Unlock Safety

When electronic door locks jam, burning buildings become death traps. A fix must be found

A fire in a Lucknow commercial building left 15 people dead on Monday. The usual suspects – building code violations and civic neglect – are evident in the case already. But another factor demands urgent attention, because it’s been making fires deadlier, by turning burning buildings into death traps. This new “danger” is the electronic door lock, also known as smart lock or biometric lock, depending on its features.

Just this year, dozens of people have perished inside burning buildings whose electronic door locks jammed. A fire in a Delhi house, in Jan, cost six lives. In March, a fire in Indore left eight dead. May saw another big one in Delhi, and a death toll of nine. June started with a massive hotel blaze in Delhi that left 21 dead. And now, we have the Lucknow fire. This is not an exhaustive list.

To be clear, we aren’t against tech, generally, or electronic locks. But their role in building fires deserves investigation. In the early 2000s, this was a recurring problem with car door locks. Many people died after getting trapped inside burning cars. But regulators and manufacturers solved that problem. Now that electronic locks for homes and offices are becoming popular, a fix must be found for them quickly.

It’s not that electronic locks are a new, untested gadget. They appeared in 1950s for bank vaults and other high-security establishments. But their recent democratisation has probably involved cost-saving measures. Experts say plastic parts inside locks can melt in a fire, and jam them. Whatever the cause, users need a foolproof overriding mechanism. If the electronic mechanism of the lock fails, it should unlock on its own, or at the press of a manual lever or button.

While new tech has its advantages, it becomes frustrating, and possibly dangerous, when you have no way to negotiate with it. For example, when you’re chatting with a customer service bot. Or trying to operate a touchscreen with wet hands. Studies show that using a touchscreen infotainment system while driving increases driver response time several fold over drink driving at the legal limit. That’s why, starting this year, cars won’t get a 5-star Euro NCAP rating if they don’t have physical buttons for key functions like horn, windshield wipers, etc. Electronic door locks for buildings should also have reliable manual override features, so that nobody ever gets locked in a burning building again.