Man dies trapped in Corvette

How about we lock the guy in his car with a combination lock release?

I guess he should have read the berkeleying manual.

Or better yet, an iPhone app that will let him out.

I guess he should have read the berkeleying manual.

Where is the law that says everyone is required to read in order to drive?

I guess he should have read the berkeleying manual.

Can anybody say age discrimination?

I guess he should have read the berkeleying manual.

What if he loans his car?

I guess his friend should have read the berkeleying manual.

What if he has a passenger, and he faints?

I guess his passenger should have read the berkeleying manual.

What if he is underwater?

I guess he should have read the berkeleying manual.

What if he is upside down?

I guess he should have read the berkeleying manual.

What if he's got no left arm?

I guess he should have read the berkeleying manual.

What if he is able bodied, but gets sick, disoriented, or hurt?

I guess he should have read the berkeleying manual.

What if he doesn't speak English?

I guess he should have read the berkeleying manual.

OPENING A berkeleyING DOOR TO GET OUT SHOULD NOT REQUIRE A berkeleyING MANUAL.

THIS THREAD IS FULL OF SO MUCH STUPID IT'S PATHETIC.

Did anybody notice that the Emergency Responders couldn't figure it out either, even though they are trained to get people out of emergencies?

I guess they should have read the berkeleying manual.

I was whacking at a 10' piece of tempered glass today with a CAT 320C that wouldn't break.

I guess I should have called a 72 year old man.

Calm down, you're going to have a stroke and die in your car.

Come on guys, if an electrical cable can 'fall off' or become disconnected then so can a rod in a manual door lock. It's happened to me before and I've had to take a door apart to fix it. How about we get the government to outlaw manual door locks as they can come disconnected and insist on only electronic ones? Or even better how about electronic ones with a well marked manual back up? That would work, then this poor guy and his dog could have gotten out couldn't they? Oh, hang on, HE DID HAVE A MANUAL BACK UP and for some reason we will never know was unable to use it or didn't know it was there.

I know people, especially this group, seem to hate electronic aids, but these days things are pretty reliable. I don’t’ work for GM, but I’ll bet there was a hell of a lot of testing and discussion around the DFMA before that went into production. I’ve had several manual throttle cables snap on me over the years, but I haven’t had a single failure of an e-throttle. I’ll bet there are millions and millions of cars with e-latches on the road, I bet there are people on here with them who don’t know it. We’ve no idea what happened. Was there some E36 M3ty aftermarket wiring that was causing a battery drain. Had he already had to jump the car a half dozen times on a failing battery? Had he sat in the car listening to the radio for ½ an hour before the battery drained? Was he in a food coma and had fallen asleep before overheating?

Cars today are magnitudes safer than they were 20 years ago and 20 years ago they were magnitudes safer than they were 10 years prior to that. The single most dangerous element of a car these days is the humans inside them, the second is the cell phone in that users hand. To me the ‘dangers’ of e-latches are hundreds and hundreds of places down the list of issues on cars today.

Trans_Maro wrote: Calm down, you're going to have a stroke and die in your car.

Just when I am starting to question my own logic, Paul comes in and confirms what I was thinking. Don't stop him now!

I would like to be the attorney representing his estate in the suit to be filed against GM.

Why? Because the highly touted Blue On Star button and corresponding emergency button don't have a back up battery system, of say 3500MaH, for emergency communications.

Datsun1500 wrote: I would have more sympathy if it was a new car, and he didn't know about the release, but it was an 07. If you don't know about that release after owning the car for longer than 2 months, that's on you.

I guess "more sympathy" might be in order, though we don't know exactly how long he owned this car, only that it was "recently purchased." If it was less than two months (why that number?) who is it "on?"

Sounds like he may have died because he was concerned about his dog, as opposed to deserving to die because of how he treated it, like some seem to think.

"According to The Associated Press and KHOU, James Rogers, 72, stopped at a Port Arthur restaurant for coffee and left his dog in his recently purchased 2007 Corvette, his dream car. Rogers left his cellphone inside the restaurant and went back to the car to check on the dog, police said."

And there's this:

"Hernandez says police believe her dad made a valiant effort to escape, and possibly died while looking through the car's manual."

So he tried to RTFM, apparently.

Datsun1500 wrote: Corvettes have had that door since 2005. There have been @235,647 Corvettes sold in that time. How many people have died? Sorry, the door design is a non issue.

