Technology Gone Terribly Wrong

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
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An elderly couple were trapped inside their brand new Mazda 3 for 13 hours. The car was equipped with push button starting and keyless entry all controlled by a radio-controlled by a key fob, which was lost. The couple were rescued the next morning by neighbors when the couple was close to death, according to emergency services. Maybe this is a good time to remind senior citizens not to get all of the available bells and whistles on their new cars. :D

The Otago Daily Times explains that a "series of unfortunate events" and “a combination of stress, night-time, and what they called a lack of information from the salesperson" conspired against the pair.
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The interesting thing is that technology and the modern world is so unfathomable to them that they thought that not having a manual way to get out was something that was possible. not looking forward to the day when I'm old enough to be in their shoes though...
 
This is crazy - why can't you open the car from the inside? They should have kicked out a window on the car if they were really that stuck.
 
I have a Mazda 3 with keyless entry. The manual operation is exactly the same, whether you have keyless entry or not. The article makes it sound like they hid the manual controls, but if you read this article linked from the original, you see that's not that case. This sounds like less of a case of technology gone wrong, and more of a case of seniors panicking under false assumptions.
 
steakman1971 said:
This is crazy - why can't you open the car from the inside? They should have kicked out a window on the car if they were really that stuck.
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Couldn't figure out what controlled the door latch. From just checking pics of the interior, they are the little nubbie type buttons that kind of flip up, they are right next to the door levers.

Did they promptly take away their driver's licenses?
 
They can't have done a very good job of searching for the manual lock when it's in the same location as it would be in any normal car.

I expect to see another media interview from the guy in a few months after he complains that after climbing into his fridge he got stuck when light went out and he couldn't see the door. At which point he can blame the salesman for not warning him.
 
jpm100 said:
Did they promptly take away their driver's licenses?
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I sure hope so, but if not, it should be pretty easy to stop them from driving.......just lock the doors to their house.. that should trap them inside
 
I'll stick with vehicles, pre-2005, thanks.
So convienient it will save us from ourselves. Literally.
 
Crosshairs said:
I sure hope so, but if not, it should be pretty easy to stop them from driving.......just lock the doors to their house.. that should trap them inside
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Someday I'll learn to not read this forum and drink at the same time.

IMO it does raise the question of whether this couple would have been just as "stuck" had the car been equipped with normal door locks.
 
Same couple is reported to have starved almost to death while locked inside a grocery store. ;)
 
steakman1971 said:
This is crazy - why can't you open the car from the inside? They should have kicked out a window on the car if they were really that stuck.
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they are in their late sixties. that's not easily done at that age. those things are made to withstand a few puny kicks...
 
One of the little things I like about ford, pulling the handle opens the door regardless if the lock is engaged or not
 
Even in the worse case scenario if your life was on the line and your wife was passed out don't you just think maybe you would say now is time to break the windows? No way better to die now than damage our new car. This is just a case of senior dementia no different than seniors with various problems that make horribly calculated mistakes to go out in heavy snow, get run over by snow plows at night and everything else. Someone find a picture of where the manual door lever was in this car so we can see if it was really hidden.
 
86 5.0L said:
One of the little things I like about ford, pulling the handle opens the door regardless if the lock is engaged or not
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LMAO..Thats not a Ford thing at all dude.....thats a just about every fucking car thing...
 
This is not a story other than senior mental confusion. Do not worry as all of us will have our turn in their shoes :(
 
rudy said:
Even in the worse case scenario if your life was on the line and your wife was passed out don't you just think maybe you would say now is time to break the windows? No way better to die now than damage our new car. This is just a case of senior dementia no different than seniors with various problems that make horribly calculated mistakes to go out in heavy snow, get run over by snow plows at night and everything else. Someone find a picture of where the manual door lever was in this car so we can see if it was really hidden.
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Look up :D
 
temujin987 said:
they are in their late sixties. that's not easily done at that age. those things are made to withstand a few puny kicks...
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From the inside? I have had to extract myself from a car from the inside where the only option was to kick out a window and it broke very easily. Having also done the reverse, they are tough as nails from the outside unless it is the worlds smallest pebble flying off the back of a dump truck with a sticker that says "not responsible for debris from road".
 
