What I’ve always worried about regarding an underwater escape is the part about opening the windows. I haven’t owned a vehicle with manually cranked windows in over 20 years. Pulykamell’s linked article states that electrically operated windows will work for a short time. Opening the windows is probably the first thing you’d want to do if you if you hit the drink. If you can’t get a window open to rapidly equalize the pressure, it’s going to be impossible to get a door open.
If the windows won’t open, what you really need is one of those tools that will break a window from the inside.
Regarding the advice in pulykamell’s link (excellent article, BTW), if you do manage to get the window open (or break it), wouldn’t it be better to simply exit through the window than to spend time trying to get the door open?
With respect to the OP, for my last two vehicles with electric locks (Toyota and a BMW), the inside door handles (for the front seats, at least) would open the doors from the inside even if the doors were locked.
Have you ever been launched from your seat during severe turbulence?
During a real crash your chances are slightly better in your seat (where you will hit the seat in front of you) than flying through the fuselage where you can hit everything (or body).
I know (i.e. told by salesmen/heard it around/possibly read it in the manual) that Volvo specifically recommended that car doors be kept unlocked when driving the car.
To that end, until the late 90s (presumably caving into the US market’s perception of vehicle safety) Volvo cars did not have automatic door locking mechanisms in the car.
I remember my '94 850 didn’t - in order to automatically lock the doors, you had to go and push down the door lock thingamajig itself. there was no button to lock the doors.
I was the photographer for that article, and in the class, I think there were only two people who didn’t exit through the window. The instructors wanted people to go through the window for two reasons, I believe: 1) to avoid the risk of getting stuck (and I’m sure there’s plenty of people who simply can’t fit through a car window) and 2) to teach them to remain cool under pressure. It doesn’t take long to open the door once the pressure is equalized at all. Instead of it swinging open instantly, it takes like four or five seconds. People will sometimes panic, thinking the door isn’t opening. It is, just a little bit slower. But you have plenty of time if you’re mentally prepared.
Windshields and side windows are both made using safety glass, but they are made from two different types of safety glass: laminated safety glass (for windshields) and tempered glass (for side windows).
Windshield glass consists of two sheets of glass with plastic laminated between them. Even if you break the windshield, it stays intact.
The side windows are also safety glass, but instead of being laminated, they consist of tempered glass. With tempered glass, the glass is hardened so that if the glass breaks, the whole piece of glass fragments into small pieces.
Tempered glass is not appropriate for windshields because one small stone could cause the whole windshield to shatter. Laminated safety glass is not appropriate for side windows because it would otherwise be very difficult to break a window in an emergency situation. Ordinary glass is not appropriate for either because it results in large shards of glass when broken, which is not a good thing in a car accident.
So anyway, if you want to break a window in an emergency situation, don’t waste time trying to break the windshield.
So, if you want to trust a couple of guys whose stock in trade is knowing just about everything about cars, you **should **always lock your doors. (Side note: eight years earlier, they answered slightly differently: same general conclusion, but with more of an “it ***probably ***won’t hurt you to leave them unlocked” twist.)
Well, it’s not a completely bizarre concept if you are driving a convertible or a Jeep. There have been more than a few instances of passengers being thrown clear of roll over crashes and ending up mostly uninjured. That said, it’s probably a lot less likely than the seatbelt saving you in slower speed crashes where the impact with the steering column/dash/windshield, but the “thrown clear” rationale has some basis in reality.
Well, it makes me wonder exactly how door locks work. Do they block the latch mechanism so that the latch cannot open? Or do they disable the unlatching mechanism by disconnecting the linkage between the handle and the latch? If the former then perhaps this makes sense. If it’s the latter, then locking the door would do nothing to offset any inertial unlatching that might occur.
My instinct is that it’s the latter or else slim jims and other locksmith tools wouldn’t work. If the lock actually blocks the latch then there’s no way that triggering the latch from inside the door would override the lock that I can imagine.
