Man unable to open car doors after battery failure; dies

[angrysoba]

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.

I don't think we need to surmise there were other people around watching him die and cackling.

I'd like to think that qayak, despite his stated callousness, would not do that either. Also, if I remember correctly, qayak is a grandfather himself.

 

[Bob001]

Watch Cops long enough and you'll see big damn cops wailing on car windows with nightsticks and failing to break the glass. I've seen video of a car thief trying to break into cars with a hammer and the damn thing bounces off.

Rescue hammers are damn handy things to have.

Can you break a side window with a metal car key or house key, which is the one thing you would be almost certain to have with you even in a rental or somebody else's car? Or is a sharper, heavier tool required?

 

[ddt]

You really only need one hand 90% of the time, anyway.

Oh, I know. I used to smoke in the car, and roll my own cigarettes while driving - and steering with a knee. But especially in the situation sketched - entering or leaving a parking garage - it's comfortable, as that's a situation where you want both hands on the wheel.

That, however, is true. I still prefer having the option to open my windows if electrical power is out, and I'm so used to doing it manually that I don't even notice the 'weird motion'.

Fair enough. I don't have the option, and I pretty quickly got used (addicted?) to all nifty new features. Especially the windshield wipers that automatically adjust their speed with the amount of rain.

 

[Bob001]

You unlock the door by unlocking the door. That's what people know.

Everything else is untested chin-rubbing rationalizations by my fellow lazy engineers. They know this, and know better than this.

It would cost a fraction of a cent to glue a sticker on the door that would say something like "To open door manually, use floor lever" with a pictogram showing where to find it. And make the lever orange or yellow instead of black (see video). You can't assume that everybody in the car will have read the manual. What about a parking lot attendant or a passenger?

 

[qayak]

First, he was in his 70s which means THIS car was not his boyhood dream. Maybe anything with yhe name Corvette on it, but not this particilar car.

Second, he bought it because it was unique, not like other cars. Do people really think anyone's boyhood dream is a Chevy Cavalier dressed up to look like a Corvette? If this car was his boyhood dream he would have known everything about it. So all that is just fluff to tug at your heartstrings and make Chevrolet out to be the bad guy.

Also, are we sure there wasn't a contributing factor here. It's really strange for a battery to go like that. No 100% sure about the Corvette but you usually can't kill a battery in a new car by leaving something on, the computer shuts it off in a minute or two. Weak batteries will almost always make themselves known with starting issues long before they go completely dead.

Out of curiousity, where was the dog while he was in the restaurant, in the car?

Do we know whether he didn't know where the door handle was, or was he incapacitated by a stroke or heart attack that prevented him from using it?

It is really strange that no one saw him fighting to get out and went to help him and the dog. More likely people saw a man and his dog sitting in the car with no indication anything was amiss.

How do they know why he was stuck in the car, or even that he was, if both he and the dog were dead?

 

[One Skunk Todd]

I'm thinking an accident, where the driver is unconscious and the passenger isn't.

For instance, if somebody was giving Bill Cosby a ride.


Seriously though, how are the doors supposed to work? You put the put the car in park, turn off the motor and the doors will just open if pushed on?

I guess it will come across as blaming the driver, but I feel like I would have looked into how to open the doors in an emergency if I had gotten a car with no (obvious) interior handles. It just seems like such a unique feature. I had never heard of it before now.

 

[TomB]

That's why we look for the ignition switch on the dash and not on the engine, right?

Obviously, for the recent history of automobiles, certain essential controls are located in consistent places. As far back as I remember, the ignition switch has been conveniently located on the right side of the driver's position, gas on the right, brake center, clutch left. This convention has transferred over to pushbutton ignitions such as my stepson's highlander. One would not expect it to be on the engine. These conventions make it possible for people to drive different cars without reading the manual.

Also, even on one's dream car, one only reads the parts of the manual one feels they need or that are exciting. How to use the launch control stuff, what does this button do, how to remove the sunroof, that sort of thing. The thought of electronic doors not opening doesn't occur to people until it happens. We've had the Porsche for 15 years and the previous one for 6 before I got T-Boned. Love the car. Know my Haines manual pretty well. Never read more than a few parts of the owner's manual, though.

