yes, Victoria, there is a Santa Claus (for car thieves)

[winterbadger]

sign there are too many idiots around: when the police sent around a "reminder" not to warm up your car on cold mornings but turning on the engine and then leaving it running while you go inside and have breakfast, take a shower, whatever, I thought "Surely no one is stupid enough to do that?"

sign that I've been watching a lot of 'Ballykissangel': when I biked past an empty pickup with the motor running yesterday morning, the first thing that came into my mind was "Sure, and that's just what the Gardai were telling us not to do!" :-)

Further note: For two mornings now, I've woken up with a 'burned' mouth, feeling as if I'd smoked several pipes before going to bed. The cause? I've fallen back on my reserve tube of toothpaste, Tom's of Maine cinnamint, which is kind of burny even when you've just used it. Cinnamint = in the bin.

Comments

[rolypolypony.livejournal.com]

I kinda do that - after breakfast I start the car and then go back inside to brush my teeth and make my lunch! I don't know anyone who doesn't do that around here, or back home growing up!

[winterbadger]

You presumably have very law-abiding neighbours.

In my area, there's so much burglary* and street robbery that leaving an unoccupied car running on the street would only be safe if thieves decided it was *too* easy and must therefore be a police trap.

ETA: I take it gasoline is very cheap in Massachusetts these days? ;-)



* Thieves around here are so brash that one gang has started shouting "This is a burglary" when they break into houses!

[rolypolypony.livejournal.com]

Wow, I can't even imagine. And I can't imagine the boldness needed to steal a car from someone's driveway in broad daylight! Well, broad almost-daylight! ;)

Granted, my town IS tiny and very peaceful. I'm sure if anyone tried to steal a car, everyone would run out of their houses to chase them down!

HAhha, no, gas is still pricey, but it's either that or die for half of my commute while the heat slowly kicks in!

[wcg.livejournal.com]

For a couple of hundred dollars you can get a remote start kit installed that allows you to start the car with the doors locked and allow it to warm up. I understand they're popular in Minnesota and similar cold places.

[winterbadger]

Yeah, apparently my SIL's sib and her partner have them for their cars--in the frozen wastes of the Jersey Shore! :-) I think my soon-to-be-ex-BIL in North Dakota actually goes whole hog and had a block heater...

[wcg.livejournal.com]

If I lived in North Dakota I'd have a block heater too. The trickle current required to keep the block warm is nowhere near the ~600 amps it takes to turn over a V-8 engine when the block temperature is below zero. It doesn't take long to drain a battery with that kind of load on it.

[keethrax.livejournal.com]

I live in one of the coldest places in the continental US. Not too far from International Falls, and a stone's throw from where GM did their uber-winter testing for a while, my poor father-in-law used to have to come here to run tests in the winter and winter and death valley for the summer, the poor guy. And don't find block heaters necessary on modern, gasoline engines.

Batteries get replaced before they actually fail (every other year for most of my cars, some go 3-4 years). I'd do that with or without a block heater, you never know when you won't be able to plug in and winter here is nothing to screw around with. I use heaters if the car already has them. And if it's older (or diesel, but I currently don't own one) it gets a heater. But for newish (15 years or so) stuff I don't bother, and have never not started even with cars parked outdoors (never had a garage until a few months ago) in the -50 to -60 range.

A heater *might* extend the battery life a bit, but I'm not waiting for them to fail to find out how much anyhow. With or without a heater.

Huh. Looking at http://www.currentresults.com/Weather-Extremes/US/coldest.php Looking at that's kinda scary. Apparently I've spent most of my life near three of the five "major" (not sure what that actually means) weather stations where the temp has an annual mean of <40 degrees F

I have been known to leave the car running on occasion, but pretty sure it's safe. Though one winter my brother went off his meds and did steal several cars that were left running in a single night.