this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
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I had something similar happen to me years ago in a Toyota minivan. The car stalled and died in traffic, some kind of electrical glitch. I got out to raise the hood. The door closed behind me and it came up with just enough battery to lock itself, with my keys in the ignition and my two babies and quadriplegic husband inside. It was 107° outside. And pre-cellphones. I bolted to the nearby gas station to call 911 and grab something to break a window. Meanwhile hubby tried to coach toddler how to wriggle out of car seat and open door, but straps were too snug. Firehouse was near, and the jammed traffic was all in one direction so they used the opposite side and didn't take long, and they jimmied the door open quickly. But it was boiling in there. Sat the kids by the road to cool off with water and get checked by paramedics, gave water to husband in car with open doors, and waited for a tow to the gas station so I could lower the ramp and get my husband out. Meanwhile of course we made the traffic even worse, but people weren't too mad when they saw our plight as they squeezed past.
I'm wondering, did some similar glitch happen here, or do Tesla doors lock every time they shut?
Might be the doors are fail shut if anything happens... But that seems like the worst design ever.
Come to think of it, it's basic design to designate features as fail closed/fail open on loss of power in an emergency, and you go with what's inherently safe. It appears Tesla did not consider basic safety design. To no one's surprise.
You're assuming they didn't consider it, vs having considered it and thought that its more important to protect property than peoples' lives. Again, to no one's surprise.
It really says something when even oil companies will design for these considerations but Tesla won't.
I design process control equipment for a living and you are 100% correct. When the controller/PLC dies or the power goes out everything goes to a safe state that protects the human. Big part of the design decisions.
I've unfortunately been working on process control strategies for almost a year now on new and novel applications for my company, so I've been intimately familiar with this. If it isn't obvious, this isn't my favorite professional area of interest hahaha.
Designating fail open and fail closed valves is so intrinsic to what I've been doing that I can't imagine someone designing a car control system and not thinking about that at all.
I designed a quencher system that failed closed, no water flowing, during outages once. Granted I was an intern but still not my proudest moment.
It's weird now as my employer is slowing moving into motion control tech for waste. Seeing the changes like having to really think about hardwired limit switches and safety relays. Chemical world I feel is easier.
We all make mistakes. I once forgot to include gravity in a pressure drop calculation for a 100 ft vertical pipe as part of a steam drum system. I had to send an awkward email revising the design pressure I previously communicated out.
But hey, if we were perfect, we wouldn't need peer review.
I have a little bit of experience with limit switches, but that's really interesting. It certainly seems like an unusual system. I'm a lot more familiar with safety relays.
Imagine there is a process that makes a gas that is too hot. The solution is to spray the gas outlet with water. That's a quencher. The PLC controls the amount the water valve is open or rather how much to close it. If the PLC dies the valve should open up as much as possible and blast water. It is better to waste water instead of risking hot gas going through ducting systems that can't handle it.
My mistake was putting failed closed valves in the system. If there was a power outage or a dead PLC no water would have cooled the gas. And presumably the ducting would have melted and there would have been fires.
Like I said my most embarrassing mistake. At least we caught it before shipment.
It happens! The important part is review and learning from the mistakes.
I'm glad that had a happy ending and sorry that happen. Autolock is so dangerous.
Most cars I've used with it won't lock until you put it in drive or start moving at a certain speed; I assume that's because of incidents like this one.
Tesla model 3 doors do not lock immediately every time they shut. But if you use your cell phone as a key, the default behavior is that they are locked if you walk away with the phone a few yards.
IDK about Tesla but yeah Toyotas like to lock themselves.
Auto-lock doors have been a nightmare in general. I always roll a window down at least far enough to stick an arm through every time I get out of a running car because of the one time forever ago that I left a 90s Pontiac Skylark running, shut the door, and it autolocked with the keys in the ignition and the motor running. I had to get my girlfriend to drive me back to my apartment for the spare key while the car was humming away, and I never forgot that. If I wasn't close to home, with a helpful ride nearby, and a spare key on hand, I'd have been screwed.
Talk about features that need regulated out. All because suburban whites don't want to remember to lock the doors as they drive through the black neighborhood so the car locks itself whenever you put it in Drive.
Color discrimination?
Yup, racism. Right out in the open. Upvoted, even.
Every car I've driven with keyless ignition (which seems to be the standard now) refuses to lock if it detects the key inside the car, even if you try to do it manually by pressing the lock button, so hopefully this is a solved problem now.
I've honestly never heard of self-locking cars doors, that's a crazy idea.
Our new keyless ignition vehicle wouldn't fully close the hatch with the doors locked and the keys in the car. It would go down half way and play the "I can't close" noise.
Last couple cars I've had that's been a setting you can change... I set mine to lock when the car moves at more than a few mph, the other options seemed like too high a chance to cause an accidental lockout to me
Specifically, it's that the doors opening mechanisms are powered, and the power was not being applied to open them. There is no exterior mechanical entry option.
Ah, that is stupid.