Man unable to open car doors after battery failure; dies

jimbob said:
First para: I suppose it is ideal if you want to abduct hitchhikers, although I am not totally sure that is an angle which the brand-managers would want for a marketing campaign.
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I'm thinking an accident, where the driver is unconscious and the passenger isn't.
 
True, Pup, but you have to try turning a downside into a feature.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
I'm surprised he couldn't break the window. I keep an emergency tool in my car with a window punch and a seatbelt blade. But I'm pretty sure if I didn't have it and I had the time one would have it one was just locked in and not sinking in the lake or something that I could break the window.

It's a bizarre event.

It's sad. There should be a warning label somewhere in the cab like on the dash if this flaw was known and it was.
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I may be going out on a limb here, but I'm gonna guess that the sort of person who won't take the 30 minutes or so to read the owner's manual on their fancy new (even if just 'new to them') car isn't going to be the sort that buys emergency equip. for rare and unusual situations.
 
jimbob said:
<snip>

Second para: I seem to recall some cars with button openings, can be set to only unlock one door so that unwanted people can't come in. That seems a reasonable security precaution for many places. This doesn't.
Also, "just popping into a shop" with the car outside

<snip>
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The approach used in my 2000 Tundra is that if you unlock the passenger side then both doors unlock, but if you unlock the driver's side only the driver's door unlocks.

You also have to work pretty hard to lock it up from the outside with the key still in the ignition. It refuses to let the latch stay in the locked position if the driver side door is open and the key is still in the ignition.

If you really, really want to lock it up that way you can close the driver door (while unlocked) and lock both of them with the lock button on the passenger door while the passenger door is open and then closing that one, but it pretty much needs to be on purpose.

(Most of the time. Don't ask me how I know this. :mad:)
 
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You can actually break a car window with the keys if you are desperate and don't mind a bit of blood
 
When the "shaved door handle" craze took off a few years ago with classic car restorers, many owners installed a small back-up battery that had a diode to prevent the main battery from discharging it. That way, you could always get in your car, even with a dead battery.

I wonder why the Chevy didn't include the same thing.
 
An humorous ad for a Citroen 2CV some years back: "Central locking. The driver can reach all the door locks" :)

Things have gone too far.
 
Blue Mountain said:
That's an excellent idea. Perhaps it should be standard equipment on all vehicles and part of a driver training course.


Maybe, or maybe not. The glass used in side windows is pretty tough stuff, and is probably laminated. Which means you need to break through the layer closest to you, then the laminate layer, and finally the layer further from you. That may be possible if you have good shoes and use the strength in your legs.


People can develop a blindness to these labels after a while. But if there was such a label, this man would likely have remembered the information on it when he became trapped in his car.
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Bikewer said:
Another excuse for concealed carry... In addition to the hammer-like device show, you can obtain any number of small, unobtrusive (pen-sized) window breakers these days. Some are spring-loaded...Press against the window and a little sharp spike shatters the window.

We have a device in the patrol cars which doubles as a window-breaker and a safety seat-belt cutter. Looks like a little fish.
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cullennz said:
You can actually break a car window with the keys if you are desperate and don't mind a bit of blood
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All the above are wonderful, but!
Many late model cars are using Laminated glass for the front pax windows, partially because of the way crash-ratings are done nowadays. Laminated glass is pretty much un-shatterable
Rear seat windows are still generally tempered glass, so they are breakable and an avenue for extraction.
 
How do you get OUT of the car normally anyway? Do you really have to press a button on the key fob just to get out in everyday situations? This seems awfully inconvenient to me.

I can understand the designer's/engineer's idea to not include levers or handles on the OUTSIDE. But on the inside? I mean, there are enough buttons and controls inside a car anyway. Aren't there buttons to lower the windows? So why not put a control to open the doors on the inside? Visible, and close to where you would expect them (I'm not talking about those mechanical levers in the floor, which seem to be an emergency device).

