I’ve recently been using a borrowed GM car with doors that lock automatically when you start moving. A very annoying feature is that when you stop, only the driver’s door unlocks. You exit the car, go to get something from another part of the car, find that door is still locked, and must return to the driver’s door to manually unlock all doors. Repeat many times until you develop the habit of manually unlocking all doors every time you stop.
I was told that this is now required on all new US vehicles, and cannot be overridden. Anyone know if this is so? And why such an obnoxious feature would be foisted on all? Is there any practical way to defeat this?
I don’t know why this is required (assuming that it is really required) but on my Honda Fit, the manual explains how to change the setting so the doors won’t automatically lock. Your car’s manual may also explain how to change the settings. But if you’re only borrowing this car, I don’t think you should change the setting. Or at least change it back when you return the car.
I have a 2006 Chevy HHR, and really like the unlocking system it has. When you stop the car, and put it into park, all doors unlock instantly. Very convenient. Maybe the newer ones have eliminated this feature, but at my age this HHR will be my last car - so I don’t have to worry about it.
So does mine (a 2007 Ford). It never occured to me that anyone would object to it. I always thought it was good practice to have all doors locked while driving, (a) to make it less likely that a door would accidentally come open while the car was in motion, and (b) to prevent a carjacker or axe murderer from opening a door and hopping in while you’re stopped at a red light.
As noted, you get used to it. Personally, the majority of the time I have no need to open any of the other doors, so I’m just as happy not to have to remember to lock them before leaving the car.
What percentage of drivers are carjacked? It seems to me that locked doors might hinder rescuers in the event of a serious crash, or prevent occupants from rapidly exiting a vehicle after a crash. Doors accidentally coming open? Only if you unlatch it, and that’s why there are child locks. If the door isn’t securely shut in the first place, I’m not convinced that it being locked would prevent it from opening.
A friend of my father was visiting Florida to settle his mother’s estate. He was driving somewhere when he had a heart attack but was able to drive into the parking lot of a car dealership. The people outside the car could see that he was in distress but couldn’t open the doors to assist him. By the time the paramedics arrived, it was too late. So my parents encouraged me to disable the automatic locking feature on my car, although I haven’t yet done so.
Call me old-school, but I’m one who would object to it. In fact, if I was told a new car I was contemplating buying had this feature and it couldn’t be disabled, it would be a deal breaker.
I agree that locking all doors when driving is good practice. I also believe that I’m perfectly capable of choosing to lock said doors myself. Or of choosing not to lock them. If I forget to and something bad happens, then shame on me.
I’m 100% in favor of buckling seat belts at all times when driving. I think people who choose not to do this are idiots, and their so-called reasons for choosing not to do so are brainless.
Nevertheless, I would be against any kind of automatically locking seat belt mechanism (weren’t there some cars that had such a feature many years ago?).
I really think the issue here is control. I don’t care to cede mine to faceless automation.
P.S. The story told about the man having a heart attack at the car dealership who couldn’t be rescued because of the automatically locking doors has all the hallmarks of an urban legend. Unless a news cite for it can be provided, I doubt it ever happened. But urban legends usually develop out of just the sort of thing I’m talking about…the fear of loss of control.
I am unaware of any regulation that requires the doors to lock. IIRC this came about when early crash tests on one American car(Chevy?) the door popped open in the crash so the starred locking the doors as a secondary measure to cover for their shitty door latches.
I have many fears in this life. Being carjacked at 70MPH isn’t very high on the list.
I disabled them on my 2014 Hyundai.
If it were legally required it would be disable proof.
Auto-locking my car doors seems silly, since most of the time I don’t even have a roof on my car. I do have a button on my dash board that is in easy reach, and will lock both doors. I use it on the rare occasion that I’m driving through a dangerous area. I put the top up for those occasions, too.
Those became fashionable in the 1990’s or thereabouts, IIRC. Actually, I doubt that this was ever fashionable. As I understood it, there were new regulations requiring cars to have “active restraint systems” – that is, robo seat belts that tucked you into your bed and kissed you goodnight – as opposed to “passive restraint systems” that depended on people (gasp!) to tuck themselves in.
They seem to have mostly disappeared. I never knew for sure if it was really required (anybody here know?) and if so, what happened. My guess: So many people so vehemently ranted about them that the idea was abandoned. (Again, anybody here actually knows the history of this?)
Robo seat belts would certainly have been a deal breaker for me. I refused to even ride in a car with them on the passenger side.
The other way around. Passive restraints means the driver/rider does not have to do anything to become restrained, e.g. airbags in most modern applications. Eventually the decision was made that vehicles had to have both active and passive. The robo-belt was a transitional/compromise solution until airbags became universally required, as a way for the makers to save face after decades of saying airbags were not the solution. Some makers went even cheaper and simply fixed the shoulder belt to the door on one end and to the console on the other. They went away because they were unnecessary extra mechanical complication and actually inferior safetywise.
You can almost certainly override it, but it is not something easy like a toggle button. It usually a series of actions like turn the car on an off twice, then beep the horn and flash the high beams (that is just an example, so don’t bother doing that). The instructions will be buried somewhere in the manual. Since this is a borrowed car, you will likely just need to suck it up.