{"id":5681,"date":"2011-01-01T12:01:31","date_gmt":"2011-01-01T17:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=5681"},"modified":"2011-01-03T20:33:32","modified_gmt":"2011-01-04T01:33:32","slug":"grand-caravan-with-a-teutonic-twist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2011\/01\/01\/grand-caravan-with-a-teutonic-twist\/","title":{"rendered":"Grand Caravan With A Teutonic Twist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I found this article in <em>The Boston Globe<\/em>. There does not appear to be a link to it on the web, so I have scanned in the first page of the article.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-5683\" title=\"Grand Caravan with a Teutonic Twist\" src=\"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/2011-1-1-RoutanArticle1.jpg\" alt=\"Article From The Boston Globe\" width=\"1020\" height=\"1207\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/2011-1-1-RoutanArticle1.jpg 1020w, https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/2011-1-1-RoutanArticle1-126x150.jpg 126w, https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/2011-1-1-RoutanArticle1-253x300.jpg 253w, https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/2011-1-1-RoutanArticle1-865x1024.jpg 865w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1020px) 100vw, 1020px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The paragraph that sprang to my attention was:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The fob also has a remote start feature.\u00a0 We discovered that it works from a distance after inadvertently starting the Routan while opening the front door to our house with an armload of packages, one of which squeezed against the fob, activating the starter.\u00a0 We found the Routan happily running several minutes later when heading back out for more bundles.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I am surprised that the author did not jump on this &#8220;feature&#8221; as a potentially fatal safety hazard that merited an immediate recall. Can you imagine this vehicle being parked in an attached garage and accidentally being started just before a family went to bed? It is highly likely that by morning the whole family would be dead from carbon monoxide poisoning.<\/p>\n<p>We have a fob like this for controlling our garage doors.\u00a0 We have to be extremely careful with keeping this fob in our pockets.\u00a0 We have accidentally opened the garage door any number of times just be bending over with the fob in our pocket.\u00a0 We usually treat this fob very gingerly.\u00a0 When we enter the house, we carefully pull it out of our pocket and hang it from a hook in the kitchen so that we won&#8217;t accidentally open the garage door and cause our pipes to freeze in the winter cold.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>I have reported this problem to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. <\/p>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>Project:<\/td>\n<td>NHTSA Hotline Center<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Case:<\/td>\n<td>Safety Issue With VW Routan<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Case Number:<\/td>\n<td>319849<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>Escalation:<\/td>\n<td>None<\/td>\n<td>Status:<\/td>\n<td>Closed<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Date:<\/td>\n<td>2011-01-03 <\/td>\n<td>Time:<\/td>\n<td>17:43:18<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Creation Date:<\/td>\n<td>2011-01-01<\/td>\n<td>Creation Time:<\/td>\n<td>12:11:38<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>They made quick work of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I found this article in The Boston Globe. There does not appear to be a link to it on the web, so I have scanned in the first page of the article. The paragraph that sprang to my attention was: The fob also has a remote start feature.\u00a0 We discovered that it works from a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166,178],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5681","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"category-technologyrunamok","8":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5681"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5705,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5681\/revisions\/5705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}