Jalopnik:
This is one of the most common shared experiences in all of automobilia: You’re outside a car, trying to get in. The person inside the car is attempting to open the door lock at the same time you’re pulling the handle to open the door. A comedy of errors ensues, with each of your actions canceling out the other’s, leaving you both pulling handles or locking buttons over and over, in a seemingly never-ending mechanical stalemate. Eventually, someone yells for someone to let go, already, and the nightmare ends. But why must it be this way? What’s going on?
Why can’t you pull the door handle while the door is being unlocked? Why would such a fundamental mechanism of a car have such a frustrating flaw? Well, the answer is simple mechanics. (Except, as we found out, there’s nothing simple about door latches.)
I had no idea car door locks were so insanely complicated.
I happen to know that inside each door is a homunculus-sized Franz Kafka, working his magic to frustrate the user.
“I think the biggest takeaway here is, holy crap, car locks and latches are complicated. They’re like the human foot of cars. Human feet have the highest concentration of bones and are mechanically really complicated, likely the most mechanically complex system in the body, and yet they rarely get any respect outside of podiatrists and I guess foot fetishists.”
You go, foot fetish folk! You appreciate that well-designed foot! Look at how complicated, how robust, how…
…wait, wait. What are you doing?
Oh my god. What are you doing?
STOP THAT.
OH MY GOD.
ain’t nobody got time for that