Reply #87: Leaving a car unlocked and running is so

[SheilaT]

phenomenally stupid that anyone who does that almost deserves whatever happens. As someone else pointed out it is actually against the law in many places. To excuse this as something people got in the habit of when cars had to be hand cranked leads me to ask, when was the last time you had to hand crank a car? I'm 62 and I've never even SEEN one of them.

And the idea you need to "warm up" a car is something else that belongs about fifty years in the past. It takes five minutes or less for the vast majority of cars to give decent heat and/or air conditioning, whichever is needed.

Several years ago in the Kansas City area there was a genuine tragedy when a woman left her car open and running while she went into a convenience store I think it was, as she was coming out someone was preparing to drive the car off. She opened the back door and tried to get out her young child who was in the back, got the kid tangled up in the seat belt and couldn't get him. The car thief drove off, the kid dangling by the seat belt, and was dragged to death. During the trial the mother's 911 call was played, and I heard it, and it's truly heart-rending. Nothing can bring back her kid, nothing can erase the horror of what happened, but leaving a car unlocked and running is a truly stupid thing to do.