Good News story about the Successful Campaign for Car Boot (trunk) Security

I read about the couple who were locked in the boot of their car. 

Afterwards it took a long campaign to persuade manufacturers that it was both desirable to install a luminous escape device, and affordable for the car manufacturers.

The trunk release for escape is luminous so it can be seen in the dark.

Next Safety Warning Needed

Now it's time for campaigns to install warning devices when babies children, adults or pets are locked in cards in the heat, left unattended and apparently forgotten for hours. This should happen to new cars in 2025. (see next post).

You might have a car from before then.

Suggestions include

Leave your phone or shoe beside the baby or child which you will take with you.

Set an alarm on your watch if leaving a baby or child in the car for just five minutes. Then if you are distracted, you will be reminded to return on time. 

Offload the baby into its carrycot indoors, ideally into the charge of a trusted adult, before fetching the luggage. 

Send a photo of the baby in the car to next of kin if leaving the baby for a few seconds, eg at a garage, so if you fell ill or were abducted your family would be alerted to rescue the baby.

Lock the car at a garage (called gas station in the USA) and take the key, so nobody can leap into the driving seat and drive off with the baby.

Before locking and leaving a car, always look all around your car for forgotten babies, pets, bags, jackets, valuables. 

Do not leave empty bags and jackets in cars. You may know that there is nothing valuable in your bag or jacket. But a thief in a hurry does not know that until after they have driven off or smashed the window to grab it. .At that moment they might be enraged with disappointment and damage the car or threaten you or the car occupant.

Let's end this good news story on a happy note. My favourite karma story is about the would be thief who opened a car boot and was confronted by a hiding terrorist with a machine gun.

Useful Websites

https://www.wikihow.com/Escape-From-the-Trunk-of-a-Car

 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13604819/family-carjacked-gunpoint-locked-trunk-save-lives.html

https://www.kbb.com/car-advice/rear-occupant-alert/

Please share links to your favoutie posts.

Two safety ideas: starting with proper safer spare tires

In Texas in March 2022, according to the accounts I read, a group of golfers and their coach were hit head-on by a Dodge pick up truck. The truck was driven by a 13 year old driving a vehicle with a 'spare tire'. 

Spare tires used to be large.

Photo author RLGNZLZ from Chile. For Thunderbird 292 hardtop 1956. From Wikipedia.

A tire on the back of the car, left room inside the boot (Americans say trunk) for your luggage.

 Let's take a closer look. I shall enlarge it for you.

Some designers put the tire inside the lockable boot (trunk). Additional advantages were streamlining the car shape for speed.

1960 valiant car (automobile).

Spare tires

The modern spare tire is thin and is supposed to be driven only at low speeds for a short distance to a garage to get a replacement tire.

The idea is that a thinner tire makes more space in the car boot (Americans call it automobile trunk). Bring back proper spare tires.

If you really put space in the car above passenger safety, you could dispense with spare tires and pull over and wait to be rescued by the Automobile Association (AA for short). (The American version is not the AA but the AAA, American Automobile Association.) But the AA would not want that. The cost of premiums would go up. More cars sitting around on motorways, waiting. And where would they wait?

Where do they go now to change the tire? In the slow lane, waiting for somebody to plough in the back of them. A common cause of death is not the first accident, but the second one, the pile-up. The pedestrian, contemplating the broken down car, stepping out in front of an overtaking vehicle.

When my car was hit on the M4 in London, I was horrified. My car shot across into the fast lane where the car revolved and stopped. The driver side door was hit and damaged and could not be opened. A driver of a lorry (Americans say truck), stopped (Forced to stop by debris across three lanes of the road). He ran up to help. Either the window was already down or I was able to wind it down. Whilst I contemplated trying to climb out of the window, or vaulting over the front seats into the back - but the back passenger seat was also dented, he pointed out, "You can get out on the passenger side!"

I did. I was horrified to find that the central reservation did not have enough kerb for a pedestrian to stand on, out of the way of traffic. 

My Accident

Two accidents waiting to happen just killed several people. When I was a child a spare tire was a proper tire. 

A motorway had a hard shoulder where you could move or be moved if you broke down. There the vehicle could be pushed in the case of an accident. So called smart motorways, which are really dumb motorways were unknown. 

Bring back the real smart motorways which have a hard shoulder. With clearer wide luminous strips to show where they are. Bring back proper spare tires.

Do you want to read that again? I would like to say it again.

Two accidents waiting to happen just killed several people. When I was a child a spare tire was a proper tire. A motorway had a hard shoulder where you could move or be moved if you broke down. There the vehicle could be pushed, in the case of an accident. 

So called 'smart' motorways, which are really dumb motorways were unknown. Bring back the real smart motorways which have a hard shoulder. Add clearer wide luminous strips to show where they are. Bring back proper spare tires.