Couple trapped in car for 13 hours: AKA common sense WTF


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    Probably dehydration, people can't go very long without water, and they were quite old (late 60s).

    Either that or they were just exaggerating when they said unconscious, she was probably just asleep :trollface:



  • @DoctorJones said:

    and they were quite old (late 60s)

    At this point dementia could be a very possible explanation. Sadly.


  • BINNED

    @ijij said:

    Please keep this man: @cartman82 out of any and all governments.

    I dunno, it was a pretty funny post. Given how "useful" local politicians are, I'd probably vote for him. At least I'd get a chuckle instead of a facepalm when I see politics on TV instead of facepalms I perform right now.

    @Keith said:

    I suspect they'll settle for a law whereby all car manufacturers must attach a sticker to the door with an arrow pointing to the handle saying "<- Use handle to open door".

    Oh, yeah, that would work. Look, I dealt with a guy that complained that my tires are at a too high of a pressure while conducting vehicle inspection. While I was pointing at a huge fucking sticker manufacturer put on it showing exact pressures recommended. At that was someone who should know this shit.

    @cartman82 said:

    An evacuation plan for every seat in the car. Like you have in buildings in Europe.

    Would be as complicated as most of them in small stores and such: EXIT - The door you entered through. You know, the only one!

    @RaceProUK said:

    Mid-80s cars did have low fuel warning lights though…

    @blakeyrat said:

    What kind of cheap-ass car are we talking about? That was a standard feature in the 70s, and not even the late 70s.

    No warning light. Produced 1988 - 1996. No tachometer either. Huge analog clock in it's place. Because digital ones didn't exist. I guess? Note that this wasn't (still isn't) the cheapest car ever.


  • Java Dev

    @Onyx said:

    No tachometer either. Huge analog clock in it's place.

    Do you ever look at that? I don't. I shift by ear instead.


  • BINNED

    @PleegWat said:

    Do you ever look at that? I don't. I shift by ear instead.

    I do usually, too. But I still can't get used to the sounds this thing makes. Seriously, this diesel engine it has, it always sounds either like it's choking or I'm revving it too much. There is no middle ground.


  • Java Dev

    There's probably some other niche uses. Like engine braking, if you're not doing it often, makes different sounds than normal operation.



  • @DoctorJones said:

    This is quite a standard feature.

    Presumably this is by design, so people don't get trapped in their cars for hours on end.

    Did they also not consider winding down a window to let some air in?


  • FoxDev

    @tar said:

    Did they also not consider winding down a window to let some air in?

    Or to climb out of? If the windows were manual, that is; if electric, then you need the ignition on.



  • @Jaloopa said:

    They tried once, the door didn't open and they gave up

    "This is hopeless! Futile! Now I long for the sweet embrace of death!"



  • @FrostCat said:

    I was skeptical too when I first heard this story, but then one of my coworkers told me she was one of those people who ran out of gas when she first started driving because she didn't know you have to refill it.

    The first car I owned, I did this—I should emphasize it wasn't becuase I was unaware of the need to fuel the car, it was because I was not very familiar with the instrumentation, and the fuel gauge still looked like it was still pointed to ¼. I only did that the one time though...



  • @RaceProUK said:

    Mid-80s cars did have low fuel warning lights though…

    Mine didn't... :/



  • @redwizard said:

    @JazzyJosh said:
    WON'T ANYONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!!?!

    2 words: child locks.

    THEY WERE THINKING ABOUT THE CHILDREN ALL ALONG!!1



  • @powerlord said:

    Hell, how did they lock the doors in the first place? Car doors usually don't just lock themselves. Not unless you start driving anyway.

    No indication in the story that the doors were locked. They didn't even try opening the doors.

    I thought the doors would only work with the transponder, so I didn't try the handle.



  • INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO OPEN DOORS: part 1 of 257



  • Video games have taught me that doors with handles can always be opened and doors without handles are actually painted on the wall.



  • Staggering lack of curiosity though, don't you think?

    "I don't think I can open the door so rather than giving it a go on the offchance, I'll just sit here and wait for my inexorable demise."



  • The difference between a young person and an old person is that when you put a young person in front of a computer with strange images on it, they'll push the keys on the keyboard to see if they can change the image, and the old person will mutter under their breath about kids being on their house's frontal grass area.



  • @tar said:

    Staggering lack of curiosity though, don't you think?

