Motoring Discussion > Limo Fire - Five dead Miscellaneous
Thread Author: BobbyG Replies: 26
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New Mon 6 May 13 21:18 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - BobbyG
uk.news.yahoo.com/bride-among-five-killed-limo-fire-063452450.html#264Xlmn

Although this was in California, I often worry about the limos you see about our area - always look like they have probably came to the end of their American life and then been shipped over to UK. Usually full of drunken women but have seen on many occasions young kids hanging out the windows waving away.
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New Mon 6 May 13 22:17 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - Slidingpillar
I often worry about the limos you see about our area - always look like they have probably came to the end of their American life and then been shipped over to UK

I understand that to be the case too. Would fail the inspection for whatever they are classed as over there and shipped over here. Wouldn't catch me driving one; horrid things!
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New Tue 7 May 13 00:59 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - Armel Coussine
>> Wouldn't catch me driving one; horrid things!

No, they must be pretty horrible to drive, and slow too (although they may have a sort of vintage feel as a result don't you think Sp?). Then there are the sort of people who fancy going in them... I bet they are usually a bit trying after a couple of bacardi breezers...

The OP and the story on which it is based are pretty horrific though. How come no one could open the back doors from inside, or make the driver understand their cries of alarm? Driver/firm for the high jump financially I would think. Perhaps the car's maker too, in the litigious US. The thing did burst into flames after all.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Tue 7 May 13 at 01:00
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New Tue 7 May 13 11:46 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - TeeCee
>> How come no one could open the back doors from inside

I wondered that and my guess is a combination of "elf 'n safety", modern vehicle security practice and the Law of Unintended Consequences.

I reckon they've got auto-locking while the vehicle is moving, no mechanical lock/unlock buttons - just switches and that by the time it had stopped the wiring running to the back doors was already fried...
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New Tue 7 May 13 12:06 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - Old Navy
>> I reckon they've got auto-locking while the vehicle is moving, no mechanical lock/unlock buttons -
>> just switches and that by the time it had stopped the wiring running to the
>> back doors was already fried...
>>

My car has auto locking but the internal door handles over ride the system, as does an impact.
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New Tue 7 May 13 12:13 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - No FM2R
My Landcruisers have auto locking and the door handles do NOT over ride the system.

I don't know about an impact.

The handles do over ride in the Dodge and the Mitsubishi POS.
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New Tue 7 May 13 12:21 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - Zero
I can verify the Laguna overrides the auto locking in the event of a crash.
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New Tue 7 May 13 13:40 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - No FM2R
Actually just been out in one of the Toyotas and realised that it has the sticky up things on the top of the door that one can manually lift up.

(That ought to get me the "Rubbish Explanation of the Day" award).
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New Tue 7 May 13 13:49 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - TeeCee
>> My car has auto locking but the internal door handles over ride the system, as
>> does an impact.
>>

I've seen more than a few where the handle does nothing until the unlocking is actuated and where the unlocking is not mechanical.
An impact may well override it but a) there doesn't seem to have been one in this case and b) if the wiring's already fried that isn't going to work either.

Another thing's occurred to me. Do not custom, stretch limousines often have only the one rear door on the nearside?
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New Tue 7 May 13 23:06 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - Slidingpillar
No, they must be pretty horrible to drive, and slow too (although they may have a sort of vintage feel as a result don't you think Sp?).
Hardly! I bet even a vintage bus is nicer to drive. Stretch limos have a colossal wheelbase and probably a turning circle that make an ocean liner look nimble...
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New Tue 7 May 13 01:14 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - No FM2R
>>Wouldn't catch me driving one;

Never driven one, but I once collected my parents from Atlanta Airport in one and took them out to Lake Lanier in a pleasantly alcoholic haze.

I thought it was rather fun.
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New Thu 9 May 13 09:31 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - Tigger
>> I often worry about the limos you see about our area - always look like
>> they have probably came to the end of their American life and then been shipped
>> over to UK
>>

A bunch of the limos were tested in our area, I think by trading standards, and about half of them were declared unfit - some with some major defects.
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New Tue 7 May 13 08:45 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - Ian (Cape Town)
There was a fifth gear episode a few years back where they crash-tested one into a concrete block. Spectacular damage and mayhem inside, as all the structural integrity had been lost when they did the original cut-and-shut in extending the cabin.
Sure, there's some decent properly built limos, but a lot of them are just bodywork stretch and fill-in-with-sheet-metal-and-girder construction.
I drove in one a while back, and was appalled at the OTT opulence inside, that was reminiscent of a nightclub... inasmuch there was a lot of stuff which would come loose in the event of a collision, and all the fluffy tat trimming was a fire risk of note.


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New Tue 7 May 13 13:57 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - TeeCee
I saw something a while back that may shed light on that.
Apparently many places in the US introduced rules around the construction of stretched limos for hire some time ago for precisely that reason, so the current ones are all pretty solid. I remember seeing a documentary on a firm that made the things, where they went through all the construction, reinforcement and inspection legislation they had to comply with.

