There are a lot of elements that go into car design that aren’t exactly obvious, at least not initially. You can draw a lovely design for a car, sketch and render and model how the various doors and hatches will open, but until that car actually becomes something that interacts with reality and humans, you can’t be certain of everything. That’s what seems to have happened with the Chevy Bolt, which has a hatch design that incorporates what owners are calling “fangs of death” because of their ability to make heads bleed.
This isn’t just hearsay or something we picked up on some online forums – though, to be sure, there are plenty of people talking about how their Bolts’ hatch made their heads bleed online – we got an email from a reader named Jordan who survived a Bolt hatch attack himself:
“OK, the thing: I rented a pre-2022 refresh Chevy Bolt this weekend in San Jose. As I’m loading up in the rental car garage, I come back from doing something in the front seat and come back to load through the rear hatch, and BAM! I’m staggered.
I crouch in pain for a bit, and move on, groaning. Seems like I’m fine. A few seconds later, I feel something running down my face to my neck. Blood! Gushing! My wife gives me a handkerchief, which quickly gets red with blood. I finally find the bathroom and enough paper towels and time to stanch the flow.”
Yikes! What the hell happened here? Well, it appears that this happened:
See those? The two sharp, fang-like protuberances on the sides of that hatch? See how they look like, you know, fangs? How they’re sharp, pointed bits of sheet metal? That seems to be the issue here.
I mean, look at those things! They’re not exactly subtle. They’re sharp, hard, and right at head level. Here’s another angle, from the side:
In some ways, this is all a result of the Bolt’s confusing approach to taillight design; the turn indicators and brake lamps are in the bumper, while the basic taillight is above, and part of the hatch. It’s a confusing setup, and while Bolts aren’t the only ones to use it, as you can see here, it’s still not great:
In their attempt to incorporate the somewhat useless upper lights into the hatch itself, Chevy has designed a hatch with those fangs. So it’s not like the fangs are even there for a good reason because there really isn’t one. In fact, Chevy showed they could design a Bolt that doesn’t eat heads with the Bolt EUV, a different body design that features a fangless hatch:
Of course, that doesn’t help current Bolt owners who must still be wary of the twin Fangs of Damocles hanging over their heads. One person on a forum showed a way some owners have been dealing with this:
See that? They’ve cut reflective tape and put it on the black fangs, which at least will make them more eye-catching, especially at night. It’s not a bad idea, but it’s hardly a real solution.
Then again, it’s not like there is a real solution for a design issue like this. You can’t re-design the hatch without changing all of the other sheet metal that the hatch meshes with. Perhaps that triangle of metal could be replaced with a rubber panel or at least covered in rubber, which could help, but would introduce all sorts of aesthetic and fitment issues.
It’s just a bad design, really, and it’s one of those things that makes me baffled that no one seems to have noticed any issue in the car’s presumably extensive testing and focus-grouping. I mean, look at some of the comments on this one forum:
“I’ve bonked my head twice on the “head-knocker”, which is one time more than I like to admit.
I smacked it good. Saw stars, and all that. Drew blood, the second time. My wife thought I was dying. Even relatively minor scalp wounds bleed like crazy.”
Ouch. And then there’s this one:
“Only took one hit, smacked the crap out of myself.”
This one uses an alternate nickname:
“It took me less than a week of ownership to be assaulted by what someone on here called “the triangle of death”.”
I should note this other forum calls it a “head hatchet.” There’s more:
“Count me in too! I have hit my head 2 maybe 3 times. The last time being just about 3 days ago. I am 6′ 2″ tall and it gets me too.”
…and look, it’s not all tall people:
“5-8 officially, 5-7 by recent measurement, though it depends on shoes and such. And yes, I’ve made the acquaintance of that corner a couple of times. I now take a wide berth of the tailgate, back up and go around! I like that reflective tape hack, though – may try it.”
You get the idea. The point is – maybe literally – that GM designed a tailgate that seems to be a hazard to heads, and if you own a Bolt or are considering buying a Bolt, maybe take extra care under that hatch. It’s also a reminder that seemingly innocuous details of car design can have some pretty significant consequences, and you would think not drawing blood would be pretty high up on that list of consequences to avoid.
