Most People Don't Know It's Actually Illegal To Warm Up Your Car In Massachusetts

Things change over time. When I was younger, I can remember my parents starting the car to let it “warm up” in cold weather. And that car could sit out there and run for 20 or 30 minutes! Back then, we had to let it warm up or the car was likely to stall out.

Flickr/Kristian

But cars change. And so do laws.

Flickr/Shannon McGee

These days in the state Massachusetts you're actually breaking the law if you start your car and let it "idle" for more than five minutes.

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So you can forget about letting the defroster and/or heater in your vehicle slowly melt away that light layer of snow or frost you woke up to this morning, unless you have a hundred bucks laying around. And that's just for the first offense. For additional violations you could be fined up to five hundred dollars each time.

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Flickr/Juli

All the law-breaking aside, according to this report published by Business Insider, you're actually wasting gas and possibly hurting your car by letting her idle in cold weather. Watch the report to see why:

At this download link, you can see this Massachusetts law, and find out other states where idling in any weather, is illegal.

Did you know about this law and that you actually don’t need to warm up your car if it was built after the 1980s?