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Comment by freetonik | Hacker News Reader

I drive a VW ID.3, and while it has traditional door handles, there is a feature that drives me crazy: it auto-locks the doors when you start driving. There is no way to turn this off. In case of a crash, the doors won't open from the outside. But they will also not open from the inside in case the electronics related to the central locking is damaged in the crash. I don't understand how this is considered a safety feature.

In every single other car I'd driven there was a way to permanently disable such feature. Not in ID.3.

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All modern cars have been locking the doors for the last 20 years or so, as far as I know. At least here in Western Europe.

The door handles still work from the inside, they mechanically unlock the door unconditionally, meaning nobody can be trapped inside even by manually locking the doors.

The exception is if you flip the "child safety" switch which disconnects the inside door handle of the rear doors.

>All modern cars have been locking the doors for the last 20 years or so, as far as I know.

Yeah, and I would always disable that feature. Perhaps that was wrong to do, and now that I don't have a choice it's actually safer for me and my passengers.

I hate this "feature". Was there a rash of children jumping out of cars that lead to its creation? It just seems like such a narrow set of facts where a child is big and smart enough to open the door but dumb enough to jump out and get seriously hurt. Opening a moving car door is presumably quite difficult given the aerodynamic pressure on the body. So the car would have to be moving rather slow and yet turning and moving fast enough that the child couldn't avoid disaster.

I always assumed it to was prevent carjacking?

> I always assumed it to was prevent carjacking?

There can be more than one valid reason for a thing.

I was talking about child locks which can be opened from the outside and increase the risk to children in the event of a car jacking.

If you're talking about the child safety, it's unrelated to door locking.

It prevents children from exiting the car before an adult can ensure it is safe to do so. Mostly to prevent the child getting run over by a passing car, or dooring a passing bicycle. If you don't like it you can just not enable it.

Yes, and actually this makes a ton of sense. I perceive the risk of my children opening and falling out of the moving car as low relative to being trapped in a car in a bad situation. But I could absolutely see the idiots trying to bolt 0.28273 seconds after I put the car in park. I'll update my thinking.

You may be on to something. I drove a BMW that, when the electric window position sensors went bad, the whole car went into limp mode and didn't let you accelerate over a certain speed. I imagine the rationale being out could not verify the windows were not down? Crazy still... the first and only BMW. I should have stuck to old Nissans

Things go wrong on cars, it doesn't mean they're bad as a brand. I loved my BMW. Have a Volvo now and apart from the slightly crap entertainment software I love it. They're replaced the software with carplay in the newer models, and updated older models, but alas they can't update my model due to a hardware mismatch.

It's the cars where things constantly go wrong that you should avoid. Jags + Land Rovers have those reputations in the UK.

It's fine that a window position sensor might eventually fail on a car. It's not fine that a window position sensor causes the car to limit its maximum speed.

It was less that it went wrong, and more that when something small went wrong it became a complex issue due to how the system was built, and how it handled a module failure.

The car was entirely capable of continuing to operate normally, but the operator is not trusted by BMW. Their ecosystem locks out the owner from easily maintaining their car as well, which made even more painful as I had no trouble identifying and sourcing a new module.

> Was there a rash of children jumping out of cars that lead to its creation?

No, there was a rash of carjackings in the 1990s. It was where someone would walk up to a car stopped at an intersection and open the door.

That seems an equally insane reason to make every car everywhere auto-lock on drive, given the safety considerations of default unlocked.

By all means let's increase common risk severity for everyone in order to demonstrate we're doing something about a rare tail risk. /s

> Opening a moving car door is presumably quite difficult given the aerodynamic pressure on the body. So the car would have to be moving rather slow

Actually, no - at least not slow by my definition.

You’d have to drive over 130km/h, this is when you need some serious force to open the door more than maybe 10-20cm - but anything slower than that, it’s still pretty easy, certainly easy enough for a kid to open the door wide enough to fall out or get in serious trouble..

Source: 18 year old stupid me and buddies, doing stuff like opening driving cars doors, going over 100km/h

Also source: 14 yo me opening the door of my parents car on a speedway (Europe, so around 90 km/h) and having stuff fly off the car door

> It just seems like such a narrow set of facts where a child is big and smart enough to open the door but dumb enough to jump out and get seriously hurt.