A nasty side effect was a massive selloff on the cheap of the cut 'n shut types, rendered unusable by the legislative changes, to other parts of the world. Thus older stretched Yanks in the UK are often the dodgy ones.
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New Tue 7 May 13 19:54 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - Shiny
Anyone know about London black cabs, I can't afford to use them, but I remember as a child the doors autolocked, and that was in the mid 1980s.
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New Tue 7 May 13 19:56 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - Zero
dont they lock on the move and unlock when stationary? (or the other way round? I know they are constantly chattering away)
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New Tue 7 May 13 23:40 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - Mr. Ecs
Rear doors on black cabs remain closed as long as the driver keeps his foot on the brake pedal. To stop runners on reaching destination and not paying.
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New Wed 8 May 13 08:19 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - TeeCee
>> Rear doors on black cabs remain closed as long as the driver keeps his foot
>> on the brake pedal. To stop runners on reaching destination and not paying.
>>

Actually I think it was because some child once fell out of one and Esther Rantzen ran a campaign to get the doors locked.
Presumably all that effort and expense saves about 0.000002 lives a year.

When I was a lad, if I'd played with the door handles in a taxi, one of my parents would have provided a sharp wallop to the hand doing the playing, solving the problem. I suppose that the sensible solution is not to be countenanced these days.
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New Wed 8 May 13 08:25 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - Zero
A statement by LTI some time ago after a spate of black cab fires.



The door locking system on the London taxi works through motion sensors so that when the vehicle is in motion the locks in the passenger compartment operate to prevent the doors from being opened from inside the taxi. When the vehicle is not in motion the doors can be opened unless the driver depresses the brake pedal in which case the doors remain locked from the inside of the passenger compartment.

In normal operating circumstances the rear passenger compartment door locking system is designed so that the door can be opened from the outside and overrides the vehicles motion locking system.

In the event of a fire causing electrical failure the motion locking system would fail and would not engage the rear passenger door locking thus allowing the rear passengers to exit the vehicle. The passengers would also still be able to open or break the rear window and open the doors using the outside handle.

In some circumstances, although this is not usual, a driver might engage the manual central door locking system. In this instance, a passenger is still able to disengage the central door locking by flipping the lever by the door handle clearly marked “unlock” and then is able to exit the vehicle in the same conditions as above."
Last edited by: Zero on Wed 8 May 13 at 08:25
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New Wed 8 May 13 08:32 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - Old Navy
>> When I was a lad, if I'd played with the door handles in a taxi,
>> one of my parents would have provided a sharp wallop to the hand doing the
>> playing, solving the problem. I suppose that the sensible solution is not to be countenanced
>> these days.
>>

I believe the vast majority of parents have more common sense than the do gooders give them credit for and they totally ignore their claptrap. If a child is going to put their hand on something hot, or otherwise dangerous, a light rap on the back of their hand teaches more than words and is an instant lesson. An explanation should accompany it if the child is old enough to understand it.
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New Wed 8 May 13 08:52 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - Zero

>> I believe the vast majority of parents have more common sense than the do gooders
>> give them credit for and they totally ignore their claptrap. If a child is going
>> to put their hand on something hot, or otherwise dangerous, a light rap on the
>> back of their hand teaches more than words and is an instant lesson.

A burn on the fingers is the best lesson of all. After that you just need to tell them which is hot and which is not.
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New Wed 8 May 13 10:45 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - Old Navy
>> A burn on the fingers is the best lesson of all. After that you just
>> need to tell them which is hot and which is not.
>>

A typical wishy washy liberal answer, let your child harm themselves, don't let them know who is boss, never say "No", and let them grow up feral.
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New Wed 8 May 13 10:48 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - Zero
WHat a stupid reply.
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New Thu 25 Jul 13 13:33 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - retgwte
When I worked in Chicago I used to get stretch limos quiet often, you can book them like taxis and the price is very competitive.

They were very funny in icy weather though sliding allover the place.

I would never get one here they just dont fit the roads, or the style of driving.
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New Thu 25 Jul 13 13:59 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - TeeCee
>> I would never get one here they just dont fit the roads,
>>

Ah yes, the Yank Tank problem.
Funniest one of those I heard was during the Balkan conflict, when the Yanks were disconcerted to find that their jeep-designed-by-a-committee, the Humvee, would often wedge itself between houses if they attempted to drive it through a village. As pretty much all the rural roads in the area were dotted with villages at intervals, this presented them with something of a mobility problem.

The Brits learned to sleep in their Land Rovers. The alternative being waking up to find the vehicle gone and a shiny, new Humvee sat in its stead.
Last edited by: TeeCee on Thu 25 Jul 13 at 13:59
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New Thu 25 Jul 13 14:35 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - R.P.
Jeeps and Landies were designed specifically to be narrow enough to fit into tank tracks - They forgot that bit when they designed the Humvee.
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New Sat 27 Jul 13 01:10 
 Limo Fire - Five dead - Dave_
tinyurl.com/nbwh5uz (Links to report of limo crash in Birmingham this week).
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