This week in the news a woman was rescued from her car which caught fire after she hit a pile of slush and the door locks and all other electronics instantly became disabled. The news clip went on to demonstrate two escape methods. First they showed how to use a hand-held spring-loaded center punch to break a window. But, the slower, less destructive method was to fold down the back seat and crawl over to the safety release and push the trunk open. I had to look it up again and found this picture. After you fold the seat down you need to open the mini-trunk and remove a little access panel so you can move the hatch-release lever that might save your life someday.
This has always bugged me. Don't cars with trunks have a big, easy-to-see, glow-in-the-dark T-handle for releasing trunk? With the Prius it's a small, recessed metal tab, difficult to see in the dark, and below the top floor, so you have to lift that up and out of the way, in cramped quarters (without kneeling on it). And then pry off a little cover. I've never tried our btw, maybe should. If my posts-per-hour rates falls off, you'll know what happened.
if i'm sinking in the river, i'll probably go the broken glass route. don't the prius doors unlock manually?
Yeah we have one of those combo emergency and light and glass hammer dealies, in the centre console. All the doors are mechanical though, aren't they? Maybe hard to push open with water pressure?
The hatch lever moved easily enough while the trunk was open- now you have me wondering. Also, the manual door locks feel suspiciously light to move. I hope I'm wrong, but it feels like there is no mechanical linkage connected to them. Speaking of water pressure, even with roll-down windows, in a submerged car they become so tight in the track that they still won't budge until there is water on both sides of the glass.
you have to wait for the pressure to equalize by letting the car fill with water and breathing up near the ceiling. not panicking is the hard part. i guess you could disconnect the 12v and try the door lock mech.
But when you operate them there is no noise from an actuator, like when you operate the central locking - yet they do unlock the doors. I haven't tried with the power disconnected but I would expect they would work. Not sure what is typical on cars sold in North America, but on "sedans" sold in Europe there are often large handles or brightly-coloured straps in the "trunk" - but in my experience these are to unlock the seats (so they can be folded down), not open the trunk to the outside world.
I have done this to get at a dead 12-volt battery. It is very slow, frustrating, and annoying. And that's with the car out of the water. Once you get at it you have to reach all around and try to figure which bit is the handle, and then you have to work it through all the possible ways it might move until you find one. If it happened to me, I would expect to be fully settled onto the bottom of the lake long before I got the hatch opened.