I had to guess, I'd guess you aren't a parent or spend much time interacting with children :)

Also, auto-lock reduces theft and carjacking risk, which is nice.

Parent of 2 actually, and lots of time.

I'm talking about child locks, not auto-lock. Locking the door from the inside. A commenter above suggests that it's to stop the little idiots from popping out into the middle of the street .7845 seconds after I put it in park. That actually makes some sense.

Ah got it. The conversation upthread had focused on auto-lock, and someone had mentioned child locks in passing, and my read of your comment was on the auto-lock on shift to drive (or on starting to move). And my bad for falsely guessing you weren't speaking from personal experience!

A friend's 3 year old absolutely opened the door last year while we were driving. Luckily she was strapped in her car seat, but otherwise could've easily fallen out.

I'm renting a 2025 Chevy Malibu sedan in the U.S. right now, and for the driver door, I have to pull the handle twice. The first pull unlocks it, the second pull opens it. I think it is digital and not mechanical.

There is no mechanical lock I can pull on, just a push button with a light to indicate that the door is locked. I hate this car.

I thought that about my car (a Honda) as well, having not RTFM. In this case at least, there's a touch sensor on the inside of the handle. Lay hand on it, wait half a second to unlock, pull. No double pull needed.

I've got a 2012 Toyota Avensis and it does not lock the doors automatically.

> All modern cars have been locking the doors for the last 20 years or so, as far as I know.

No? My Honda Civic from 2016 certainly does not.

I was curious, so I googled it. Here's a video showing the settings for a 2016 Civic...maybe you have it turned off? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkEvKIik52k

The Civic Touring is/was high end, and rather more expensive.

Mine is a cheaper, european model, which if you are willing to pay for it, of course have all the fancy stuff like keyless ignition, auto door locks, auto high beam system, security systems etc as addons to the standard model.

I'm not that rich so..

The doors of an ID.3 will unlock automatically when the airbags are deployed. It's described in the AutoLock section of the owners manual.

Thanks! I stand corrected, I have missed that part in the manual.

This is part of the Euro NCAP standard:

> Automatic Door Locking (ADL): System in the vehicle whereby the door latches automatically lock once the vehicle has reached a certain speed. They should also automatically unlock in the event of an accident, post impact.

https://cdn.euroncap.com/media/43396/euro-ncap-rescue-extric...

They also have a section for electric retractable door handles (5.3), including

> It is assumed that by design the door handles will extend outwards ready for use when the SRS system deploys any airbag/detects a severe impact or the door handle remains in its retracted position but can be grabbed nevertheless by the first responder without any tool.

I wonder if Tesla's don't do this? Or if it didn't in this case?

"should" as in "recommended"? (I am not a native speaker of English)

Honestly, not sure. I think this is open to interpretation (and maybe is clarified elsewhere in their documentation).

Euro NCAP is a voluntary assessment program, so I believe all of these are just recommendations that will impact a vehicles scoring rather than mandatory safety standards.

That, presumably, is an electronic/computerized feature, not mechanical. So if the car is damaged enough to not have electricity, or that board was damaged in whatever caused the airbags to deploy, then the doors won't automatically unlock.

Given the kinds of things that could make an airbag go off, I wouldn't bet on that feature working when needed.

>Given the kinds of things that could make an airbag go off, I wouldn't bet on that feature working when needed.

As 3D30497420 said, this is part of Euro NCAP. They test for exactly this [1]. Why would you assume a safety system wouldn’t work?

[1] “If ADL is fitted as standard and by default always on then the doors will be locked by the lab personnel prior to ALL full-scale tests… Post-test the lab personnel will immediately check if any of the side doors inthe front crash tests and any of the non-struck side doors in the side crash tests has remained locked/has not automatically unlocked.” https://cdn.euroncap.com/media/43396/euro-ncap-rescue-extric...

There are crash sensors to trigger air bags, pre-tension seatbelts, cut off the fuel pump and so on. You would think that some engineer must have thought about auto-unlocking doors!

