Idling engines is a behavioral modification problem
 

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.

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.

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"

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Well...a member on a different forum shut off his engine to save some gas while coasting and ended up rolling his new-to-him truck when the steering lock kicked in...

Point being: don't screw around unless you know what to expect. (And it's your own damned fault if you do something that has dire results)

Agreed. A small electric motor to make sure the car can at least move out of the intersection would go a long way toward obviating "restart anxiety." :thumbup:

IF that actually happened, he shut it off AND PULLED THE KEY OUT.

"Restart anxiety"- do that many people have P.O.S. that don't start right up? I thought that pretty much went away with carburetors. :confused:

I'm not saying it's founded in reality, that just seems to be the reason why people (non-Ecomodders, that is) distrust auto-stop, and are reluctant to do it manually.

Heck, even my POS carburetor cars are good about restarting, unless they're vapor-locked on a hot day. ;)

There is damn little that people as a whole think because it's grounded in reality. :rolleyes:

Thanks. Didn't believe what you said until I went and tested it for myself. Two very different vehicles...same results.

Wonder what he'll have to say about it...I've seen the damage pics, so...lack of power steering, perhaps?

One of my vehicles from the 1970s has steering column lock, so my vote is that that guy is just a dumbass.

You don't have to pull the key out, just move the cylinder to the position where the key will come out an some cars lock the steering even with the key still in.

Ps.. I just noticed you do have to shift to park to get the key to turn to that position. Some really new cars won't actually shift into park or reverse even if the shifter is moved there while in motion with electronic controls. So maybe you can shift into park while in motion and it will stay in neutral but then the steering lock becomes effective. It does seem hard to do.

A kill and restart ability while in gear with no shifter or key activity (like the factory auto stop-start systems) would be the best but I bet we would also get more roll away or drive away accidents as well.

On an old manual transmission car, you could put the car in gear and use the starter motor and regular battery to move the car a short distance like out of an intersection. No interlocks and saftey nannies. It's probably just a matter of time until these auto stop-start systems get old and glitchy causing all kind of 'Maximum Overdrive' "accidents". The nannies in the systems is what the aliens will use to conquer us. I should write a script, add Zombies, base it in Alaska, the next Discovery channel hit.