My first car was a 77 Malibu without power windows. They were common, but not the default back then. We all managed to go through drive thrus, parking garages, and roll down the window on the freeway. (AC wasn't universal either. The Malibu didn't have it.) I like the convenience of power windows (until the switch or motor eventually breaks.), but it's a convenience that used to be regarded as a luxury. I've never seen them marketed as a safety feature.

 

[TomB]

For instance, if somebody was giving Bill Cosby a ride.


Seriously though, how are the doors supposed to work? You put the put the car in park, turn off the motor and the doors will just open if pushed on?

I guess it will come across as blaming the driver, but I feel like I would have looked into how to open the doors in an emergency if I had gotten a car with no (obvious) interior handles. It just seems like such a unique feature. I had never heard of it before now.

It's got an electronic button you push, I think. Kind of like the buttons some of the minivans/crossovers have to open the rear door without putting your groceries down. People are so used to things just working they don't automatically think about what happens if they don't. I've encountered people who had no idea how to open their garage door when the power was out.

 

[qayak]

Obviously, for the recent history of automobiles, certain essential controls are located in consistent places. As far back as I remember, the ignition switch has been conveniently located on the right side of the driver's position, gas on the right, brake center, clutch left. This convention has transferred over to pushbutton ignitions such as my stepson's highlander. One would not expect it to be on the engine. These conventions make it possible for people to drive different cars without reading the manual.

We saw this same effect with the "Runaway" Toyota debacle. It's seniors having the problems. There is nothing odd about putting a control in a different spot.

In the past on this forum many people were unaware that all key fobs contain a key. The Corvette is no exception. However, instead of removing a small cap on the door handle to insert the key, the Corvette's gets inserted upwards into the rear bumper just above the licence plate. It's different but the same.

It's exactly the same with the interior handle. The Corvette's is on the floor. Again different but the same.

When push button ignitions came out many people believed you couldn"t shut them off while driving and they called for Toyota's head even though all push buttons are the same.

Basically any change has the potential of killing certain people, namely those who do not familiarize themselves with the boyhood dream car they decided to buy. You are not going to change that because every car is a little bit different from every other car. I can tell you that because I get to drive a huge variety of makes and models.

Some manufacturers will go with a stanfard layout because they are trying to attract new customers and want to make the car feek familiar. Others will make changes because they are trying to attract customers looking for something unique. Unfortunatrly, this guy should have bought a car in the first catagory but instead chose one from the second and failed to familiarize himself with things that are the same but different.

 

[Beerina]

I also prefer manual windows. Not as cool when you want to say something snappy to someone and then drive away, but more reliable.

A hybrid would be nice. Nothing like rolling down all the windows while driving alone.

I would, though, like old-school window vents you can open and turn almost 180 degrees around, shunting air directly on you.

 

[Belz...]

A hybrid would be nice.

A flying car would be nice.

 

[One Skunk Todd]

This article: http://www.ibtimes.com/texas-mans-d...stions-about-overuse-electronics-cars-1963858

Has some nice illustrations of both the door and the manual in question.

 

[Vic Vega]

This article: http://www.ibtimes.com/texas-mans-d...stions-about-overuse-electronics-cars-1963858

Has some nice illustrations of both the door and the manual in question.

Yes. They are more than adequate. I would have found that in the manual in about a minute, assuming that I didn't find the handle first.

"But he never reached Page 80 of the nearly 500-page book where a brief description explains how to manually open the vehicle's doors from the inside."

Every automobile manual I've ever seen has an index. I have never once flipped through one to find something specific. I can't find any reasonable way to explain away this person's stupidity.

Do we know if he was sober?

 

[P.J. Denyer]

Rolling down a window doesn't exactly require much brain power, although I admit that for some people it might be too much to keep one's visual cortex working simultaneously.

It's less about brain power than co-ordination and hands off wheel, particularly since the kinds of car parks with ticket barriers tend to be in built up areas with plenty of traffic, I know it shouldn't be an issue but given that my experience as a motorcyclist has been that a worrying percentage of drivers can't turn their heads to make decent observations without drifting around their Lane.. One less potential distraction seems like a good thing.

In a similar vain, I'm also a big fan of electric mirrors and mirror de-icers on the basis that it improves the chances of mirrors actually being clear and pointing in vaguely the right direction.

 

[jimbob]

We saw this same effect with the "Runaway" Toyota debacle. It's seniors having the problems. There is nothing odd about putting a control in a different spot.
In the past on this forum many people were unaware that all key fobs contain a key. The Corvette is no exception. However, instead of removing a small cap on the door handle to insert the key, the Corvette's gets inserted upwards into the rear bumper just above the licence plate. It's different but the same.