More importantly you have to ask what’s more likely, that the inertia of a crash would cause the door to unlatch or that you’d get into a crash and need assistance from outside. Seems to me that the latter is orders of magnitude more likely. I think the Car Talk guys have some problems with this answer.
If you’re unconscious, my WAG is that the door’s probably deformed enough that there’s a good chance it wouldn’t open properly and you’d be coming out the window anyway.
Being thrown clear is pretty safe, if you can make it through the windshield unscathed.
But your body will be traveling thru the air at, say, 55MPH, and isn’t likely to be unscathed when it hits something that’s stationary. And it will, sooner or later.
It’s not the initial impact that kills, when your car hits something. It’s the secondary impact, when your body does, that you dread.
I have to question this claim. If this were true then why is a motorcyclist forty times more likely to be killed or seriously injured if they have an accident than a car driver? A motorcyclist is pretty much always “thrown clear” from his vehicle.
My Honda Civic has a switch on the driver’s side that automatically unlocks all doors. The front passenger seat, on the other hand, has a switch that automatically locks all doors. There is no way for the driver to lock all doors at once. I can only assume this feature is designed to thwart kidnappings.
Mythbusters demonstrated this with a car and a pool. You don’t even have to open the window - cars are not hermetically sealed, and water will get in fairly quickly without opening the window.
Basically, Adam sat in the driver’s seat and calmly waited until the car reached the bottom of the pool, then was able (with some moderate effort) to open the door and swim to safety. There was enough air in the car to breath most of that time, and the pressure was equal enough that a bit of air wasn’t a problem.
md2000 said:
Not factually correct. It is true that if the airplane flies into the side of a mountain, seat belts aren’t going to do much good. But most plane crashes (especially commercial planes) don’t fly into mountains, they crash on takeoff and landing, when the plane is slower and relatively close to the ground. It definitely is some advantage in rough landing type situations. Furthermore, seat belts have more use than just plane crashes. Turbulence, for instance, can bounce you around the cabin like a superball.
Omniscient said:
According to here, the lock mechanism disengages the door handle from the latch.
Just a note, a number of car makers are using laminated safety glass in side windows now. It is marketed as anti-smash, or theft deterrent glass. It also has the side benefit of making the car quieter.
If you believe that those two yahoos know just about everything about cars, you are sorely mistaken.
Their stock in trade is humor and entertainment. Any factual information they give is strictly secondary and incidental.
It varies from car to car, lock to lock In some cases the outside handle is disconnected, in other cases a blocking piece is put into place.
True. The point in favor of opening the window is that it gives you a second option for escape and an easier way in for any potential rescuers should things not go as planned.
Not at all, but their show is entertainment, not strictly factual. They never let fact get in the way of a punch line. As a result the facts of how things actually work takes a hit.
I stopped listening to them due to the extreme errors fact when they would try to try to explain how something works. I found myself yelling at the radio “That isn’t how it works you fucking idiot!” and “Jesus Christ where did you learn to work on cars, Disneyland?”
Don’t forget I taught design and function of automotive systems for 15 years. I am an expert. They aren’t.
Their grasp of how many systems in a modern car work, while better than the average consumer on the street is far inferior to my own and most if not all other top flight technicians I know.
but take it from somebody that has been doing this for over 40 years and has the CV to back up my statements, they are NOT experts in auto repair.*
*Unless your definition of expert is Ex as in has been and spurt as a squirt under pressure.
(Actually curious here.) Are they just plain wrong, or are they hyper-simplifying things for listeners who know nothing about cars? Keep in mind, their target audience is people who know just about nothing about motor vehicles, as opposed to someone like yourself, who’s very familiar with them.
Given how (relatively) well known they are, I would think that if they were as consistently dead-wrong as you claim, the internet would be full of “the Car Guys made some shit up when I called in and now my car is totally broken” complaints.