Locking Car when in motion

Locking Car when in motion

Author
Discussion

foxtrotmike

Original Poster:

26 posts

118 months

Wednesday 21st May 2014
quotequote all
Many newer vehicles on the market now have features that let you lock the vehicle when your inside and travelling, some even will self lock when in motion, presumably to prevent hijacking.

However I have a concern about this, that if you have an accident, or fire and all your passengers are not able to unlock the doors then a third party, ie witness cannot gain access to the vehicle to administer 1st aid or get the passengers out in a fire until the fire service have come to cut them out.

So what are peoples thoughts about this?

Can / Should a vehicle automatically unlock the car when there is an accident (ie deployment of the airbags)

If it is to prevent hijacking, should the vehicle doors be unlocked for motorway or rural driving where the risks of this are reduced / removed and locked only for urban driving 30mph or below.


shandyboy

472 posts

153 months

Wednesday 21st May 2014
quotequote all
The manual for my car specifically mentions that the doors will unlock in the event of an accident to allow emergency services access. I'm not too worried about it as I guess it's just one more thing for the ecu to handle along with airbag deployment, seatbelt tensioning, ABS etc.

Incidentally, it's a 10 year old car so it's not a particularly new feature (the doors lock at about 8mph).

Edited by shandyboy on Wednesday 21st May 13:52

TheInternet

4,703 posts

162 months

Wednesday 21st May 2014
quotequote all
shandyboy said:
Incidentally, it's a 10 year old car so it's not a particularly new feature (the doors lock at about 8mph).
Automatic door unlocking was a feature of the 80's BMW E30. nerd

Pappagallo

755 posts

152 months

Wednesday 21st May 2014
quotequote all
Auto unlock upon crash has been around for donkeys. It's very important part of crash test scoring.

Edit - I seem to remember Ford advertising this on the Mk1 Mondeo??

trashbat

6,005 posts

152 months

Wednesday 21st May 2014
quotequote all
As I said elsewhere...

'Who cares?' would be my first thought.

It's very marginal. You need an accident where the car is sufficiently damaged that the electronics are dead, insufficiently deformed that the doors stay shut, all the occupants are incapacitated and someone is about to help. Plus why wouldn't you just put a window through and pull the handle?

To take it slightly more seriously, the doors are part of the structure of the car, and having them shut in a crash is important to safety. Having them locked is probably a minor contributor to keeping them shut during the forces of an accident. This is probably a better motivation for the feature than preventing hijacking.

Medic-one

3,105 posts

202 months

Thursday 22nd May 2014
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In my 10+ years on the job i've only ever had to smash the windows of a car once to get access to the patient. He was a diabetic in an old car and had manually locked his doors and then had a hypo and smashed into a lamppost.

As said above, with most cars (especially the newer ones) the doors auto unlock when they crash.