It's exactly the same with the interior handle. The Corvette's is on the floor. Again different but the same.

When push button ignitions came out many people believed you couldn"t shut them off while driving and they called for Toyota's head even though all push buttons are the same.

Basically any change has the potential of killing certain people, namely those who do not familiarize themselves with the boyhood dream car they decided to buy. You are not going to change that because every car is a little bit different from every other car. I can tell you that because I get to drive a huge variety of makes and models.

Some manufacturers will go with a stanfard layout because they are trying to attract new customers and want to make the car feek familiar. Others will make changes because they are trying to attract customers looking for something unique. Unfortunatrly, this guy should have bought a car in the first catagory but instead chose one from the second and failed to familiarize himself with things that are the same but different.

Are you sure about the highlighted part?

http://www.edn.com/design/automotiv...ler-firmware--Bad-design-and-its-consequences

Barr's ultimate conclusions were that:
Toyota’s electronic throttle control system (ETCS) source code is of unreasonable quality.
Toyota’s source code is defective and contains bugs, including bugs that can cause unintended acceleration (UA).
Code-quality metrics predict presence of additional bugs.
Toyota’s fail safes are defective and inadequate (referring to them as a “house of cards” safety architecture).
Misbehaviors of Toyota’s ETCS are a cause of UA.

Hardware

Although the investigation focused almost entirely on software, there is at least one HW factor: Toyota claimed the 2005 Camry's main CPU had error detecting and correcting (EDAC) RAM. It didn't. EDAC, or at least parity RAM, is relatively easy and low-cost insurance for safety-critical systems.

Other cases of throttle malfunction have been linked to tin whiskers in the accelerator pedal sensor. This does not seem to have been the case here.

Thousands and thousands

The Camry ETCS code was found to have 11,000 global variables. Barr described the code as “spaghetti.” Using the Cyclomatic Complexity metric, 67 functions were rated untestable (meaning they scored more than 50). The throttle angle function scored more than 100 (unmaintainable).

Toyota loosely followed the widely adopted MISRA-C coding rules but Barr’s group found 80,000 rule violations. Toyota's own internal standards make use of only 11 MISRA-C rules, and five of those were violated in the actual code. MISRA-C:1998, in effect when the code was originally written, has 93 required and 34 advisory rules. Toyota nailed six of them.

Further reading here: http://embeddedgurus.com/barr-code/2013/10/an-update-on-toyota-and-unintended-acceleration/

In March 2014, the U.S. Department of Justice announced a $1.2 billion settlement in a criminal case against Toyota. As part of that settlement, Toyota admitted to past lying to NHTSA, Congress, and the public about unintended acceleration and also to putting its brand before public safety. Yet Toyota still has made no safety recalls for the defective engine software.

On April 1, 2014, I gave a keynote speech at the EE Live conference, which touched on the Toyota litigation in the context of lethal embedded software failures of the past and the coming era of self-driving vehicles. The slides from that presentation are available for download at http://www.barrgroup.com/killer-apps/.

Elsewhere in reading about this, it was stated that if a critical bit was flipped the only way of reseting the throttle to stop it accelerating was to set it to full then relax it.

and some more background.

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1319903&page_number=3

What's next for NHTSA
After the Oklahoma trial, what steps should the NHTSA be taking? Barr made some suggestions:

NHTSA needs to get Toyota to make its existing cars safe and also needs to step up on software regulation and oversight. For example, FAA and FDA both have guidelines for safety-critical software design (e.g., DO-178) within the systems they oversee. NHTSA has nothing.
Also, NHTSA recently mandated the presence and certain features of black boxes in all US cars, but that rule does not go far enough. We observed that Toyota's black box can malfunction during unintended acceleration specifically, and this will cause the black box to falsely report no braking. NHTSA's rules need to address this, e.g., by being more specific about where and how the black box gets its data, so that it does not have a common failure point with the engine computer.

There did also seem to be a mechanical problem with the mats causing the accelerator pedal to stick *as well*.

 

[Dr. Keith]

Obviously, for the recent history of automobiles, certain essential controls are located in consistent places. As far back as I remember, the ignition switch has been conveniently located on the right side of the driver's position, gas on the right, brake center, clutch left. This convention has transferred over to pushbutton ignitions such as my stepson's highlander. One would not expect it to be on the engine. These conventions make it possible for people to drive different cars without reading the manual.

