When I was a kid, my dad drove a 1947 Hudson Commodore 8. This was the last year of the Hudson with "suicide" rear doors before the introduction of the "stepdown" design. We were coming home from town, and my younger sister got fiddling around with the rear door handle. She managed to get it unlatched, and the wind swung the door open. My sister was still hanging on to the handle, and the action flung her out into the passenger side ditch. Luckily, my dad was not driving real fast,and my sister survived, with a multitude of cuts and bumps and bruises. Again, luckily, we were not that far out of town, yet, with its hospital. If my sister had been on the driver,s side of the rear seat, she would have been flung out onto the highway, in front of any oncoming traffic. I am thinking this was 1952-1953, because my sister was just little. I think these "suicide doors" likely killed a lot of people in the early days. It must have been a simpler (cheaper) way of hinging doors. It took almost 50 years before all the manufacturers did away with them.