I've sat in enough vehicles that had the inside door handles not at the usual place where people expected them. And having entered a state of confusion myself, and observed that in others, frantically searching the handle and panicking of not getting out. Just because the handle was near your elbow, and thereby just a bit out of sight, instead of by your hand when you stretch out the arm.
 
elgarak said:
How do you get OUT of the car normally anyway? Do you really have to press a button on the key fob just to get out in everyday situations? This seems awfully inconvenient to me.
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There's a button on the interior door handle which opens the latch. I have no idea why this is preferable to a small lever.
 
When you normally unlock the door (battery power available) it's like a normal car door handle except your thumb activates a switch that pops the door open.

If you get in an accident when the air bag deploy the doors unlock automaticly.

When you have not kept up vehicle maintenance properly and the battery fails, you use the manual unlock lever ... the lever is HUGE (about 3 inches long) and has a BRIGHT RED icon of car with the door open on it and it's located 6 inches from the driver's left knee (same on passenger side)

It's been like that for over at least ten years. some drivers also get the break and gas pedal mixed up and die every now and then ... or use a blow dryer in the bath tub ... you can't do much about it except get them to read the instruction (or look at the picturers)

Excerpt form Corvette owner manual; "Read the owner manual from beginning to end .... to learn about the vehicle’s features and controls. Pictures and words work together to explain things"

"From inside the vehicle, use the door release handle located on the floor next to each seat. Pull the handle up to unlock and unlatch the door."

"... who get into unlocked vehicles may be unable to get out ... overcome by extreme heat and can suffer permanent injuries or even death ..."

"Leaving ... helpless adults ... in a vehicle with the windows closed is dangerous. They can be overcome by the extreme heat and suffer permanent injuries or even death"

In other words "If you don't know how to work your car you might die"

How much more explicit can it be?
 
Macgyver1968 said:
When the "shaved door handle" craze took off a few years ago with classic car restorers, many owners installed a small back-up battery that had a diode to prevent the main battery from discharging it. That way, you could always get in your car, even with a dead battery.

I wonder why the Chevy didn't include the same thing.
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This is a good point ... even to keep radio stations tuned etc when swapping the main battery ... there's a capacitor that holds charge strong enough to deploy the air bags (in all modern cars) for 20 seconds or so after batter disconnect .. that's it far as I know.
 
cullennz said:
You can actually break a car window with the keys if you are desperate and don't mind a bit of blood
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I've broke a car window with my head by mistake in an accident once ... I've also bounced a 5 pound sledge hammer off a side window (while standing on the roof) and it did't break before (prepping a Demolition Derby car) ... it just depends on exactly how it hits I guess
 
Bikewer said:
...
We have a device in the patrol cars which doubles as a window-breaker and a safety seat-belt cutter. Looks like a little fish.
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Are the things you use commercially available? The ones most often seen in auto parts stores look like hammers, a little large to keep handy in the car.
 
Doors shut, no life-hammer available?

Pull out one of the head-rests out of the chair and use the metal pins to break the window.
 
Eddie Dane said:
Doors shut, no life-hammer available?

Pull out one of the head-rests out of the chair and use the metal pins to break the window.
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Requires physical strength and clarity of thinking. Neither of these is a given in the circumstances.
 
Yeah, I know.

I was just throwing it out here as I remembered the trick and I hope others will remember it too.

As an aside: I drive a new Citroen and it has a truly ridiculous amount of electronic gadgetry. But it still has bloody door-handles!

Not having that sounds like a design choice that could bankrupt a company through lawsuits.
 
Blue Mountain said:
Texas man, dog die after being trapped in Corvette

(Bolding mine) My question is: why did he not know that?

For background, the key fob is the standard way to open the car's door. I'm guessing there isn't a interior latch on the door itself, possibly to achieve a clean look to the interior.

The car's from 2007, so it's possible he bought it used. In that case, there may not have been a dealership involved with a salesman to show him this vital safety feature.

How else could this information have been communicated to someone unfamiliar with the vehicle? Sure it's probably in the owner's manual, which he apparently was looking through in his attempts to escape. But how many people read their owner's manuals, provided they're even available for a used car?
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I'll lay a £1 to a penny that it wasn't heat exhaustion. It was probably embarrassment. Imagine the shame of being seen in a Corvette.
 
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