And Takata airbags have been out for over a decade now and were on over 30 million vehicles, but there have only been about 7 fatalities and 100ish injuries. Those are still being recalled.

We are reading about it happening to one, I wonder how many other cases there are where the corvette electronic doors were a problem.

I share in amazement at how quickly some of us are dismissing it as a possible safety problem.

Wasnt looking to launch this hard/aggressive of a debate though, sheesh.

To boil down the core and focus it, do you think these complicated electromechanical system solutions to problems noone had should be allowed? I kinda think that they did the doors that way causing this to be a possible thing is a sign of an alarming trend.

I have been in cars that had electronic parking brakes, thought that was questionable as well.

I won't offer an opinion on the old guy in the 'vette, but I did just get in a brand new Jetta at lunch and saw little electric buttons for the lock/unlock. My first thought was "Well, that doesn't seem like a good idea...."

I had no idea that the vettes were designed that way.

Enyar wrote: Heat exhaustion inside a Chevy and outside of a waffle house sounds like an awful way to go. RIP, I feel for his family.

That could be my obituary.

If anyone is carrying one of those seat belt cutters try it out sometime. My mother gave us all emergency hammers one year for Christmas. It sat in my car for years. One day I had a call for a customer stuck on a bus because the wheelchair strap wouldn't release. I had forgotten my knife so I went to the car and got my tool. The first yank chafed the edge of the strap. The second pull caused the tool to fall apart and the blade drop down inside the handle.

pinchvalve wrote: 1. How do you operate a piece of machinery, any machinery, and not know how to use it properly? Read the owner's manual, that is why people like me write them, it can save your life! If a door had no physical latch, which I am assuming the Corvette doesn't, then I would damn sure want to know how to get out if the battery was dead! 2. Per the article "the battery started recharging itself enough to be able to roll the window down" Elon Musk, the oil companies, wind farms and solar panel makers are going to be so pissed when they find out that GM has long-ago developed a self-charging battery. This is going to make the P85d the best car ever!

Yes and yes.

I read all manuals 100% for every car I drive. Even rentals.

Advan046 wrote:

pinchvalve wrote: 1. How do you operate a piece of machinery, any machinery, and not know how to use it properly? Read the owner's manual, that is why people like me write them, it can save your life! If a door had no physical latch, which I am assuming the Corvette doesn't, then I would damn sure want to know how to get out if the battery was dead! 2. Per the article "the battery started recharging itself enough to be able to roll the window down" Elon Musk, the oil companies, wind farms and solar panel makers are going to be so pissed when they find out that GM has long-ago developed a self-charging battery. This is going to make the P85d the best car ever!

Yes and yes. I read all manuals 100% for every car I drive. Even rentals.

Not sure if serious-- I don't recall ever renting a car that had the manual left in it. And I've looked because there is often something quirky about the car...

SVreX wrote: And I would lay 100:1 odds that the vast majority of us have never read the entire owner's manual for the cars we drive.

Never read the entire manual? Yeah, you've got me there. I do however make myself familiar with every switch, button, lever, ect. present in any car I've owned (or routinely operated) within a few days.

It does however seem that many people don't do this. Just the other day I was waiting at night in a friend's 70s GM product, he left the keys in it and I was fiddling with the radio, I had pulled the headlight switch out a click (to the parking light position) so the backlight would come on. He gets in, starts the engine, pulls out and is then confused why there are no headlights. "Pull the switch out another click", headlights go on, "Oh, I didn't know it did that". He's had the car, as a 3 season DD, for over a year.

Datsun1500 wrote:

SVreX wrote: OPENING A berkeleyING DOOR TO GET OUT SHOULD NOT REQUIRE A berkeleyING MANUAL.

It doesn't require a manual, it requires pulling a handle that is in plain sight

Did anybody notice that the Emergency Responders couldn't figure it out either, even though they are trained to get people out of emergencies? I guess they should have read the berkeleying manual

Completely different, they were on the outside trying to get in, no latch in sight. Break a window.

If you're looking at the button that opens the door, you can see the manual release. I think his car was also a targa, you can definitely push the top off from inside after unclipping it. The control layouts aren't the same in every car. Heck, there's probably some kind of weird similar situation that could happen because the window controls are on the center console instead of the door. My car ran out of gas because I couldn't figure out how to open the fuel door. The car died in fast traffic and caused a fatal accident. Definitely the manufacturer's fault. Chevy knew that they had to have nice little pictures on everything for the Corvette demographic.