Be careful out there! There are fanged tailgates, hungry for head-blood out there!
What the hell is going on in the auto industry!? Virtually useless bumpers and taillights, flesh cutting body panels, unwanted, possibly illegal, spyware, Touchscreens adding to driver distraction! I take no pleasure in disparaging younger generations, but WTH, did all the adults retire? Are we still giving out participation awards?
I chalk it up to yet another human endeavor focusing on pursuit of “vibes” – how things make us subjectively feel, rather than what they objectively do. Very popular it appears, but I’d note it does seem dependent on actual technology (an objective thing) to accomplish it, so let’s hope there are still some firms that still focus on that.
How is this a generational thing?
Valid, growing up we had lawn darts! It just seems accountability is lacking, and questionable products are released untested. But again LAWN DARTS!
I don’t know why there was an uproar about LAWN DARTS. In my opinion it’s a much safer game than let’s see, Football, Futball, Baseball, Hockey, Basketball or even a game that is more similar, Horseshoes. With LAWN DARTS there is one real danger to a human if played remotely close to the rules “You’ll shoot your eye out”. In all of those other games “You’ll bash your brain out” comes into play. If you play like an idiot in lots of things it will be dangerous.
My family (7 kids) played a lot of LAWN DARTS when I was growing up and the worst that happened was a minor scratch when someone was screwing around. My family also played a lot of those games above and every one of us had far worse injuries doing it.
The CPSC banned them in 1988 after child deaths. I never encountered any injuries from them, but the inherent danger was evident. 60s early 70s we didn’t have car seats, some cars didn’t even have seat belts, and kids were piled into the back of station wagons and pickups with little regard to safety. I was an absolute nut with bikes, minibikes, go carts, and a tree monkey growing up, never wore a helmet, and never broke a bone by shear dumb luck.
As near as I can tell (lazy google search) there were 3 deaths attributed to lawn darts. I didn’t bother checking to find out how many deaths there were from things like swimming pools or days at the beach were. It seems like we should all stop doing any thing more dangerous than playing lawn darts. Things like walking down stairs or driving cars or fornication. All things that have a higher rate of mortality than yard darts.
Yeah but there were also 6,100 injuries – most of them head injuries and most of them to kids, “and more than 50 percent were ten years old or younger.“
So, yeah. It’s going to find a Legislator brave enough or dumb enough to leap to the defense of Lawn Darts.
https://www.cpsc.gov/Newsroom/News-Releases/1987/LAWN-DARTS-CAN-CAUSE-SERIOUS-OR-FATAL-HEAD-INJURIES-AND-DEATH
I didn’t take away your lawn darts. But if you don’t see their objectively conceptually catastrophically flawed design, you’re welcome to try to re-market them. After being laid off from a management job at 25, a friend of a friend had a tree service, and I decided to take a break from white collar work, and was a top climber for 5 years. One a year per county dies, and I experienced some close calls. The owner told me of a climber that had just finished a take down, lowered himself to a 3ft wall, unclipped, slipped, fell just that 3 feet and broke his frickin neck! I guess if death wants you.
Calm down, gramps, the clouds ain’t going anywhere no matter how much you yell at them.
Most of what you’re kvetching about is just capitalism in action where time is money so people/companies aren’t willing to take the time to ensure something is done well, such as checking the ergonomics of what people interact with like the Bolt’s hatch design, and also people/companies are more inclined to cut corners by adopting the cheaper alternative of touchscreens rather than the time-intensive option of implementing hard-wired buttons and switches, etc, etc.
ETA to point out that this is just good old-fashioned capitalism which existed long before “participation awards.”
Are you suggesting capitalism is inherently bad? It’s the proven best option! Unchecked/no oversight corporate and/or owner greed prioritized over consumer protections is where the trouble starts.
