Thank you for the clarification.
And yes, that design change was clearly not well thought out.
I think this is a case of an engineering solution to a problem that didn’t exist.
And to make matters worse they didn’t test it out with a parent of small children.
I’m sure the assumption was that the step would never be used unless the door was already opened—I mean, who stands on a conventional running board before you open the door, right? You open the door. THEN step up and into the vehicle.
That logic probably works fine, until you are 3 feet tall and weigh 60 lbs. Kids are going to stand on it to try and get more leverage to reach/open the door.
A work-around would be to always make sure you leave that first door open, until all kids are in the vehicle. I’m assuming as long as the first door opened remains in the open position that both sides running boards will stay extended?
Or just make them all climb in on one side?
Otherwise, I would probably keep mine in the locked down position, if I had small kids, until Ford issues the inevitable recall.
But yeah, Ford’s needs to fix this ASAP