This is against the law in WV and Ohio.(more laws)

[MikeD74T]

NH law is pretty straight forward.
"No person driving or in charge of a vehicle shall permit it to stand unattended without first stopping the engine, locking the ignition, removing the key and effectively setting the brake thereon and, when standing upon any grade, turning the front wheels to the curb or side of the way, unless such vehicle has been started by remote control car starter.
II. No person shall start a vehicle by remote control unless the doors of the vehicle are locked; the doors shall remain locked until the operator arrives at the vehicle."

 

[Bird]

I'm sure not disagreeing with you, Frank. We have a lot of laws I don't agree with. I know the reason for some of them and then there are some that I don't even know that much about. /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

 

[PitbullMidwest]

I'm "guilty" of breaking this law also. It is illegal in the City of Burlington to leave a running car unattended on public or private property, inside or outside a structure. One reason is theft but there is another reason cited, asphyxiation. A local man killed his children last winter by leaving his kids in the car with the engine running while he sat in a bar. There was a hole in the floorboards and in the exhaust pipe. According to a news story on WLS-AM (Chicago) 3 people at an apartment building were killed last week when another resident started his car in the building's garage to warm it up, went back to his apartment and fell asleep.

As I said, I do it too. But apparently there is some justification for the law as well.

 

[jim_wilson]

I agree with fenneran.

And this is the type of insane law that really sets me off /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif

The problem with ANY law is that it is inevitable that it will be abused by those in power ( the police and the govt.). We hear time after time after time about how we are going to get some new great law to protect us - only to hear a few years later about how that great new law is now being used to abuse us. Personal responsibility never factors in. We used to have a law here in Mass. that basically said if a crook came thru your front door you were supposed to leave thru the back. You could not defend your own property without the risk of prosecution. Politicians and lawmakers forget that laws and behavior are linked - criminals do what the do basically because they feel they can get away with it on some level. Even if this means going to prison - because many criminals don't fear prison. If the laws basically make criminals out of people for going about their lives then the real criminals will take advantage of this and us.

We used to have a police chief here in Boston named Bratton - I believe that he is now chief in LA and was chief in NY City for a while. One of his theories was that simple things like trash on the street, broken down properties, and graffiti all contribute to crime. The theory being that if you are of a criminal mind then evidence of neglect and abuse in a neighborhood indicates to the criminal that people don't really care - which means to the criminal that they can basically get away with whatever they want to do.

What do you think the crime rate would be if the law basically said that you can leave the keys in your car - door unlocked, with the engine running and a naked woman sitting in the passenger seat holding a bundle of money and if somebody so much as looks sideways at the vehicle or the woman they would drawn and quartered, then executed, their family exiled to a desolate arctic island, every piece of their property burned and their family name stricken from all historical records? There would surely be at least some impact on the crime rate.

And the point is not that I think a law like that is reasonable - it really isn't (see previous reference to govt. abuse of power), but that laws influence behavior. Laws such as the 'leave your home and property to the crooks' and ' don't leave your car running or your are in trouble' only serve to discourage personal responsibility and encourage criminal behavior in the end.

When I was younger and poorer I drove numerous cars that would not run correctly unless they were fully warmed up and/or had various maladies like they would not start when hot or things like that. I used to leave the car running a lot (especially in winter) out of sheer necessity. So if you ask me why I think laws like this are insane it is because I think back to those days and think that if I had to follow every stinkin law that came down the pike I simply couldn't have lived my life.