You’ve probably never noticed it before. But it’s there—tucked away in your trunk. It is a potentially life-saving lever designed to help you escape in the event you get trapped inside. If you have a car that was manufactured in 2002 or later, your trunk has one.
TikToker @parkinginfl just discovered the emergency trunk release in his Ford and credited the company with designing and implementing it. “Someone at Ford deserves a reward for this,” the text overlay of his video, which now has 70,000 views, reads.
“I love that someone at Ford Motor Company took the time to put this little diagram on this thing,” he says. “Freaking love the attention to detail.”
On the glow-in-the-dark, upside-down-T-shaped lever is a person running away from an open trunk. An arrow is pointed away from the trunk, in the direction the person is running. There’s another arrow that instructs one to pull down on the lever to open the trunk.
@parkinginfl Love it #ford #fordmotorcompany #carsafety #kidnapped ♬ original sound – P&S
Here’s a demonstration of how it works:
The story behind the behind the emergency trunk release
While the TikToker credited Ford for the emergency trunk release, a woman named Janette Fennell is actually responsible for a 1999 mandate that required all new cars to have one, according to the Hustle.
Her struggle to get the mandate passed started with her own kidnapping experience.
In 1995, Fennell and her husband were kidnapped. The two armed kidnappers robbed them and left them to die in their Lexus’ trunk. They struggled to escape and eventually found a small piece of metal that aided them in getting the trunk open.
Getting it mandated proved to be a challenge
Fennell told the Hustle that she found it “ridiculous” that car manufacturers didn’t have a way for people to escape trunks. She first wrote to each of them to inquire about it, to no luck. Then, she used Google to compile her own data of incidents of people getting locked in trunks of cars and got in touch with a then-U.S. representative. He sponsored a bill to create a panel that would formally investigate the incidents.
While there was some pushback from car manufacturers, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration eventually passed the emergency trunk release mandate. And it’s been working as intended ever since. There reportedly hasn’t been a documented trunk-related fatality in a car that has the emergency trunk release since the mandate was passed.
Fennell has since launched a nonprofit called Kids and Cars and is working to make vehicles safer through various legislation.
“If you look at any safety feature in your vehicle, just know there is somebody who fought and fought and fought to make sure that was there,” Fennell told the Hustle.
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