Ah, yes, you’d think car manufacturers would’ve learned something by now. VW buses have sharp corners on the engine hatch lid as seen here:
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FAaWKUe2ORBg%2Fmaxresdefault.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=7f75c6eff6335e271ce245b41c3b291cdc85cc2df67a2e4b36902f23a7d32fe1&ipo=images
Whenever I’m working on the engine in my 1969 bus I often unlatch the engine hatch lid’s prop, open up the rear cargo hatch gate, swing the engine hatch lid further up, and lower the rear cargo hatch gate to hold the engine hatch lid in place. Sometimes I’ll just remove the engine hatch lid altogether.
One time I was looking at a 1991 Peugeot sedan (a 405, I think; it was from the last year of Peugeot being sold in the US) at the local Pull-A-Part and when I opened the trunk lid the prop didn’t hold so the trunk lid fell down but I stopped it just as the lid’s latch was about to hit my head; the lid’s latch was a simple bolt-like affair in the shape of a ‘¿’ but slightly truncated so it had a horrifyingly sharp end just sticking down, egad. A close call, that one.
There’s a good blog where a photographer takes pictures of interesting cars in the San Francisco area and writes about them:
http://californiastreets.blogspot.com/?m=0
When writing about a 1962 Rambler Classic Cross Country station wagon he notes a change from the previous years: “Notice also that the window frame on the rear passenger doors has a rounded-off corner. I wonder how many people poked their eyes out trying to get into the car between 1956 and 1961 when that corner ended in a sharp jutting point.”
1962:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs41RPp0k7hiO1J6AD3GVs-zr2tjHyFSYgl3ybGEmyqW_5uq5fZbM5BPDFDgYNTGl9hfoLBm0un0VKMxq_uA3pAvAibxSKv9IubfwW0FCfq-4LboozPb5G3BEYLUKsw-BKyvABgIMbHf0/s1600/IMG_3169.jpg
1961:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgmT6wLe7-9SYP_sz_yf5-5DmFWqUIqFimJ77QXN2iEXHXu7WhutOrU99IqLV0zpWotjnpBS2t7Cmy9hyphenhyphen-Uv7zYP5KGMI8C59C7iu80VpIZ-e1ur5rka6YBXGX-CllDYcRhrDKZ3cD0G8/s1600/IMG_3191.jpg
I always hate stuff like this, it especially effects those of us that are in the sorta tall category (6 foot- 6′ 4 or so). Taller people can see it before they smack into it, shorter people don’t have to worry about it. My ’77 Cherokee is especially bad, as the hood latch on it is a dagger shaped protrusion that juts down a good 4 or so inches from the hood.
I’ve got a ’18 Outback, and I’m an average height person (5’10”) and even I occasionally hit my head on the tailgate. Who the hell designs this crap?
My ’15 Golf managed to open the tailgate high enough that I couldn’t hit my head on it, and that car was like like a foot shorter.
No fangs, but still shit design.
You want fangs?! the 2004 Hyundai Elantra hatch, those had fangs! Pre-reddened in fact, though capable of less damage:
https://images.auction123.com/52c87894-d92e-4e76-9396-307147000431/KMHDN56D25U133008/04.jpg?wtrmk10nw
reminds me of the Dustbuster minivans and their front doors.
Yup. I have a friend who hit himself all the time, even ruined a pair of oakleys lol
One of my most hated feature of older Toyota cars was the ‘oh shit’ handle (the retractable one above the door) that was on both the driver’s side and passenger side – every bump would have my head impacting that hard bit of plastic.
Newer cars seem to have moved them so I no longer hit it on every bump (or, perhaps, I shrunk).
You should haves saved this subject for next month and put a Halloween spin on it!
missed opportunity!
They drew first blood, not me.
Can confirm, I have been hit on the head multiple times by those things!
Been there, done that. I started to feel dizzy and confused when I hit my head with that thing, I had to sit down and my kids called my husband (Registered Nurse) to check on me, I didn’t bleed but I got a big bump the next day.
After that incident, I started to walk backwards when unloading bags from the trunk.
Even around the house, when I’m crouched below things, I’m wary of this after doing likewise on say the freezer door…I’ve dug up an old diver skill from memory and have now gotten used to putting my hands above my head before I straighten up.
Freezers belong on the bottom. It makes more sense both head bashing and the fact that heat rises.
Similar issue with GM’s dustbuster vans. The front doors had a swept back edge at the top and caught more than a few people unaware.
