The fact that the front doors both unlock when a single handle is pulled is because there's an electronic sensor and solenoid that unlocks everything when one handle is opened.
I had a Pontiac Vibe (really a Toyota Matrix) that had a cable in the door unlock assembly fail. You could open the door from the outside - the external door handle was physically the same part as the latch mechanism - but the external handle was back by your shoulder, while the internal handle was forward by the mirror and connected to the latch by a steel cable swaged to some aluminum pins; that connection eventually failed and the internal door handle flapped impotently.
I spent an embarrassing amount of time ignoring the problem and instead rolling down the window to open the door...
Regardless, it's not that much of a stretch to imagine that an automotive engineer might decide to replace cable actuator with a wire and solenoid.
Or with a bunch of CANBUS electromechanical hardware and some shittily written software running on the entertainment unit (with insecure cellular network connectivity).
I wonder how long before someone sets up unlockyourtoyota.ru where you can send them 0.01BTC to unlock the car you're stuck inside?
Low effort comment I know, but I had to let you know.
The fact that it's a russian site made my day. Russian hackers man...
I've noticed that on both our 1995 and 2014 Fords, when you pull the door handle it mechanically unlocks that door and opens it. (On the 2014 the other doors may additionally be triggered to unlock. However, in a no-power situation pulling the handle will still mechanically unlock just that one door.)
Here's a video describing how to use the manual overrides (none are in plain sight)... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLDqmGQU6L0
Here's a photo of thee door interior (with no mechanical door pull)... https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/7I8AAOSwF-tgN5U1/s-l300.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purvis_Eureka
I spent a lot of time helping build it.
He got the "electric roof" version, which had this awful hodgepodge for pneumatic rams, high pressure air hoses and couplings, and a seriously underpowered hydraulic pump - with instructions to fill the system with auto transmission fluid.
It was _not_ a well designed and reliable system, and some of the failure modes left the roof/door clamped down. He kept a pocket knife in th4e glovebox so you could stab the hoses to release the hydraulic fluid and manually push the roof open.
It wasn't until it failed closed while he was taking his girlfriend to the high school formal/dance, then ruined her dress by getting red auto trans fluid on it that he bit the bullet and threw all the supplied parts away and replaced it all with electric liner actuators...
I’ve always considered this a serious safety design flaw.
[0] Why? Why do kids do anything, really?
https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/questions/52480/is-the-d...
Unfortunately, this is not anymore warranted. Already in models of ten years ago, there do exist "full lock non mechanically overridable" and "lock which is unlocked through the handles". Disabling the "feature" requires intervention from the manufacturer - if it can be disabled at all.
Look, I am informed that in at least many of the current cars with RFID based keys, it is impossible to lock yourself in the car... (And the idea seems to have spawned from manufacturers coming from the territories in the world most notorious for carjacking.)
> the 2007 Corvette has a manual release located on the floorboard by the driver's seat
Having random cables cut doesn't help the situation, but the issue was not knowing how to manually release the latch and not having an emergency window breaker.
Is it, is that really the issue?
The problem is there is a door handle that is designed with a failure mode such that pulling the handle DOES NOT OPEN THE DOOR.
Design matters, and bad designs can literally be deadly. Why auto mfgs feel the need to "innovate" with shifter designs is beyond me. The worst part is how every mfg seems to be implementing a different design of bad electronic shifters, from wheels and touchscreens to one-click-at-a-time joysticks to single-function pushbuttons for some gears with others on a scroll wheel. They've taken something and made it worse with no benefit to the user. At least with those auto-flushing toilets, the intention was good, even if the implementation is still somehow so awful decades later.
On my old Chevrolet Tahoe, I can tell what gear I just shifted into by feel (shifting into D, it has a slight tendency to overshoot the normal overdrive mode and end up locked into 3rd). And of course, this is essentially a nonissue on manual transmissions.
[edit]
Honestly if the rotary dial had similar tactile feedback, it would probably be fine. No worse than when they moved it off of the tree as bench seats were retired for safety reasons.
It's column shift despite bucket seats.
My guess is that the dial costs less, so it is done for the company not the customer. Many cases of bad design come from prioritizing the manufacturer over the customer.
It also doesnt work at all if i am in tube, or when my building forgets to pay phone bill, or movike network craps out
Whatever benefits the tech firms and salespeople sold you (not literally you, anyone reading) on all this shit, if you have this stuff in your life I guarantee you your life is more stressful than mine because of it.
