Deadly Convenience: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

Well, I certainly don't fit that mold:

(*) My newest vehicle, a couple years newer than my Prius, doesn't have Park at all. But it does have a clutch, as have all vehicles in my household in the past three and a half decades except the Prius. And all of dad's trucks too. With that clutch, there is no assurance whatsoever that key-in-hand means the vehicle is safely parked. Sis was reminded of this the hard way a few years ago, when she was interrupted by unexpected visitors, flubbed a 4WD transfer case shift, and forgot that dad hadn't had the parking brake adjusted on that particular (and oldest) truck in far far too long. Oops. At least it took out only two fences and a septic drainfield access pipe.

(*) When traveling long distances solo, I carry two keys or fobs in order to prevent being stranded by a lockout or lost key (again). Having a key in my hand is no assurance that the car is even turned off. There are also several other scenarios where I carry two keys, such as when dropping off or picking up the car for service, such as yesterday for the MT and today for the Prius. It makes it much easier to have the shop lock a key in the vehicle so that I can pick it up after hours.

Then there is dad's place. While keys are usually pulled out of car and truck ignitions when turned off, this is only to quiet the key-in-ignition reminder alarms. The keys are not taken away from the vehicle except when parked off the farm. For tractors, bulldozer, ATVs, etc., this is essentially never. This practice is a convenient feature of living in a deeply rural area, and I'm sure numerous others still do it too.

Has GM ceased making manual transmission vehicles altogether? My spouse was quite happy Subaru still made them, that quickly and sharply narrowed down the field for our most recent replacement vehicle. I'd probably receive greater blowback from her for buying a normal AT car than for unchaperoned overnight travel with a certain female friend. Seriously.

 

That is an extremely America-centric view. Globally, MTs still dominate:

"At last count, just 3.9 percent of cars sold in U.S. were built with manual transmissions, but in the rest of the world, manual transmissions are still overwhelmingly the top choice. In Europe and Japan, for example, more than 80 percent of cars sold have manual transmissions."
Manual vs. Automatic Transmissions: Who's Winning? - Quoted

The last several times we rented cars overseas, American-friendly automatics went for triple the cost of sticks. Being still accustomed to manual transmissions on a daily basis saved us a lot of money.

The last I noticed, hybrids were in the mid-to-high-2% range, still less than MTs.

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Manual transmissions also help encourage teen drivers to put down the cell phone! Many of their parents could use the same treatment.

My youngest niece drives a stick shift F-250, almost twice her age, to school. Her older sister did the same. Sure, there are some younger F-150s in the school lot too, but this is a real classic that none of her classmates, male or female, can match. Used to be one of my dad's farm trucks, probably the only one he ever traded in before it was seriously beat up.

 

At my last job, if you took to the stairwell to get to another floor, you needed to tap your identification/access card at the destination floor. More than once I found myself pulling out my phone, then realizing nope, that's not gonna work.

 

Right, time to kick this thread again, fresh news on the topic:

Toyota plans auto-shutdown feature for new models

 

Meh.
Still prefer rfid embedded keys.

 

The Auto Shut Off feature might have helped my car that had 15 hours of "On" at the body shop. Thread here.