I was literally just typing this – beat me to it! I owned two of them and learned to tip my head back when opening the door quite quickly.
til a Chevy Bolt can also act as a giant staple puller
Scalp wounds are about the best to look absolutely terrible but not be that bad
Ooooh, I see now. I thought the Bolt owners were in their head, a bit, about some silly thing. But they’re getting bit in the head. Riiiiight right right right…
Fortunately, Bolts are not poisonous, though you may want a tetanus shot, just in case. Bolts are fairly easy to spot, often found it parking lots and driveways, so pay attention to your surroundings and never stand or back away quickly from a Bolt and you should avoid any painful encounters.
Poisonous hurts if you ingest it. Venomous bites or stimgs. So the Bolts would be more dangerous if they were venomous.
Pedantry over.
Thanks. Still, be pretty interesting to see someone ingest a Bolt.
What am I missing about why manufacturers need such large but non-functional-beyond-lighting-up taillights, relegating the functional parts to smaller, lower ones?
I’m looking at the very sharp Buick Envista for my mom, and it does this on both the front and the rear – the large lights aren’t the headlights, just the running lights, while the large taillights don’t incorporate the brake lights. At least it’s symmetrical I guess, but is it skeuomorphism (Torch word!) for why they just don’t make the running lights small as well?
Got my wife a bolt, the first time I found myself following her home (about a month after buying it) I saw here hit the brakes and the taillights lit up and I was like WTF, the taillights are down there?! WTH are those big things up top for. Answer: decoration.
I’m living in the twilight zone.
I can’t stand the split lighting thing! I also checked out an Envista recently, pretty impressive for the price even with the annoying lighting setup. I went in a different direction, but Buick did a nice job with that car.
The tail lights have to be visible whether the hatch is open or not.
This is why I sold my 09 Venza.
Plus I felt like an idiot wearing a football helmet in the Target parking lot.
Not nearly as stupid as owners of BMW i8 convertibles with their Get In Helmet
Seems more and more hatchbacks and minivans have stupidly low opening height and sharp/exposed trim and latches. On my in-laws’ 2019 Odyssey I nearly cracked my skull loading the rear–and I am only 6’2″. If not careful, I could loose teeth on it. I can stand under the rear hatch of my 2003 Odyssey and only barely brush my hair on the lowest point. I wonder if car designers actually try to live with their cars before foisting them on the public?
Classic GM, innovating early in the realm of pointy, hazardous regions in their EV, then abandoning the idea for boring, dulled edges like every other mainstream EV. Lord Elon and his infinite wisdom, of course, saw this innovation for what it was, and took it to the natural conclusion, by making a vehicle so cutting edge that every edge is truly cutting! Will GM ever capitalize on its early game-changing innovations? When will GM learn?
I thought this was going to be about the gas struts somehow because one of my fellow firefighters recently told me about a vehicle collision in which the rear struts of a Subaru became detached and as he was bending them inwards to be able to close the hatch in preparation for loading the car onto the tow truck, one rapidly disassembled itself and piston shot out, whizzed past his face, and embedded itself in a nearby hillside. Yikes!
On the other hand, our fleet has forty of these Bolts and I’ve never heard of a single incident amongst the what, 75-100 people that have taken them out in the four years I’ve had this job. And my people loooove to complain.
I’m 6’4″.
EVERY hatchback is a hazard to my head, or even my face.
Just another reason I’m not really fond of SUVs.
Yep. That’s why I like my tracker, with the side opening door. You’d have to try really hard to smack your head into that.
Seems like if you are over 6′ tall you don’t have spatial awareness from what I’m reading in the comments.I’m 5’9 and my basement is 5’7″ with the cast iron pipes. I’ve hit my head once in the 20 years I’ve been here. It was in the first week.
Ooof. Being follicle challenged and tall and a bit clumsy, I’d look like one of Custer’s men at Little Bighorn if I owned one of those…
Ain’t nothing but a B-fang.
Most will warn you to pretend that the fangs can’t see you and act accordingly. I say bullshit! Don’t pretend but know that the fangs CAN see you and are just waiting for you to amble into their strike zones! By then, it’s too late.