An aside but i'd like to point out the biggest design difference and why that changed. The doors. They used to have a latch. That resulted in numerous deaths of children. The modern design using magnetic seals came about because of this.
If you like to be prepared for worst case scenarios, get a friend to duct tape your hands together and lock you in the trunk of your car and see if you can escape. Make sure the friend sticks around to rescue you if you fail or cry out for help.
I have a feeling this is one of those cases where a small handful of cases got a disproportionate amount of media attention. It doesn't hurt to fix the problem, but it ends up being one of thousands of possible problems that people arbitrarily decided to fixate on.