Was the manual in the glove box? I'm pretty sure the one for my car is in a little compartment under the rear seat. Why? No clue. Cadillac just thought that made sense. Found it totally by accident when looking for the battery.
And, more importantly, when panicked from the heat would someone even think the manual would have such information? I'm used to looking in a manual if there is some thing I have to do to change tires but to open doors? That just seems beneath the manual.
Very true. Texas, 100 degree heat, parked in the sun. The car could easily get to 180 F or more inside. Someone with breathing problems in high humidity counts on getting the air conditioning going or windows down right away. At 73 years of age, with reducing memory facilities, we don't necessarily think quickly in emergencies. I would last about 3 minutes, tops.
The "greenhouse" effect works with cars, just as it does with the planet Earth. From a random article on leaving children in a locked car,
this guy experimented with a car on a 97 degree day.
So now, safety advocates are getting creative. Brett Garrett, a firefighter and paramedic in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, pulled a stunt recently to illustrate the danger. He actually baked cookies inside a car warmed only by the sun.
“According to the oven thermometer, it’s 174 degrees on the dash. These have been in there just over 40 minutes, but these are done,” he says, taking a bite. “It’s hot.”
I'd never own any color car but white ever again. But imagine that experiment in a black car.
I agree that the post was extremely insensitive, or rather, intended to bait the sensitivities of others which is why it is often best not to respond to posts like that and give the writer the satisfaction of knowing he upset someone, which is clearly his aim.
I didn't feel it was intentional baiting at the time, just immature thinking. I agree though that such posts don't deserve any answer, and I usually try to avoid such responses.
However, I pictured a good, probably fun guy like so many I know, retired, enjoying relatively good health, apparently a widower, not bugging anyone, at long last getting his boyhood dream car, running over to have breakfast with his long time buddies and show them his pride and joy, pumped up and in a very euphoric state of mind, even forgetting his phone upon leaving, just to be able to go for a simple drive in his fantasy car with the wind in his hair next to his dog.
All this, of course, before reading the entire user's manual as any
non-moron on the planet would have certainly recommended to this gentleman beforehand.
Instead he gets trapped, in effect by modern technological yuppy coolness.
I had an overwhelming image in my mind from that post that while this man's dying, a bunch of thugs, good-ol'-boys, wise asses, or delinquents of 9th grade bullying mentality stand around yuk-yuking, pointing and calling him a moron, while a few adult humans are frantically trying to break into the car to save a decent man.
To an extent, I guess my Rifkin
mirror neurons were running on high power triggering an empathy crisis, hearing
echoes of another person's life in myself.
