Not anymore. Modern automobiles with a properly functioning exhaust aftertreatment system run extremely clean. Take a look here: the 1998 Toyota Sienna they measured puts out (at most) 62.5 PPM, which might be enough to give you a slight headache after several hours of exposure. I expect emissions rules and tech have improved quite a bit even since 1998, and so a late-model car puts out even less. If you run your car in a sealed garage, you’ll probably run out of oxygen before CO builds up to lethal levels.
I don’t have numbers for diesel engine CO emissions, but my understanding is that they are also quite low because diesels operate with a lot of excess air.
I hear with the cleaner fuels and catalytic converters you are as likely to wake up with a horrible headache as wake up dead.
ETA: Damn you Machine Elf. <shakes fist>
And recently it’s become a more and more popular method.
In fact I just had a case where the security guard at a parking structure reported a Subaru had been parked there for an excessive time (we’ve been getting a lot of stolen cars dumped in parking structures). When I approached the car the guy was on the floor in the back seat ( Yeah, I don’t get it either) with the bag on his head and the balloon gas piped in.
Maybe - except those in the know have the knowledge that hanging isn’t always “peaceful” and the body left behind is anything but pretty.
There are other means of asphyxiation, some of which leave a much more attractive corpse. My sister, for example, was left quite rosy-cheeked by carbon monoxide.
^ This. Also, for those who care, you are highly unlikely to hurt someone else while killing yourself by hanging. Some people who have used poison gas in a car have thoughtfully taped warning notices to windows to alert responders of the potential hazard.
Well… I’d ask my sister but she was a little too successful with that stunt.
People who have survived such events (whether deliberately or accidentally getting into that situation) have said that yeah, it was quite a bit like dropping off to sleep but the “hangover” the next day was a hellacious headache. Of course, things other than carbon monoxide in the exhaust might be irritant and cause coughing and the like.
Or wake up with severe brain damage. Some people don’t die but also never really wake up again.
It was a little bizarre that my sister’s suicide note specified her wishes that if she was left in a coma or persistent vegetative state she wanted to refuse medical treatment and be allowed to die. I mean, no shit, sis, you’re trying to commit suicide, I think we could have guessed your wishes in the matter.
In any case, dead people typically (though not always) piss and shit themselves at some point, when the sphincters relax. Bottom line, it is really hard to leave a pleasant corpse.
What options are there for suicide? I suspect if you could pick up cyanide pills at the local 7-11, it would be a very common way to go. But in the absence of that, what do you have?
Gunshot: In many countries firearms are very difficult to acquire. Risk of “just” blowing off much of your face, or making yourself a “vegetable” using a handgun. More powerful guns are difficult to use on yourself.
Jumping off a building: Psychologically difficult to do, terrifying in execution, leaves a very unpleasant corpse often in a public location.
Sleeping pills: Again not foolproof, you might vomit it up or have a high tolerance and suddenly find yourself receiving treatment and therapy, rather than the death you planned for (Oh noes!). Also risk of alerting others when procuring / stashing the pills.
Breathing something other than air: Not so easy these days as the car exhaust method is largely out. Getting a cylinder of helium is possible, but still needs some set up and calculation, and again there is a risk of someone finding the cylinder and realizing what you are planning (secret balloon animal fetish). Also, awareness of this method and why it’s preferable to, say, drowning, is not so high.
I won’t list all the 6 million ways, but those are some of the most common ones.
I think hanging compares well, even if it weren’t the case that you pass out in the first few seconds.
I’ve accidentally inhaled carbon monoxide before, when a neighbor left a grill or charcoal burning for a while - probably wasn’t a dangerous amount of CO, but it was enough to cause a distressing headache and sick feeling.
I don’t think CO would be a painless suicide method.
WAG: He was on the floor in the back seat so it’d be harder to see him before he was dead. If he was sitting up in the front, someone might notice him doing something strange and confront him.
