Idling engines is a behavioral modification problem

[JRMichler]

Mainstream psychology is looking into how to convince people to shut their engines off: https://phys.org/news/2017-02-behavi...em-idling.html. And showing successful results.

[oil pan 4]

It seems that a lot of people think starting the engine more will wear the starter out that much faster.
Which isn't true, starter age appears to be the main factor in their failure.

[gone-ot]

Starter motors "wear" with every use...use it 100-times more often and it'll wear out 100-times sooner. Mechanical wear is a function of usage.

• Lookup: "bathtub curve life cycle"

[Hersbird]

I think people greatest fear is that the car won't restart for some reason. Even a perfectly good car may have shift or brake interlocks that could confuse you in the hurried, startled moments of, oh crap! It's time to move! Or that after that you end up only making it back to reverse instead of drive and back in to the car behind you. I'm sure all of these things have happened to a great many people (although never myself, my cars just wouldn't restart because they are pieces of junk). It's one thing when the problem or confusion happens along the curb or in your driveway, quite another when there are 20 angry people behind you waiting for you to figure it out.
What would help was some kind of countdown. The crosswalk sign sometimes helps but not always changes on "0", and not always is it your turn to go, and sometimes you can't see it. Also you may not know if this is a 20 sec light or a 2 min light.

[oldtamiyaphile]

Doesn't really apply to railway crossings as per the article.

[oil pan 4]

Originally Posted by Old Tele man

Starter motors "wear" with every use...use it 100-times more often and it'll wear out 100-times sooner. Mechanical wear is a function of usage.

Actually I have found that to not be true at all.
When I was in the air force we had a lot of retarded rules that made no sense.
One of those rules caused busy flightline vehicles to be started between 40 and 100 times a day.
But the starters didn't wear out 40 to 100 times faster. They wore out maybe twice as fast for heavy duty trucks and maybe 3 to 4 times as fast on light duty cars and trucks.

[Frank Lee]

The proliferation and massive abuse of remote start systems more than counteracts any good this- and perhaps automatic engine-off systems- might do. ☯

[Fingie]

my car has the starter in a good spot, so changing it is not a problem.

And I've learned to use the 20-sec rule of shutting a car down.

Here in finland we idle our cars warm, urgh. But we have pretty cold winters, so thankfully most people use block heaters.

[oldtamiyaphile]

For cars with auto stop, BMW and Ford quote 3 and 5 seconds as the break even point (I forget which is which).

[pete c]

My current rental is an ecoboost Escape with auto-shutoff. It really does work well, but there are times when it is annoying in stop and go traffic. Fortunately, there is a dash mounted defeat. I think the long term solution is for all cars to go to at least a mild hybrid system. Something along the lines of the original Insight, but with the ability to run on just the electric motor. Such a motor located between the engine and tranny shouldn't be that much more expensive to build, as it would eliminate the need for a separate starter and alternator. Keep the battery size down and it wouldn't be terribly expensive.