People get preoccupied and can miss almost anything. That is not an excuse, but an explanation. The solution is to not be preoccupied. But we are talking about people here.
Barkydog: I remember the Ford transmissions jumping out of park to reverse. Ford did nothing as it was not common claiming drivers were not fully engaging park. They may have had a point. Of my 46 vehicles owned 9 have been A/T and 6 of those have been Fords. None of those had this problem. If they did it would have not been catastrophic as being a mostly M/T driver I always engage the parking brake. From my observation most A/T drivers consider the “park” feature sufficient and the parking brake obsolete. That disturbs me.
Two things I DON’T like about keyless cars:
1. I drove my mom's car for a bit while she was out ofp town for a month, using the spare key. There's NO way to (securely) leave the car somewhere, with the spare keys in it! (I guess you could make a Faraday cage out of aluminum foil, but boy, what a Mickey-Mouse workaround!)
2. I'm a forgetful person; I'm also a creature of habit. If I'm not to lose stuff (like keys, for instance) I need to be able to do a consistent "time and motion" with them every time I enter a room, or a car. That said, I'd really appreciate some device on the right side of the steering column to put my keys...even if it didn't actually "do" anything.
One of those Fords dropped into reverse while I was standing behind the open door @Sarge. It nearly killed me. I can think back and laugh now but at the time it wasn’t amusing.
There’s NO way to (securely) leave the car somewhere, with the spare keys in it!
That depends on the vehicle, some have a method of turning off the key.
Lexus ES350;
Electronic Key Battery-Saving Function
When battery-saving mode is set, battery depletion is minimized by stopping the
electronic key from receiving radio waves.
Press twice while pressing and holding
. Confirm that the electronic key indicator
flashes 4 times.
While the battery-saving mode is set, the
smart access system with push-button start
cannot be used. To cancel the function, press
any of the electronic key buttons.
@sgtrock21 guess the newer generation just isn’t taught about why you should use the parking brake when you put the car in park! My dad has taught me from day 1 that I should always put the parking brake on regardless of where I park (hill or flat surface) pretty much clockwork now for me
@meanjoe75fan and not to mention if you ever misplace one of these key fobs it costs a lot of money from the dealer to get replacements!
I recognized the engineered obsolesence via annual trendy face lifts on automobiles back in the early 60s. Of course Volkswagen threw dirt in the face of trendy face lifts and gained esteem and market share by refusing to make changes for the sake of change. And the Big 3 took note and toned down their excessive fantazmagoric styling to some degree. Now the marketing departments may have found a new worm hole into the future wealth of millennials via their technological vanity. These days on college campuses automobile 0-60 times is passe while some exponential term for computer/internet speed is now required for social acceptence. Could anyone be accepted socially who used a 56K dial up modem? Or drive a car with roll up windows and a radio with a tuning knob?
Interesting point, Rod. Slow internet is today’s young person’s equivalent of yesterday’s slow car (econobox). I like it.
While I don’t care for what I consider today’s useless gizmology (I made that word up for the occasion) I have to admit that I’ve always loved the tailfins and “rocketship” stylings of the cars of my own youth. I particularly like the “floating” headlights and taillights of the early '60s Chryslers. Always did. And I’ve always liked Chrysler’s pushbutton automatics. The idea was just ahead of the needed technology IMHO.
I hope we don’t come to the Ski Doo (wave runner) method where the key is on a rope and you attach the rope to your wrist. Then when you fall off in the water, the machine stops so you can get back on without being stranded in the middle of the lake. So attach rope of kill switch to wrist or put a sticker on the window “be sure to turn car off”. That should take care of it.
@“Rod Knox” You hit it on the head about internet speed being the new bragging field among young people. In my college years in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the contest was on for the well to do students as to who had the high fidelity system with the most power with the least harmonic distortion at that power. On automobiles, the in car to own was the VW Beetle. I didn’t have the money for any kind of car. nor could I afford any kind of high fidelity equipment.