    Was it a lack of curiosity, or a lack of will to live? If I was in a life-or-death situation, I'd try everything that offered even the slimmest chance of saving me.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @tar said:

    I was not very familiar with the instrumentation, and the fuel gauge still looked like it was still pointed to ¼.

    I did this once, shortly after I got a car, for the same reason. After that I knew basically how low the needle could go and I still would have a bit of gas.

    This was a '95 Ford Escort. I don't recall if it had a low gas indicator light or not, but I don't think so.



  • @FrostCat said:

    This was a '95 Ford Escort. I don't recall if it had a low gas indicator light or not, but I don't think so.

    I can't remember the exact year but mine was an Escort as well, probably somewhere in the '93-97 range. (I got it in 2001-2002, and it was over 5 years old by that time).

    I'm going to go out on a limb and say it didn't have the low gas light...



  • @ben_lubar said:

    Video games have taught me that doors with handles can always be opened and doors without handles are actually painted on the wall.

    There's a bad Newgrounds adventure game called "Trapped" where at one point you end up trapped INSIDE a car and have to escape. Retsupurae did it, it was pretty funny. Lots of "cars don't work that way!"



  • An eye witness said that they tried to break the window with a smartphone banging it hard on it, when that failed they just sat in there playing Candy Crash, waiting for their life to end. They were fortunate though, every 20 minutes they got a new live and that kept them going in those difficult times.



  • Why do I have a feeling that eventually, human legs will be vestigial?



  • Vestigialution theory

    Imagine all the things we could have done, if we still had our tail.



  • This reeks of urban legend. I couldn't prove it, but I suspect: Oh do I suspect.



  • How would you go about proving that something like this didn't happen, though? Proving a negative is kind of a bugger...



  • @tar said:

    Proving a negative is kind of a bugger...

    It takes much more research than I'm willing to do, because it involves tracing every story back to its source. Urban legends usually lead back to a cycle of stories that never really have an origin; they're passed from source to source to source without having any basis in a real story that can be tracked down.

    But they have general characteristics: Horror story (trapped, almost to death), incompetent humans, and/or runaway technology (locked car with no means of exit). They can be quite specific, even given with particular names. They're often designed to trigger people to warn others (chain letter effect).

    One thing that is kind of indicative in this case: In a Google search, the earliest story I can find is December 13, 2014 (Otago Daily Times). But Guy Fawkes night is November 5...why wait a whole month?

    Like I said, reeks.



  • @CoyneTheDup said:

    the earliest story I can find is December 13,

    Yeah, the OP is either the 18th December (5 days later) or the 12th Eighteenber (not a real date). Then again, maybe it was reported but google didn't catch it? *shrug* Maybe it took them fully five weeks to recover from their ordeal; maybe it took that long before they were prepared to admit they spent 13 hours in their car for no good reason at all?



  • @FrostCat said:

    I did this once, shortly after I got a car, for the same reason. After that I knew basically how low the needle could go and I still would have a bit of gas.

    I used to run out all the time when I was a student and only kept the minimum in the tank for it to go, due to budget constraints. Once I was going down a hill and ran out, luckily managed to coast to the bottom, cross traffic and roll into a servo. :)

    I don't think my two early 80s cars had fuel warning lights (Laser and Cortina).

    @Onyx said:

    No tachometer

    Interestingly I've owned six cars in my life. Three were manual and three had tachometers. Guess the cross over? That's right: my three automatics had tachometers.

    @Onyx said:

    Huge analog clock in it's place

    My sister's corolla had a clock but my mate's corolla of similar vintage had a tachometer, so maybe it was an optional feature?


  • kills Dumbledore

    My first moped had a fuel gauge that went from well over the full mark when you filled it, to empty when the tank was half full. The odometer didn't work, because it was a piece of shit, cheapest I could find vehicle, and the tank was so small that when it first read empty you couldn't get the 2 litre minimum delivery from a petrol pump, so I had to run on apparently empty for quite a while.

    Iran out of fuel 3 or 4 times on that shitty scooter


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @ben_lubar said:

    old person will mutter under their breath about kids being on their house's frontal grass area.

    Hey, @boomzilla isn't that bad! 😉


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @DoctorJones said:

    Hey, @boomzilla isn't that bad! 😉

    Right. I never mutter. That doesn't work. You have to yell.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @PleegWat said:

    IIRC you need to have removed yourself from the gene pool to qualify for that?

