhere with the factory engine still in it.

I am blessed with remote control locks, so I pop the ignition key off my ring, start the car, close the door and lock it from the outside to go back in and gather everyone up, turn off lights, etc. I'm rather obsessed that the car *is locked* before I go in.

 

[Kacey]

In addition to girlbug's points, Denver has an aggressive campaign against leaving your car idling in the drive, because it has a measurable negative effect on the pollution level, especially in the winter - to the extent that leaving your car idling is illegal, whether you're in it or not - although I've only see it enforced when the car is empty (yet another instance of Big Brother, I know... but Denver's got a significant pollution problem, which is what pushed the issue to this level).

As far as AAA goes - they've changed that recommendation, at least in Colorado, as follows:

Unless your car was built before computer-driven systems became common (around the mid-1980s), it shouldn't be warmed up at all.
<snip>
Prolonged idling also wastes fuel, increases air pollution, makes an unattended vehicle vulnerable to theft and can even earn you a ticket in some places. Ten seconds of idling use more fuel than restarting the engine, and just 10 minutes of idling per day adds up to an average of 22 gallons of gasoline a year-at current prices, that's $64 spent on gas that will be simply pumped through a stationary car's engine, out of the exhaust pipe and into the air for no reason.
Worse, the emissions are at a higher level than your car produces when being driven. "The catalytic converter doesn't do its job of controlling emissions until the car has been driven long enough to heat it to operating temperature," says Greg Jozwik, also with the AAA Approved Auto Repair program. "When you idle a cold car, those emissions are passing through the exhaust untreated." Many cities have passed anti-idling ordinances in an effort to lower unnecessary vehicle emissions—Denver, Aspen and Colorado Springs among them.
This winter, make it a goal to remember not to idle your vehicle in the morning for longer than one minute—and that's if the temperature is close to zero or below. In any other case, 30 seconds should be the maximum for a modern car.

And then, too, one of my neighbors left his car idling in the driveway while he ran into get something - and we live in a nice neighborhood, back off even the secondary roads - and in the 3 minutes he was in his house, someone stole his car. It was only recovered because the police were in the area looking for another car stolen in exactly the same manner a mile away, and found his instead, purely by chance, because the officers were already in the area looking for the other one.

 

[MJS]

Even during the warmer months where I live, I still let it run for a couple of minutes before taking off. Even though the cars today are built better than the cars of years ago, I still like to give the engine some time to run and for things to start moving.

During the winter, I never get in and go. I have a remote start on my vehicle as well as my wifes, so we can hit the button from inside and by the time we're ready to leave, the car is warmed up. We park both in a garage but when they're outside, it gives everything a chance to warm up. I leave work at 12am, so about 10min or so before my shift ends, I hit the button. The windows start to defrost, the inside is getting warm, and I spend less time cleaning the windshield of ice.

 

[terryl965]

Well my old vehicle like me needs to get a little going before we can go down the driveway, with that beisng said statistic show mare car are stcolen when left running go figure.