Emergency Exit ?

skull

Something happened to a neighbour which gave me pause for thought.

He has a van for his business and is often washing and cleaning it inside and out. In the recent very hot weather he was inside vacuuming it. He didn't have his keys with him, they were inside his house. There was no-one else home.

My husband was leaving our house for work and if he didn't have to do a 3 point turn he would not have seen this neighbour in his vehicle on his driveway, frantically waving him to come towards him.

He did so and got out when the neighbour beckoned.The neighbour then mimed for my husband to go into his house and fetch his car keys. Going in and finding several sets of keys my husband returned to the van with them, the correct ones were identified and the neighbour was able to get out of the van. He had had a real scare as he was extremely hot and near the point of collapse. It could have been so much worse. People and pets have died in hot cars.


I understand that car designers have to pare to the bone many optional extras to keep prices down, however, a manual escape route is an essential, can you imagine a plane or bus without an emergency exit? Can anyone such as car designers or automotive engineers, who possibly may be reading this, do something about this situation? It isn't a problem until it happens to you.

Some years ago my car skidded on black ice and turned on its side before hitting a bank. I was unhurt, (thank you seat belt) but was unable to lift the passenger car door open, (the drivers side door was pinned to the tarmac).

Luckily this was an older car which had a wind back sunroof which gave me just enough space to climb out. This was just in time as despite being on a quiet country road, I was on a corner and I knew that the school bus was due any minute. Being able to get out and to flag down the bus and other traffic before it too hit the black ice probably prevented a pile up.

My point being that anyone can get trapped in a vehicle.

Electric windows or key enabled unlocking of a vehicle from the inside is not always the answer. Some kind of manual emergency exit, allowing a person to climb out in case of being locked in, whether caught in a flood, or in a crashed car would seem to me to be necessary.

I don't have the power to make the powerful automotive industry make a change, but perhaps I can make people aware of the problem through this website, and maybe someone who can do something will read this - I can hope. Thanks for reading this far.

regards ~ skull

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tykesi

skull wrote: »

blah blah blah Some kind of manual emergency exit blah blah blah

I doubt this story is true for one second but have you ever considered the possibility of kicking any of the windows out? If the situation is so desperate the only other option is dying, I think any normal person would do just that.

skull

Both of these events happened and not everyone is strong enough to kick out a car window. Were you never taught, that if you have nothing nice (or useful) to say then you should say nothing at all? I didn't think MSE forumites were allowed to flame posters, mod ?

blackshirtuk

Headrests on car seats are designed to be removable in order to break the windows if trapped.

takman

blackshirtuk wrote: »

Headrests on car seats are designed to be removable in order to break the windows if trapped.

That's just a myth and that isn't part of their design, although some can be used that way. On some cars the headrests are not removable.

To the OP the best solution is to keep one of those emergency window breakers in your car which will easily break any window to allow you to escape. They also usually have a seat belt cutter built into them aswell.

This then allow you to cut your seat belt and escape from any window.

Even if car manufacturers did come up with some kind of emergency escape system they would have to fit so there are multiple ways to escape and would had hundreds/thousands to the price of the car. Compare to an emergency window breaker which costs less than £10. If your particularity concerned you could get 5 of them and keep one in each door and one in the glove box.

k3lvc

skull wrote: »

Both of these events happened and not everyone is strong enough to kick out a car window. Were you never taught, that if you have nothing nice (or useful) to say then you should say nothing at all? I didn't think MSE forumites were allowed to flame posters, mod ?

In your instance it would be very unlikely that a car ended up on it's side did not smash, or at least weaken a major glass panel

In your neighbours instance then given he was uninjured in a van it should be a fairly simple job to smash one

Things have ended up like this because of thieving scrotes happy to smash a small window and empty cars of their contents - between that and the overall safety improvements in cars over the years it seems a reasonable compromise.

If you're worried than buy a glass hammer from somewhere and have it in easy reach

Guest101

All boots have an internal exit

lincroft1710

Buses usually have one door access (some do have 2 or 3) on one side of the vehicle, hence the need for an emergency exit on the other side. Cars tend to have at least one door on each side.

DoaM

Guest101 wrote: »

All boots have an internal exit

Do they? Some BMWs didn't use to even have folding rear seats never mind split-fold, unless you chose it as an option. (I think that's changed now).

OP initially described a situation regarding a van not a car. That said, I'd be surprised if the van rear/side door couldn't be opened from the inside.

AdrianC

Guest101 wrote: »

All boots have an internal exit

No, they don't.

But van rear and side doors do. If the keys were needed, then I suspect the problem was (probably aftermarket) auto-locking deadlocks without internal access. "The correct keys" strongly points this way. These are common fitment on vans to increase security of the contents.

Most recent cars have deadlocks, too, which disable the internal handles and lock buttons, so that somebody can't unlock the car using a coathanger or similar, or simply smashing the window.

So it's a perpetual trade-off. Security versus safety. The simple answer is not to be such a muppet as to lock yourself in the damn thing in the first place.

Guest101

AdrianC wrote: »

No, they don't.

But van rear and side doors do. If the keys were needed, then I suspect the problem was (probably aftermarket) auto-locking deadlocks without internal access. "The correct keys" strongly points this way. These are common fitment on vans to increase security of the contents.

Most recent cars have deadlocks, too, which disable the internal handles and lock buttons, so that somebody can't unlock the car using a coathanger or similar, or simply smashing the window.

So it's a perpetual trade-off. Security versus safety. The simple answer is not to be such a muppet as to lock yourself in the damn thing in the first place.

Fair point. Though as far as I've experienced having driven lots of cars and vans, they've all had a manual release on the inside.


Agree that modern car doors have a deadlock, but from what I've seen again, the boot had a manual override.