source:
http://www.drive.com.au/news/article...XTJ62SMFD.html
Computer glitch traps man in BMW
smh.com.au
Tuesday May 13 2003
While on the way to an important speech, Thailand's finance minister got locked inside his luxury car because of an onboard computer malfunction and had to signal someone to smash a window for him to crawl out.
"It was pretty bad because nothing worked, everything was locked," a shaken Finance Minister Suchart Jaovisidha told reporters yesterday.
Mr Suchart said he was on his way to give a speech to central bank officials from 17 countries when his ministry-assigned BMW car stalled on a road, not far from his house.
The engine stopped, the air conditioning shut down, the doors got locked and the windows wouldn't roll down, he said, adding that he was trapped for about 10 minutes.
"We couldn't breath because there was no air," he said.
He and his driver waved at passers-by to draw attention to their plight, but it took a while to make them understand that they wanted the windows smashed.
Finally, a guard of a nearby building came to their rescue with a sledgehammer and broke a window. Mr Suchart then climbed out of the car through the hole.
"Even using a hammer, it took a long time to break the window because the glass proved to be very resistant," he said.
Mr Suchart then went back home and got his personal car, also a BMW, to drive to the speech venue, where he arrived one hour late. The speech was to open a meeting to plan the set-up of an Asian bond market.
Mr Suchart said he had got the official BMW car two days ago as a replacement for his regular Mercedes Benz, which had broken down.
-Greg
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