When will mechanical inside escape handles become mandatory? 1

As to the latter, several car makers already offer the ability to detect occupancy when the car is not running.


Also see

I know of several platforms with fully electronic locks, but all the ones I am aware of have a mechanical release somewhere in the passenger cabin.

For back doors, you're talking about basically eliminating child locks. Don't believe that to be smart.

I don't believe that automatically opening doors to release a child or an animal is smart either.

Don't lock your dog in the car and this becomes a non-issue.

23 children died in 2021 in the US from being left in cars. There were 53 deaths in 2019. It's not only about dogs. Usually it is one parent being 99+% responsible for dropping the child off at day care and the 0.1% of the time the other parent puts the child in the back seat, the child falls asleep, and the parent is distracted back onto the path they have taken 1000 times before without the infant and that is that.

My wife had occasion to go to work (no child involved) and got out of the car, left the keys in it, engine running. The car out of gas and I found out that the maker of the new gas can I bought had a mold maker ruin the design, but that's separate. She was concentrating on getting in to her desk.

The point is that sleep deprivation, worries about work or finances, habituation, and a novel (new child) situation can all coalesce into forgetting something terrifically important. People lock their keys in the car, forget they are filling with gas at the station, forget the tide will come in while at the beach, leave their coffee on the car roof. The seriousness of the situation cannot overcome the out-of-sight error.

Is this inside lock release problem a real problem? Hard to imagine a crash severe enough to kill the electrical system and leave the doors undamaged, particularly in the days of crumple zones. There used to be a time when a tank, like an 1963 Impala could total a Datsun hatchback but leave only a banged up hood and punctured radiator on the Impala (BTDT)

Regardless, carrying a window breaking tool is a useful thing to do, since you can potentially still exit the vehicle through the window, even if the door is jammed up.

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Several manufacturers offer electrically driven HVAC systems that maintain cabin temps in case you want to intentionally leave the dog/kid in the car while shopping.

If electric door poppers fail the obvious/easy solution is to break a window and climb out. Relying on mechanical latches as emergency backups is a bit of an exercise in futility bc vehicle bodies often buckle enough that they either fail or the door itself is jammed shut.

Others are welcome to their opinions, but personally I would like to see a reduction in the amount of unnecessary vehicle complexity that is driven solely by regulation. Complexity drives cost, and we're already severely over-regulated.

"Mechanical inside release handles" ARE mandatory, in that it has to be possible to open a front door from inside independently of the electrical system. "Child safety locks" that prevent rear doors from opening from inside are legal but the consequence of the child not being able to accidentally open the door while the car is driving is that it will also not open from inside in an emergency, you can't have it both ways. All such systems are mechanically selectable ... read the owner's book.

The problem with fancy electrical inside door poppers that have a separate mechanical release handle is that owners fail to read instruction books. They get used to pushing the little button and have no idea of the existence of a separate mechanical release handle.

I fail to understand what's wrong with a plain ordinary mechanical door handle (both inside and outside), but that's another matter.

No door release mechanism whether mechanical or electrical will operate if the door has been mechanically jammed shut as a consequence of a collision. No door release mechanism whether mechanical or electrical will help if the car is underwater.

And in the same breath as advocating simplification (door handles) the original poster also advocates complexification (detection of someone left inside a vehicle)? What if I WANT to stay inside the vehicle with everything off? What if I WANT to leave kiddo in the car for a minute while running into a convenience store? Does the car have to be evacuated at a petrol station to avoid it calling emergency services by itself because the dog is in the back? I predict false alarms.

I'd like to know more about the original poster's concern. Think about unintended consequences.

"What if I WANT to leave kiddo in the car for a minute while running into a convenience store?"

That often results in the criminal who steals the car dumping the children a mile or so away and your car in a container being shipped to Africa.

The typical results are automatically rolling the windows down and sending text messages to the owner's cell phone. I have seen no systems that call 911 or other emergency services.

. . . Is there a device that can monitor us and call 911???

Is there a device that can enervate and evanesce all logic?
“Isn’t it about time???”

I fail to understand what's wrong with a plain ordinary mechanical door handle (both inside and outside), but that's another matter.

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That's just old school, right? I remember having to run around the car to lock or unlock all the doors; PITA.

Oh the other hand, it was something that distinguished my wife from ex-girlfriends that were not suitable; SWMBO got into the car after I opened her door and then she reached over to unlock my door, yah for that!

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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Even on older cars I have been in there are some where the designers seemed to take great delight in disguising the release mechanism. I recall one where the release lever was hidden entirely behind the pull handle so no part was visible except by being in the footwell and looking up at the underside of the handle.

See for the "obvious" release on the model Y.

From the same article:

Many auto supply stores sell spring-loaded “escape tools” that can smash a car’s window from inside to give occupants another way of exiting in an emergency.

But beware: another wrinkle of modern technology may render some of these tools useless. Strong, laminated glass can keep occupants from being ejected from a vehicle in a crash, but laminated glass is harder to break than traditional tempered glass.

In 2019, AAA tested six escape tools on vehicles with laminated glass, and found none of them were able to break it.

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3DDave said:

"What if I WANT to leave kiddo in the car for a minute while running into a convenience store?"

That often results in the criminal who steals the car dumping the children a mile or so away and your car in a container being shipped to Africa.