I sincerely hope that they sue GM's proverbial pants off. The variety of morons that design a failure prone touchcreen crap-pile to control radio and ventilation instead of using high-quality switchgear are the same morons that would design an electically operated door latch instead of using a mechanical actuator. It's criminally negligent and anyone could forsee a deadly situation such as this. The message for GM and others is this: Get the cheesy gadgets out of cars, or get sued!

There's probably more to this story. Maybe he had a stroke.

Does anyone here disagree with this statement?

"If I am inside a car, and desire to leave said car, pulling the door handle should open the door regardless of the current status of the door lock."

rotard wrote: There's probably more to this story. Maybe he had a stroke.

Agreed. Probably brought on by extreme aggravation at the sheer stupidity of design that would require a working battery to exit the vehicle.

1988RedT2 wrote:

rotard wrote: There's probably more to this story. Maybe he had a stroke.

Agreed. Probably brought on by extreme aggravation at the sheer stupidity of design that would require a working battery to exit the vehicle.

It doesn't require any power to exit the car. There's a plainly visible lever with a picture of an open door on it. Heck, they even included another one on the passenger side!

rotard wrote:

1988RedT2 wrote:

rotard wrote: There's probably more to this story. Maybe he had a stroke.

Agreed. Probably brought on by extreme aggravation at the sheer stupidity of design that would require a working battery to exit the vehicle.

It doesn't require any power to exit the car. There's a plainly visible lever with a picture of an open door on it. Heck, they even included another one on the passenger side!

Not true! It's a lever with a picture of ET on it with his tongue hanging out!

http://www.autotraderclassics.com/images/a/cms/48116/48116.jpg

Which brings us to another stupid thing auto manufacturers do. Label the damn buttons! Goofy indecipherable line drawings are useless.

tuna55 wrote: Does anyone here disagree with this statement? "If I am inside a car, and desire to leave said car, pulling the door handle should open the door regardless of the current status of the door lock."

Tuna for President!

spitfirebill wrote: Being a luddite, this is why I hate complicated electrical stuff in cars. Our new company Explorer is almost too complicated for me to figure out how to get the display I want on the dash. I hate the electronic throttle on my wife's Solara. And don't get me started on the God awful dash in my daughter's Ford Edge. How many people read the owners manual?? Half the time I look stuff up in one, I have to get a chair, sit in the shade and read through it. I have to read each time on how to reset the oil minder light. On my DD, I have a Dynamo label stuck on the dash with the mileage on it. Now get off my lawn!

LOL …. I like you

rotard wrote: What happened is tragic, but is the operator's fault. When the seat is fully forward, it doesn't cover the lever and no one could sit in the seat anyway. His leg could have been blocking his view of it, depending on how large he was. When the elderly, or anyone else, reaches the point where they get confused then easily panicked, it's time for someone else to be spending time with them and taking them to the Waffle House.

what you're not getting is that it IS hard to see those levers if your limberness is shot to hell … you should see me trying to get out of a caged race car … it's amazing my teammates are able to help, as opposed to lying down and laughing themselves silly

throw in a bit of panic … added to maybe never having had a car with levers on the floor beside the door before …. then throw in a lot of panic …..

this is based on observed behavior .. not even a panic situation … my Mom wouldn't have any idea in the world how to find that lever … 'course she's 20 yrs older than he was

Trans_Maro wrote: When was the last time anyone was allowed to bring their not-an-assistance-dog into a restaurant? The dog was probably in the car. Probably with the car running, lights on and AC running, draining the battery. Alternator couldn't keep up or battery was weak. Car stalls, owner goes out to figure out why. Owner gets in car, doors lock, tries to start car, battery drains, doors won't unlock. Owner and dog die. I'd love to be wrong but I'm probably not.

(again, I didn't read the article) but small town Waffle Houses ?? I've seen it … your a local, regular, they great you by name, and have your drink and a bowl of water for the dog waiting for you as you come through the door … happens all the time

rotard wrote: What happened is tragic, but is the operator's fault. When the seat is fully forward, it doesn't cover the lever and no one could sit in the seat anyway. His leg could have been blocking his view of it, depending on how large he was. When the elderly, or anyone else, reaches the point where they get confused then easily panicked, it's time for someone else to be spending time with them and taking them to the Waffle House.

I'm guessing you've never been in the position to have to deny a parent or grandparent their "god given right to drive" … it's a discussion I've had to have with my late Father, and will have to have with my Mom in the not too distant future

and quite often there's no one nearby that can/will take on the responsible of forcing this to happen