Only after the user story has been written in blood.

The reasoning behind the auto-locking feature is that when the doors are locked it adds to rigidity of the car and thus decreases the likelyhood of the passanger cabin collapsing on the occupants. Auto unlocking the doors would completely defeat the reason for that feature.

The actual mechanism of how the door works as kind of "configurable deformation zone" usually involves somewhat thick steel rod running down the middle of the door that on hinge side abbuts similar strength member in the chasis and on the latch side connects to the latch. The latch has two distinct positions depending on whether the door is just latched or locked and the only latched position is not strong enough to hold the potential impact forces..

Huh! Autolocking behavior has bothered me for as long as I remember seeing it, and I’d love to believe that it improves safety against crashes (rather than notional “bad guys trying to open the door on your journey” or something). It’s only ever inconvenienced me, never helped.

I’m having trouble finding more formal explanations for what you’re describing, though. I see a lot of talk about how the latching behavior links the door’s steel into the rest of the body, but very little about the structural aspects of the locks that link the handles to the latch’s release mechanism.

I’m the farthest thing from a car engineer, but I wonder if you’d know of anyplace I could read more about this structural aspect of locking design? Every time I accidentally lock out a passenger, I get frustrated: I’d find grace and patience easier to muster if I understood how someday it might save both our lives :)

I am also not a car engineer, but from my reading of "Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards; Door Locks and Door Retention Components" [1] it is the latching that is meant to prevent the door opening, not the locks. However, even many modern cars have a mechanical linkage from the handle to the door. In a crash the mechanical linkage, particularly older style tension-type linkages, could unlatch the door when your body hit the door from the inside and physically moved the linkage [2]. A lot of doors use electric actuators now [3], and linkages are much better designed, but it seems like it could still be an issue, in theory.

[1] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2007/02/06/07-517/...

[2] http://www.autosafetyexpert.com/defect_doorlatch.php

[3] https://bestsellingcarsblog.com/2023/10/media-post-actuator-...

> The reasoning behind the auto-locking feature is that when the doors are locked it adds to rigidity of the car

No, this is not the primary reason. The primary reason is safety from potential attack while in a confined, transitional space.

My late grandparents' Lincoln Mark VII non-LSC had autolocking doors when shifting into drive in 1988.

They have, from the owner manual (page 106 https://ownersmanuals2.com/d/101316/volkswagen-id3-2025-owne...)

Automatic unlocking (Auto Unlock) All vehicle doors and the boot lid are automatically unlocked if one of the following conditions applies:

— In an accident, when airbags have triggered.

— Or: the electronic parking brake is engaged and the ignition is switched off.

—Or: the door release lever has been operated. This applies at speeds up to around 15 km/h(around 9 mph).

This makes sense! But see your the sibling comment.

This has been around for 20+ years. It's a security feature that can often be disabled like here after Googling for 3 seconds: https://www.bitauto.com/ask/100122848912/ For safety, it's generally recommended to leave it on unless you want involuntary passengers.

I don’t know what this site is, looks like AI generated slop to be honest, but I can say that I have not found neither the option to disable it, not any report by any ID.3 forum user OR a corresponding entry in the user manual that would confirm the presence of this feature.

IIRC...on my older VW there is a way to set this to disable but it requires using OBDeleven/VCDS (or similar) via the CANBUS.

Typically, there are a few different options of things you can enable/disable that have no other menu options. OBDeleven has "one touch apps" that makes this easy...but there is also other ways to do things using the adaptations or long coding.

If you do any work on your own car having something like OBDeleven is pretty much required. You can't even change the rear brake pads without it.

It's been a long time since I've had a vehicle (car or truck) that didn't auto-lock the doors.

I didn't say it's a new feature. I said the inability to disable it is.

> But they will also not open from the inside in case the electronics related to the central locking is damaged in the crash.

Are you sure? Wont the internal handle unlock the door by mechanical means?

I am not sure. The driver's door handle unlocks all 4 doors, so at least that path is electronic. But I hope yes, each door's handle can also unlock the corresponding door's lock mechanically.

This can't be legal.

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