I'm to the point where I only buy used stuff period. Basically food and underwear have to be new. I don't think I've bought a brand new anything in over 5 years. I don't know if I ever will if this trend continues, proprietary single serve coffee pouches, internet connected stovetops, TVs that show ads separate from the broadcast, cars that track your movements and sell them to data brokers, touch screen everything, how many screens does a single person need?
Until, of course, it does.
They're literally engineering shit people don't need now. In virtually every product. And doing UI redesigns on things that change the user friendly UX, often breaking it.
I remember looking forward to browser updates, OS updates, the next generation hardware whatever. Things used to actually get better. I actually got a new phone the other day with a newer android version, never mind that there's a fucking hole in the screen, when I changed my screen brightness there was a deliberate animated delay to the brightness changing with the slider. Seriously, who the fuck is making decisions like this?
90% of things don't need to get more complex. A touch screen on a fridge, speakers in your car that get louder as you accelerate, Bluetooth speakers that need software updates, these are not improvements to the products in any real way whatsoever.
I've got news for you. My uncle worked in construction most his life. He told me the concrete isn't as good today as it used to be. He said in some places for shipping they "blow it around". Meaning you don't put it on a ship using a conveyor, you do something similar to blowing dust through a pipe? I never asked for more detail. He thought the handling was exposing it to humidity or in some way degrading the concrete. This would be another case of prioritizing cost/efficiency over the customer.
So even your humble concrete block might not be as good as they used to make em'
It’s sad he died but I found that handle in the first 5 minutes of owning my first corvette. It has a giant red picture of the door opening.
I did, on a 1980s car, since it was the normal door handle.
Humans expect tools to be at arm height. Do not work against natural assumptions. If you increase cognitive load, that's that much more attention diverted in a state where attention is already maxed out or otherwise in shortage.
It can be the difference between life and death.
Emergency controls in vehicles with proper regulation look like this [2], so they can still be used in the dark, with smoke, etc.
[1] https://hhcorvettenewsletter.wordpress.com/2016/08/03/dont-l...
[2] https://railgallery.wongm.com/gold-coast-light-rail/F122_929...
OSHA actually outlines the preference:
1) Eliminate the hazard outright (not possible here, you need the door to lock sometimes)
2) Engineer out the risk (they tried to do...poorly...with the manual unlock)
3) Administrative controls (e.g., the manual)
4) Personal protective equipment
Tip for readers: if your car has removable headrests, they can serve effectively as emergency window breakers.
You have to insert the metal rod between the bottom of the window and the door card and use leverage to pry at the window until it cracks
I am willing to bet my house that half the people who built that car would not find the lever if it suddenly caught fire (or any other emergency) while they are in it
It was the battery cable or similar, which cut power to all the electronic means of getting out - including the other door. It was not "cut" in the sense of someone using a knife, it just came loose or similarly broke contact. This is a design failure, not a RTFM failure.
Nope, not that model.
I had the chance to take one of the Fisker Karma development vehicles home from work. Everyone said it drove great. I got in and realized the door latch was a button. The whole car way prototype and development parts. The window was kinda small to crawl through. I said no thanks. There was a loop of string in the bottom of the door pocket to manually open it. Still nope.
For example, you don't want your kids to open the doors while you're driving. Or you don't want a car-jacker to reach through the window and open your door.
For example to open the back you push a button on tailgate and then pull to open. That button is definitely not a mechanical latch, so if the battery is dead then you're not opening the tailgate.
This would be an interesting experience - go to an auto dealer and ask them to disconnect the battery, then see what still functions.
This is about whether pulling the door latch auto-unlocks the door, or if you have to unlock the door first before pulling the door latch.
In this specific scenario, you still have a component failure. Something that was supposed to be connected wasn't. It would be nice if they designed a better fail safe but it's not a case of "corvette handles aren't designed to unlock."
My 2013 car has a physical lock pull, which the door lever is connected to, so the lock opens when you pull the lever to open the door.
Teslas have an (emergency?) mechanical release on their doors. At least the Model 3 does. Given that you can't 'lock from the outside' in the ordinary sense, if this law exists, there must be some leeway.
Happened to my friends at least a couple of times when giving them a ride. Imo, not a bad situation, because the worst case scenario here is that they will accidentally use an emergency release instead of the standard one on their first try, which will only trigger tesla to make a warning sound that the emergency release was used. Definitely works out better in a real emergency situation too, compared to cars with difficult to find emergency release handles, given people not familiar with Tesla doors tend to reach for the emergency handles in those by default at times.