Elderly couple, late 60's...

According to SS im not allowed to retire until at least 69, so according to the goverment, they are not the elderly, they are the working class.
 
nightanole said:
Elderly couple, late 60's...

According to SS im not allowed to retire until at least 69, so according to the goverment, they are not the elderly, they are the working class.
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Ya this is not elderly by any means. My dad is almost 80 and just finished doing the drywall and electrical in his basement. Using a doorhandle should be well within their abilities.
 
86 5.0L said:
One of the little things I like about ford, pulling the handle opens the door regardless if the lock is engaged or not
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Seriously? Is it really that easy to nick a Ford - cool. I'll just get my coat hanger...


Those people saying "Smash the window" - read the ArsTechnica article and it says they tried smashing the window with the car jack, but clearly no strength in the 60 year olds. (Not quite sure how they got their hands on the car jack from inside the cabin....)

Panic and age can do weird things. Some of my older clients are really fascinating as to how they react around technology. This is another example of Technofear. There is a generation of people in their 50s and above who grew up without computers and they are still playing catch-up. We may all sit here and push every button we see, but there is an older generation that is scared of pressing any button "in case it breaks something..."
 
BlueMeanie said:
(Not quite sure how they got their hands on the car jack from inside the cabin....)
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Betcha one of them actually crawled into the trunk through the split folding rear seat to grab the jack, but never once thought to use the interior trunk release.
 
AFD said:
Betcha one of them actually crawled into the trunk through the split folding rear seat to grab the jack, but never once thought to use the interior trunk release.
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You mean the one that is glow in the dark with big letters that say PULL?
 
AFD said:
Betcha one of them actually crawled into the trunk through the split folding rear seat to grab the jack, but never once thought to use the interior trunk release.
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That's the bit I don't get. If it was a hatchback, then they'd be able to pop the boot open. It is also pretty tricky for some 60 year olds to clamber around the inside of a car like that.

Notice the other missing bit here... as they were in their 60s they didn't have mobile phones in their pockets.
 
They could've also used the car horn to alert people nearby instead of waiting for 13 hours.
 
w4ffles said:
They could've also used the car horn to alert people nearby instead of waiting for 13 hours.
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Why do people not read the articles before posting? They did use the horns, but too many fireworks in the air.

And seriously - when was the last time you reacted to a car horn? When I hear a horn I ignore it as I assume it is a car alarm.
 
nightanole said:
You mean the one that is glow in the dark with big letters that say PULL?
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Yeah. I think it actually does glow-in-the-dark..

fgm8yWa.jpg


Would have been a lot easier to do that, than trying to get the tire jack out from under the trunk's floor board. This couple was seriously over thinking their whole dilemma on multiple levels.

So, is this the reasonable thought process of someone "old", or someone bent on hallucinogens?
 
Well the good news is now politicians in NZ will make a new law that says every sales person my take anyone who purchases a car through a class which shows them how to open the doors, unlock the car and roll down the windows.
 
rudy said:
Well the good news is now politicians in NZ will make a new law that says every sales person my take anyone who purchases a car through a class which shows them how to open the doors, unlock the car and roll down the windows.
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The sales person is supposed to do that anyway as part of the sales process....and even if they didn't all new cars come with what we like to call "the mystery book"..Its in the glove box and it explains all the features of the car, and how to operate them.

all that aside, I dont care how old or young you are, if your stupid enough to get locked inside your own car, you really do deserve to die there.
 
So how did the couple get into the car in the first place if they didnt have the keys or keyfob to unlock it?
 
steakman1971 said:
This is crazy - why can't you open the car from the inside? They should have kicked out a window on the car if they were really that stuck.
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Exactly my Mercedes has keyless go and automatic locking doors, all I need to do is pull the handle from inside and the doors unlock.

