A word of caution: His keyless car killed him while he slept. New legislation could save others

[MicaelS]

105. Purpose?

It is much harder to steal a keyless car over a keyed car.

Sure, there are stories of people hacking them, but you can steal anything if you try hard enough.

Keyless cars stop the casual thief, since you cannot break into the car and hot wire it.

You can partially thank the insurance companies for keyless cars. GM especially had a very poor plastic steering wheel collar over the keyswitch, it was easy to break it with a common screwdriver, then hot wire the car.
It got so bad that aftermarket companies sold steel collars to put over the plastic collars.

Insurance companies got tired of the payouts for stolen cars. They pushed to get improved collars and keys with chips in them. That led to the cars we have today.

Does the current keyless system be improved? Sure they can. It should be relatively easy to incorporate a circuit that shuts down the car after 10 minutes with no weight on the driver's seat.