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I never said anything about leaving the car running - or with the key in it - while popping into a convenience store or petrol station with the child or dog left inside.

The suggestion of the original poster would have the car call emergency for doing that.

Nope.

Whatever happened to taking responsibility for one's own actions? It is not possible to cover up all possible stupidity with technology.

I recall one where the release lever was hidden entirely behind the pull handle

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BTDT, but mine Moby Dick was the release handle for the gas cap on a rental car, which I couldn't find, so I opened the trunk dug out the release cable there and opened the cover so I could get gas before returning the car. Only when I returned the car did I find out the release was buried in the glove compartment.

It is not possible to cover up all possible stupidity with technology.

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True enough, but if there were something simple that could be done, and if even only a few kids get saved, that might be worth it. It seems to be a terrible price to pay for a mental gap.

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3DDave said:

23 children died in 2021 in the US from being left in cars.........The seriousness of the situation cannot overcome the out-of-sight error.

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Maybe IATA but I do not care. I have absolutely zero sympathy. "I'm too tired" or "Normally my wife drives the kid around" or whatever is bullshit.

You cannot eliminate stupidity by legislation or engineering. Car door locking systems are designed the way they are for a lot of good reasons. Are they perfect? Probably not. But completely re-engineering them all because 23 people made bad decisions last year (and 53 the year before) is a losing game.

My money is on NONE of the 23 deaths last year from kids/dogs left inside the car having anything to do with the failure of an electric pushbutton door release and the absence of a mechanical override handles as suggested in the original post. My money is on ALL of those happening with cars having conventional door latches and locks with normal mechanical inside release handles. Reason: The percentage of cars on the road that have separate inside electric door releases which are ergonomically separate from mechanical inside door releases is very small, and the percentage of such systems that fail is very small, and the probability of such a failure happening at the same time as someone is trapped inside and which doesn't involve circumstances in which the door couldn't be opened anyhow (collision damage, sinking in water, door physically obstructed from opening, etc) is vanishingly small.

Most of the time ... It happens in a plain ordinary car with plain ordinary mechanical door latches, and the dog or child doesn't know how to work it. So, the original poster wants to have the car call emergency services automatically because I left an inanimate package on the back seat. How is this hypothetical system supposed to distinguish a child/dog from any other object that isn't part of the car? (Hint: There is no way to do this with complete reliability.) What if I want the child/dog to stay in the car at a petrol station?

Or it has plain ordinary rear door child safety locks that mechanically block the back doors from opening from inside. Do you want to ban those? How many deaths from kids being locked inside, versus the number that could foreseeably happen because a child opens the door and jumps out of the car on the motorway? (That's the reason child safety locks were introduced!)

My Chevy Bolt, every once in a while, under circumstances where there might be someone left in the back seats after the driver turns off the car and opens the driver's door, beeps and pops up a warning on the instrument cluster "Check rear seats". I haven't completely sussed out the logic it uses to do this, but every time it has, I can see how prior events could have been interpreted as a possibility of someone being back there who hasn't gotten out before the driver. (There never actually has been a person back there who has been forgotten about.)

Personal responsibility, folks.

BrianPetersen said:

My money is on NONE of the 23 deaths last year from kids/dogs left inside the car having anything to do with the failure of an electric pushbutton door release and the absence of a mechanical override handles as suggested in the original post.

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I agree with this 100% for all the reasons stated.

"So, the original poster wants to have the car call emergency services automatically because I left an inanimate package on the back seat."

This is undeniably false.

I wonder if it's possible to have a device
which can monitor temperatures inside and sounds indicating a
child or dog is present, and pop the doors open and call 911?

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The Bolt is programmed to report if you have stupidly used the rear door immediately before starting the car and then don't check later. It's as American a development as the stranglematic and ejectomatic seatbelts. GM didn't realize the buyers would fail to read the user manual - talk about a lack of personal responsibility.


It is typical of American companies to deliver a feature in a way that fails at the primary mission - detecting an infant or child locked in a car and trapped in a car seat, unable to realize they are about to suffer an agonizing death.

I know the GM setup is a simple system depending merely on the sequence of doors opening/closing and car being switched on/off, but it's also unobtrusive ... unlike something that calls fire+police+ambulance for the mere transgression of leaving a dog in the back seat for a minute or two while running into a store and out again!

It is not possible to detect whether a pet or child is inside the car with complete reliability, and the GM system was never meant to even attempt to do so.

Seat belts aren't "completely reliable." Tires aren't. Engines aren't. As a human, neither are you.

Perhaps calling for help is too much - but the sense I get is the fear of a political "nanny state" is the real sore point.

Microwave sensors can detect the slight movement of breathing. Gas detectors can detect the slight increase in CO2.

Most interesting about a CO2 detector is, while it won't detect CO, CO is rarely the primary exhaust component, so a CO2 detector could be used to alert the driver or occupants of the car to a buildup of an otherwise undetectable, by humans, dangerous gas.

If expense for lab quality sensors is seen as a problem, compare to the cost of a fuel injector that you build one of vs the cost of a mass-produced unit. The makers would probably also use them to regulate fresh air to keep the interior from becoming stuffy, the way that ABS can be used instead of limited slip for traction control.