Either the couple was already too demented to really be driving or the car has a deadly fault in its door mechanisms.
 
Crosshairs said:
The sales person is supposed to do that anyway as part of the sales process....and even if they didn't all new cars come with what we like to call "the mystery book"..Its in the glove box and it explains all the features of the car, and how to operate them.
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According to the article, the owners manual was inside the house, so they didn't have access to it. Not that they should even need to read the manual in order to know how to operate a standard automobile door handle.
 
Just sounds like some senior couple who isn't used to door locks being in a place that isn't like the pop-ups at the top of the door like on 90's cars and not the more common flip out lock on most of today's cars
 
rudy said:
Well the good news is now politicians in NZ will make a new law that says every sales person my take anyone who purchases a car through a class which shows them how to open the doors, unlock the car and roll down the windows.
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Or every car manufacture will now have to put big ugly orange labels on every care door explaining how to unlock and open the door, and you will not be able to remove these ugly labels without damaging the door.
 
AFD said:
Betcha one of them actually crawled into the trunk through the split folding rear seat to grab the jack, but never once thought to use the interior trunk release.
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I left the lights on in my wife's SUV overnight and the battery went dead. Fortunately, we keep jumper cables in the storage compartment below the floor in the back, so I went to get them. Can't open the compartment because the rear hatch door blocks the compartment. Okay, so I'll open the rear hatch. This particular rear hatch does not use a key; we push buttons on the car key or at the driver's seat. But those buttons don't work now, because the battery is dead.

After quite a bit of searching in the 500+ page user manual, I find I need to pop a small unmarked plastic panel off the inside of the rear hatch using a flathead screwdriver and push a lever in order to manually unlock the rear hatch, but at this point it's irrelevant because we already used the jumper cables from the other car to start up the SUV. The SUV's jumper cables no longer reside in that storage compartment.

Just because something should be easy in a modern vehicle doesn't necessarily mean that it is.
 
evilsofa said:
I left the lights on in my wife's SUV overnight and the battery went dead. Fortunately, we keep jumper cables in the storage compartment below the floor in the back, so I went to get them. Can't open the compartment because the rear hatch door blocks the compartment. Okay, so I'll open the rear hatch. This particular rear hatch does not use a key; we push buttons on the car key or at the driver's seat. But those buttons don't work now, because the battery is dead.

After quite a bit of searching in the 500+ page user manual, I find I need to pop a small unmarked plastic panel off the inside of the rear hatch using a flathead screwdriver and push a lever in order to manually unlock the rear hatch, but at this point it's irrelevant because we already used the jumper cables from the other car to start up the SUV. The SUV's jumper cables no longer reside in that storage compartment.

Just because something should be easy in a modern vehicle doesn't necessarily mean that it is.
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If you get really confused, you can try to use a cigarette lighter jumper to feed enough current to get other items working, no chance of charging a messed up battery or even a regular batter or cranking but probably can get a door to unlock, assuming the cigarette lighter isn't relayed off.
 
jpm100 said:
If you get really confused, you can try to use a cigarette lighter jumper to feed enough current to get other items working, no chance of charging a messed up battery or even a regular batter or cranking but probably can get a door to unlock, assuming the cigarette lighter isn't relayed off.
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What cigarette lighter?
 
People in their 60s are not prone to "dementia." Get that out of your head right now.

And this was confusing enough to mess with not just ONE person, but BOTH of them.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I love tech. And I'm all for being [H]ard. But when you need to be a tech enthusiast to understand your car's door locks we have gone WAY over the shark tank.

When a couple who is merely in their 60s can't figure out how to get OUT of a car we have a major, major problem with cars... not the couple who got confused.

It doesn't matter whether WE find it easy or not.

I'm a firm believer that, especially in the front seats, pulling the handle should open the door. Period. I don't care if the the car is on, off or doing 120mph. The damn door latch should operate if you pull the handle. And there should always be mechanical operation that doesn't require power. Period. It's a DOOR. It doesn't need, and should never need, a dozen electronic layers of crap to function.
 
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