    .. and ideally have not reproduced. These guys were 65 and 68 - they probably have grandkids.



  • @Zemm said:

    I used to run out all the time when I was a student and only kept the minimum in the tank for it to go, due to budget constraints.

    I used to do that, too. However, as a friend pointed out to his college-age kids many years later, even if you can only afford to buy $X worth of gas at a time, it doesn't cost any more to go from full-X to full than it does from 0 to X, and you're a lot less likely to get stuck on the side of the road if you can't refuel when you need to.



  • @Zemm said:

    roll into a servo.

    Noooo!



  • My grandpa used to say, "the gas feeds just as well from the top half of the tank as it does from the bottom."

    Meaning, if you can't afford full fill-ups, at least do your partial fill-ups at the halfway mark instead of waiting for the tank to go bone-dry.


  • kills Dumbledore

    Some people keep their tanks low on the basis that it costs more to haul the extra weight of fuel. The problem with this, of course, is that you can save at least as much weight by emptying all the crap from your boot and the savings are probably in the order of a few pennies per tank's worth of petrol


  • FoxDev

    @Jaloopa said:

    Some people keel their tanks low on the basis that it costs more to haul the extra weight of fuel.

    Given a typical fuel tank size of 45l, and assuming 1l fuel = 1kg (it doesn't, but it's close enough for this), that's, at best, saving about 40kg. Even the smallest cars weight around 1000kg; a full tank is a 4% weight change, which does almost nothing. Hell, the driver adds more weight than the fuel!


  • kills Dumbledore

    Yeah. You can probably save a lot more by having enough leeway to be able to wait until you're passing a cheaper petrol station and filling up for 1p/l less. Also by not having to call out a breakdown service because you ran out like a moron


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Jaloopa said:

    My first moped had a fuel gauge that went from well over the full mark when you filled it, to empty when the tank was half full

    Fuel gauges are TRWTF, clearly. I've had cars where "full to the brim" meant the needle was touching the top of the F line, and others where it went way over, and the corresponding situation on the bottom. After a while, of course, if you're slightly observant, you can guesstimate pretty well how much longer you can go without needing a fillup.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    Yes but trying explaining that to the sort of person who runs the tank low to save weight.

    Or the person who thinks putting £10 each time is cheaper than just putting a full tank in less often.
    Yes, those people exist.


  • kills Dumbledore

    You should also fill up at night when the cold means you get more mass of fuel per litre. Just before midnight if prices are rising (in case the price goes up at midnight) and just after if it's falling.


  • FoxDev

    Plus you won't have to waste fuel queueing 😄


  • Java Dev

    My car (2008 clio) has a computer display which shows, among other things, the estimated range in KM. Thou it blanks out when less than 5 liters remain in the tank.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @PleegWat said:

    My car (2008 clio) has a computer display which shows, among other things, the estimated range in KM.

    My Kia has a DTE indicator too, but it's not terribly consistent/accurate, because it's strongly weighted towards more-or-less instantaneous fuel usage. It cuts out when the estimated distance is less than 30 miles.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    You should also drive 10 miles to the petrol station that's like 2p/litre cheaper.


  • kills Dumbledore

    I did actually let my bike run out of fuel a few months ago rather than fill up for 10p/litre more on the motorway. The difference with a bike is that there's a reserve you can switch to for emergency "get me to the petrol station" coverage, so the only hardship was stopping on the dual carriageway to switch to it


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @PleegWat said:

    My car (2008 clio) has a computer display which shows, among other things, the estimated range in KM

    @FrostCat said:

    My Kia has a DTE indicator too, but it's not terribly consistent/accurate, because it's strongly weighted towards more-or-less instantaneous fuel usage

    The one in my Golf is fairly accurate until you get near the bottom of the tank and it shows 0 miles a bit sooner than it should. I don't normally let the tank get that low though so it's not a real problem.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Jaloopa said:

    I did actually let my bike run out of fuel a few months ago rather than fill up for 10p/litre more on the motorway. The difference with a bike is that there's a reserve you can switch to for emergency "get me to the petrol station" coverage, so the only hardship was stopping on the dual carriageway to switch to it

    A lot of my fill ups are at motorway service stations. I stopped paying attention to what it costs per litre ages ago. I just go for the nearest Shell or BP garage.


  • FoxDev

    Your wallet must hate you 😛


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