I was annoyed to see in a very recent episode of* Major Crimes *that they showed a murder committed by having a person locked in a trunk with a line from the exhaust running into the trunk. I guess, hey, it’s Hollywood - never let facts get in the way of the story. At least some shows get the red skin of CO poisoning correct, but no one ever mentions the evacuated bowels.
I should have made it clearer that I meant asphyxiation/hanging is chosen as a common method because the way it is portrayed in TV makes it *appear *“peaceful”. Since most people’s exposure to hanging is via TV, they get the wrong impression. I am under no delusions about the peacefulness of hanging (see my earlier post).
Even in the most recent example I have seen (on Murder In The First), the jail suicide-by-hanging left a pleasant looking corpse.
I’ve heard that charcoal grills are now the method of choice in Japan. A couple of pounds of Kingsfords turning gray in a Hibachi in a closet produces fatal amounts of CO.
Who knows what people are thinking when they decide to bail. They’re obviously not in their right mind.
I can’t give names or anything, but this guys circumstances are still a mystery. He lived over 200 miles away and had absolutely zero connection to this area. Never worked here, never lived here, never attended school here, had no relatives here, and according to his family no friends here. They are completely baffled as to why he left work [in good standing with his employer] and (according to the parking structure ticket) arrived in Milwaukee County 5 hours later. There was nothing of any significance to that parking structure, either. No concert or sports venues or theaters. There is a tech school close by but their admin said he had no connection to the school.
Perhaps he figured if he was going to check out, keep everyone guessing.
I’ve seen a lot of dead people. I’ve never seen one shit themselves. It doesn’t make logical sense. Unless you got a turtle head sticking out the total relaxing of all muscular activity does not expel fecal matter. You need a living body to do that.
Ask a cop or insurance investigator about single-occupant cars running at high speed into a tree/bridge pier/other seriously immovable object with no brake marks.
Yes, they go looking for a note or recent increase in death insurance coverage.
Knew a person who used this - didn’t take long to get a ruling of suicide, not accident.
Not a building (you could hurt someone), but a cliff. Even if you live in Kansas or some other flat location, you could always take a “hiking” trip to the Rockies and “fall”. Some people might believe you actually fell and not feel quite as bad.
I can only remember one, and it was a very old person who had been quite ill and died of natural causes. Probably dumped before they kicked.
I had one where they were dead quite awhile and blew up. Insides just exploded from the gases. At first I thought they were killed by a shotgun blast. It’s quite unnerving to a rookie. The one that was with me ran outside and barfed.
Over the last 10 years I’ve been sent to more and more heroin od’s. They foam from the mouth like a rabid dog. It’s pretty gross.
Back to the asphyxiation theme of the thread, I got sent to a park once where a county worker found a 9 year old kid hanging from a tree. Little dunce was using a rope with a knotted loop to climb with and swing on. Somehow got his neck in it and snap!
I think the general public would be surprised how many “hangings” were actually guys doing the choke & stroke. You’d think with the internet people would have wised up to how dangerous it is. Dying while jerking it has to be one of the most embarrassing ways to go.
Stepping in front of a train seems popular around here (Chicago area), as we have a ton of commuter/freight lines running through. I think it’s a pretty assholish way to go out if it’s planned, considering the engineers get PTSD from dealing with suicides/people driving around the gates to beat the train/vehicles stalling on the tracks/etc., but I know some are impulsive acts.
On the autoerotic asphyxiation accidents, I wonder how most survivors deal with telling others about the death. Claim he had a heart attack and just don’t mention anything about the circumstances?
That’s all true, but it still has the same drawbacks I listed for jumping off a building: Psychologically difficult to do, terrifying in execution, leaves a very unpleasant corpse often in a public location.
Cyanide is probably more painful than hanging done right, cyanide seems like several minutes of agony. If you cut blood flow off properly you should pass out in a few seconds with pressure on the neck.
Yeah, I don’t get it either) with the bag on his head and the balloon gas piped in.