VW really did establish a trend that lasted into the 1970s. By the late 1970s, the Honda Civic replaced the VW. Now that the Civic has become much bigger, I thought the Fiat 500 might become the new in car, but so far that hasn’t happened.
What I found interesting about the VW movement back in the late 1950s through the mid 1960s is that many people I knew gave cars with V8 engines,_automatic transmissions, power steering and real heaters for a VW with its 36 hp engine, manual transmission, noisy ride and poor heater.
Nine pages of posts and no one mentioned the biggest drawback to the pushbutton start. Surly you all remember the Toyota runaway acceleration cases. There were people killed in accidents that were on the phone with 911 operators, telling the operators that they couldn’t slow the car or TURN OFF THE ENGINE. Yes they could have turned off the engine by holding the start button down for 3 seconds but if you in a panic in an emergency 3 seconds seems like forever. They should have shifted into neutral and some did but claimed the car sped up. They were confused by the sound of the engine going faster.
I loved the Chrysler pushbutton transmissions. The manufacturers didn’t DECIDE to do away with them, the Feds forced them to because you could shift them in an order other than PRNDL.
"the Feds forced them to because you could shift them in an order other than PRNDL."
I have never before heard that claim.
Can you substantiate it with a link to a credible website that states that Chrysler was “forced by the Feds” to abandon push-button shifting?
the Feds forced them to because you could shift them in an order other than PRNDL.
The Feds may have forced them…but not sure the order was the reason. With a standard shift you could easily go from D to R without ever shifting in N if you did it fast enough. There are vehicles today with button shifting. And then there’s cars with Paddle shifts.
@meanjoe75fan - You want a repeatable “time and motion” routine? I am the same way as you. My routine is that I put the key in my pocket. I sit in my car, put my foot on the brake, and push “start”. The only difference now is that I don’t have to take the key out of my pocket or put it back in when I get out of the car.
I have never, in my life, put a key inside a car that would operate it and then locked the doors. If you are dead-set on doing it with a keyless ignition then pop open the fob and pull out the battery. It is not a difficult operation.
There is no way to safely leave any key in a car for any reason. Thieves know where you hide your keys. If they pick your car and you’ve left your key, you’re gonna be down a car rather than just a radio.
Triedaq: You reminded me of the bragging rights transition from horsepower to computer gimmicks. Car stereo wattage, the most harmonic distortion, and the worst possible “music”.
@oldtimer11 I don’t think the federal regulation applied to the pushbutton shift. The sequence on most GM cars was PNDLR or NDLR on the original Hydramatic transmission that didn’t have a PARK position. The problem, according to some safety experts,was that when you started the car with the PNDLR arrangement, you had to go through all forward positions to get to reverse. There was a chance for driver error if one was used to the PNDLR sequence and then went to the PRNDL arranfement. Also, on the 3 speed column shift reverse was on the top left and since many people were going from the standard to automatic, it made sense to have reverse in the higher position.
Triedaq: Thank you for confirming my memory of the Hydramatic shift pattern. I’m amazed I remembered correctly! In 1970 I acquired a very unusual vehicle. A 1961 Ford Econoline pickup that had been a “wheelstand” exhibition truck. It had been de-tuned for street use by replacing the 800hp Chevy “Rat” motor with a 1965 Corvette 327/350hp “Mouse” motor. The B&M racing 1950 Oldsmobile 4 speed Hydramatic was retained. It had a much smaller than normal column mounted shift lever with no gear selection indicator. No PARK and no neutral safety switch. At the ripe old age of 17-18 I was wise enough to know this was not a vehicle you would loan to someone!
“I hope we don’t come to the Ski Doo (wave runner) method where the key is on a rope and you attach the rope to your wrist. Then when you fall off in the water, the machine stops so you can get back on without being stranded in the middle of the lake.”
Yikes! Me too! Ski-Do is a snowmobile. They don’t float too well.
I own a Sea-Do, A PWC of the same brand that floats! Wave Runner is a different brand of PWC. Jet-Ski is a PWC of another brand… 
CSA