Of course, somebody must be truly stupid to lock himself in a fridge, but what the heck, children do stupid things all the time! There REALLY should be some safety device to avoid stupid deaths like that…
OK, normally, I’d ship a question like this to General Questions. But Manny and Chronos would kill me if I did it with this one.
So, Uniball, what is your purpose with this thread? A debate about fridge safety? Stories of people locked in fridges?
Help me out here, man.
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I, uh, want to know why it’s impossible to open a refrigerator door from the inside. Y’know, the science involved, how a refrigerator door works, etc. Cuz I don’t know. Do you?
I think that it is a safety issue that they must be able to be opened from the inside.
The reason the doors must be removed if storing is so some kid can’t get inside and something block the door.
Neither of our refrigerators have latches. The doors are held shut by a magnetic strip.
Our freezers are older but they both have key locks.
The danger lies in older fridges found in dumps that had latches. The more recent fridges from about 1960 or so have magnetic strips and suction seals, and can easily be opened from the inside.
As to why they did not originally have latches on the inside: Because the designers never figured anyone would go inside and shut the door! (There is no handle to pull the door shut, either.)
Sequence:
Invent/develop an “ice box” to hold stored food. (Originally about the size of the typical “college dorm” fridge and no one could get inside, anyway, especially if it had food and ice in it.)
Develop/invent actual refrigerator. (Same size issues as ice box.)
Develop larger refrigerators into which a kid could climb if it was empty.
Years pass. First of the larger fridges is finally old enough to be retired.
At some point, among the growing number of thrown out refrigerators, a kid climbs in and suffocates.
A few more years pass.
Enough kids have now suffocated that there are calls for preventive measures. Two responses: Manufacturers develop a “latch-free” fridge so that any 18-month old can open the door simply by falling against it when they run out of oxygen; governments pass laws requiring that all unused refrigerators have either a permanant wedge put in to keep the door from closing or (preferably) the door must be removed to prevent it closing.
As GuanoLad noted, the “latch-free” refrigerators have been with us for around 30 years, so I don’t exactly understand the concern of the OP. There is no external latch (or any latch) on any frdge built in a lo-o-o-o-onnnng time.
I just saw a clip on Fox news about a 72 year old woman who had, until now, been keeping her 93 year old mother in a freezer since February of this year. They went on to say that the mom had already been dead, presumably of natural causes, before she was in the freezer, but I thought of this thread as soon as they said “body in freezer”. Also, the mike-holder said the daughter had been living with her “older mother”. Well, I never heard of a mother being younger than her child…
most modern freezers can easily be opened from the inside as well as the outside.
even industrial-sized freezers can be opened by pressing a button… (I know because my friend’s parents own a very nice seafood restaurant.)
so, no worries Friend, about getting locked in a freezer…
unless someone intentionally does… bwahahahhaha
The script writers of Back to the Future almost had the time machine be a refridgerator and not a Dalorean. They decided against this because they did not want kids jumping into old fridges. Besides, the car thing was a much better idea. Imagine how sucky the time machine would be as a fridge. The only thing worse would be maybe a phone booth 
We don’t want the cheese to escape. Cheddars and Jacks, well, ya just can’t trust those sneaky bastards. And don’t even get me started on the Provolone!
Tomndeb-
Your forgetting a very important fact. The concept of planned obselesence is a fairly recent invention. Up until the late fifities/early sixties, stuff was built to last. I know that in the eighties, some of my older relatives, or friends of older relatives, had 'fridges that dated back to the 'forties. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised of some of these old refrigerators were still in service. Based on this, I would say that these old “iceboxes”, as their owners like to call them, may continue to present a hazard to children for at least a decade or two yet to come, as the last of them expire and are discarded.
And somewhere in England, Tardis fans are sharpening their butcher knives…
Uni, I think you are confused. Refrigerators don’t have locks, freezers did or still do I haven’t checked.