Really? I think that is limited to pedals and steering wheel. Everything else has moved around in every vehicle I have owned. For example: In the three cars currently in my driveway the window buttons are in three different places, and two of those are from the same manufacturer from about the same time.

Part of what makes an exotic car exotic is that things are not like normal cars.

 

[TomB]

We saw this same effect with the "Runaway" Toyota debacle. It's seniors having the problems. There is nothing odd about putting a control in a different spot.

Toyota moved the accelerator somewhere else? Don't think the Toyota problem has any resemblance to this.

In the past on this forum many people were unaware that all key fobs contain a key. The Corvette is no exception. However, instead of removing a small cap on the door handle to insert the key, the Corvette's gets inserted upwards into the rear bumper just above the licence plate. It's different but the same.

Also, irrelevant. You are talking about the way to get INTO a car without power. This is less critical than getting OUT of a car without power. Kind of like why building doors generally have to be designed so they can be opened from the inside.

It's exactly the same with the interior handle. The Corvette's is on the floor. Again different but the same.

Except that being able to get out of a car might be a life or death situation. IT should not take a great deal of effort or referring to a manual to do so.

When push button ignitions came out many people believed you couldn"t shut them off while driving and they called for Toyota's head even though all push buttons are the same.

In that case, people were wrong. They had a legitimate concern, which is easily addressed by demonstrating that they were wrong. I don't see how this relates.

Basically any change has the potential of killing certain people, namely those who do not familiarize themselves with the boyhood dream car they decided to buy. You are not going to change that because every car is a little bit different from every other car. I can tell you that because I get to drive a huge variety of makes and models.

Not really. The essential controls are the same. Peripheral controls such as headlights, wipers, cruise control differ.

Some manufacturers will go with a stanfard layout because they are trying to attract new customers and want to make the car feek familiar. Others will make changes because they are trying to attract customers looking for something unique. Unfortunatrly, this guy should have bought a car in the first catagory but instead chose one from the second and failed to familiarize himself with things that are the same but different.

No. They use the same layout because they do not want their customers to have to retake driver's education to use their product.

Also, even if he should have seen it in the manual, it doesn't change the fact that the way this is set up is a problem. Unless you think that everyone who enters the car (valet, passenger, repo man whatever) should have to read a manual. The exit lever should be clearly and noticeably marked in a place where one would look in an emergency.

Is some of this on the guy? Maybe. Does that mean the design is fine? No.

 

[TomB]

Really? I think that is limited to pedals and steering wheel. Everything else has moved around in every vehicle I have owned. For example: In the three cars currently in my driveway the window buttons are in three different places, and two of those are from the same manufacturer from about the same time.

Part of what makes an exotic car exotic is that things are not like normal cars.

Which is why I said "essential" controls.

As for door controls, the essential control is the door handle. The Corvette door control is indeed in the traditional location. However, it's electronic nature requires that there be a manual method as well.

This manual method would be needed in either the rare case where you get in the car and the battery goes dead, or in the event of an accident where the electronic method would not operate, such as submersion, fire, or battery damaged from impact. In those cases, the occupants may need to exit the vehicle quickly. And the occupants who need the information may not be the owner or someone you would expect to be familiar with the vehicle. To put this into perspective, the interior trunk release on my car is more prominently marked though less likely to be needed.

 

[patchbunny]

Can you break a side window with a metal car key or house key, which is the one thing you would be almost certain to have with you even in a rental or somebody else's car? Or is a sharper, heavier tool required?

IIRC, Mythbusters looked at this as part of their exiting a submerged vehicle episode. The answer was no., though there is, of course, always the luck factor.

 

[Travis]

Yes. They are more than adequate. I would have found that in the manual in about a minute, assuming that I didn't find the handle first.

"But he never reached Page 80 of the nearly 500-page book where a brief description explains how to manually open the vehicle's doors from the inside."

Every automobile manual I've ever seen has an index. I have never once flipped through one to find something specific. I can't find any reasonable way to explain away this person's stupidity.

Do we know if he was sober?

My guess is he was panicked. Which is worse than being drunk. I know that when I'm frantically trying to find something in a book out of fear I tend to mentally break down in terms of how to do it and just go one page at a time. Sort of a basic functioning default.