Don’t forget about car windows with a crank.
If a crank-based mechanism would have made that less likely to happen, or at least if it would be easier for me to get the window back up with simple tools, I would have been all for that at the time!
Even when its like "the motor burned out", well what caused the motor to burn out? The lift was way out of alignment and would have been dang hard to turn by hand, and probably would have just broken the gearing.