Urban Legend In The Making: The ESB Dead Zone

The Daily News has an entertaining story today about the possibility of the five-block radius surrounding the Empire State Building becoming a sort of Bermuda Triangle for cars. Apparently, a number of cars have to be towed from that area every day, which makes people suspicious. The common denominator: the ESB.

“We get about 10 to 15 cars stuck near there every day,” said Isaac Leviev, manager of Citywide Towing, the AAA’s exclusive roadside assistance provider from 42nd St. to the Battery. “You pull the car four or five blocks to the west or east and the car starts right up.”

The News reports that people suspect that it's the presence of the multitude of radio and tv transmitters on the building's 203-foot spire. Phantom radio waves are suspected of jamming key-less locking systems and automotive disabling security systems. A local doorman says he sees it all the time and calls it the "Empire State Building Effect."

The most recent traffic figures we could locate quickly were in a New York Times article from 2003 about midtown congestion. It stated that about 2.2 million cars passed through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel monthly, a large majority of which would would seem to feed directly in and out of the 'ESB Zone'. We wonder if the number of towed cars in the area is anomalous based on the amount of traffic in that area.

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By Dave Hogarty in News on January 27, 2008 10:05 AM

Comments [rss]

Think2wice

Al Smith's revenge.

dkim2015

back in the 90's we parked our car in a lot near the wholesale flower district and when we came back, our car refused to start. the parking guys told us that it happens quite frequently here because of radio signals interfering with the car. i think it has to do with signals messing with the car alarm and hence locking the engine down.

just saying

Snoopy, nah that's not the way it's done. First you force out all the current tenants and then you convert the building to condos.

Snoopy

Tear down that stupid old building and build luxury condos. That will solve the problem.

sj

The electronic interference theory is not outside the realm of possibility. Most modern cars have an immobilizer system whereby a small antenna near the ignition switch reads a coded signal from a chip embedded in the key or key fob and if the proper signal is not received, the car will not start. If you had some high-power RF interference and the system was not adequately protected against such interference, I could see it causing problems. But you would expect to see something like this among particular car brands or rather particular car brands who use the same supplier for the immobilizer bits.

If RF interference was the cause, you would also expect not to experience this problem on older cars without all the electronic gadgetry.

In the very early days of electronic fuel injection they found that strong RF interference could disable the fuel injection system, thus causing the engine not to run. But this was solved by shielding the electronics, and the early days of electronic fuel injection were about 40 years ago so I would not expect that to be the problem.

Ethan

My father dropped off at Penn Station about 10 years ago. I went and got my train. After I left, the car went dead. It was towed to a garage. There was nothing wrong with it. It started up on its own the following day.