Ahhh, a new car... There's nothing like it... They are marvels of engineering, luxurious and super fast. Some even drive themselves (to a degree).
However, chances are they also feature a potential death trap: The little-known, even less-understood self-lock mechanism.
What happened?
Last month in Melbourne, an eight-year-old boy was fighting for his life after being trapped in a hot car for several hours in the city's west. According to police, the boy had hidden in the car when his mother took his brother to school.
Emergency services were called to the scene just before 3pm. The boy was unresponsive when taken from the car. He was rushed to hospital in a critical condition. The outside temperature in Melbourne on that day soared to 32C.
Glück gehabt: Der Junge aus Melbourne wurde nach gut einer Woche aus dem Kinderkrankenhaus entlassen Source: AAP
How can this be?
How can this be, I asked myself when hearing about that story. How can an eight-year-old boy remain locked in a car? I had heard about toddlers and pets being trapped, with catastrophic consequences. But a bright, able school student?
Surely, he would just reach for the handle and open the door.
So off I went, to study my car's manual. And there it was, in black and white, on page 83: A little-known feature in modern cars, called self- or auto-lock.
How it works
When you lock a late-model car, predominately (but not exclusively) from Germany, all is fine. The car is locked on the outside and anyone left behind can simply open any door from the inside.
However, if you lock the car, then unlock it without opening a door (because you changed your mind or got distracted) the car will self- or auto-lock after approx 30 seconds, trapping any passengers inside!
In other words, they cannot open the doors nor lower the windows!
Laut Volkswagen Australia ist die automatische Türverriegelung von den Ingenieuren so gewollt, um Autodieben das Leben schwer zu machen. Source: AAP
So what's the solution?
One solution, it could be argued, is to pressure German and other car makers to re-engineer the feature or omitting it alltogether. That of course would inconvenience those who like the feature, not the least because it deters thieves.
How does it do that? Thieves can smash the window of a self-locked car from the outside, but they can't subsequently open the door from the inside - so good luck to them if they want to reach for something of value, let alone if it's hidden.
"Hammeridee"
The other solution of course is what this author would like to call his own personal "Hammeridee". In fact, he has already acted on the idea, permanently installing the tool in the car, neatly hidden away from preying eyes.
More importantly, he has instructed his school-aged children how to swing the hammer, should they ever fall victim to the car's self-lock mechanism. (Not to be used for any other purpose and only as a last resort, of course.)
And now back to the manual.
