Am I doing something wrong the way I'm entering/leaving my car?

Question

I have finaly got my factory new SEAT Leon and it is great.

But as it is that new, I try to handle it like a raw egg. So especially one thing confuses me, as for me it hurts (speaking here literarly) and for the car on the long turn I assume I'll break the specific part of my seat.

Here is an photo I made of my seat: Its the plastic part, used to upper or lower the drivers seat. It seems to be concaved or at least has a sharp edge facing to the seat.

So the problem is when I'm trying to get out of my seat, to leave the car my leg is getting in contact with the plastic part (pushing down the cloth far enough, as it is as said soft enough) before I'm able to make contact with my left foot to the ground.

Here you can see, that I'm easily able to push down the seat onto the plastic just with my hand. And thats what actually happening every time I leave the car.

So to get my foot on the ground I have to lift my own weight over the plasticpart while thats beeing the only hinge point between my weight and the plastic part.

I allready tried diferent ways of geting out of the car, without any of them beeing able to avoid this situation. I asked friends to try it out, while they all were leaving in the same body moves, all of them said they don't share my complains.

For now I have found that I can avoid it by trying to get out the same way as getting into the car. problem here is, as for getting in my right leg is just stabilizing me as "squeezing" my inward motion. But as for getting out I'm pushing out and have to hold ballance until my left foot touches the ground. This looks pretty stupid and would let me, as soon I will loose a single time my ballance, let me drop backwards onto the street. So no long time solution either.

So on the one hand this puts a hurting pressure on the same part of my leg, everytime I leave the car, letting me after 2 days of owning the car detect allready bruises on my leg, and on the other hand even making me feel more uncomfortable with it the fact, that the part seems to be concaved and therefor soon will break at some point.

So my question is: Is this problem known? If so, what is a reasonable workaround, preventing me to pressure my leg against the part. If not so, what could I be doing wrong and what to change to do it right?

Answer 1

Well, it's your brand new car, and thus you are extra gentle with her, but trust me, she is much tougher than you think. The plastics are built to bend and buckle, but not to break. It may seem that the plastic is going to break, but in normal circumstances, like the one you mentioned, it will never break. However, for your peace of mind, you can try taking the door as a support to put most of your body weight when entering/exiting your car. How will you use the door as a support? You can put your hand on the top of the door window frame and put most of your body weight on the door, while you lift yourself up and get inside the car. Same way you can also exit the vehicle. If your window sill has any space or ridge wide enough to get a grip on, you can also take the support of the window sill to exit the car.

A word of caution

Dont put your weight on the handrest of the door pad. Make sure that the weight is getting loaded on the metal part of the door and not the door pads.

All the best! Happy Motoring!

Answer 2

I'm selfanswering here just to add the way came to handle this. It absolutly is based on Applemans answer and I had put it as comment, but comments aren't welcomed for answers, so:

I'm actually graping with my right hand the steering wheel to pull my self a bit closer to the door, after that graping the doors case with my left hand to pull me out while still using the right hand to stabelize my posture. This avoids anycontact to the plastic part and neither the wheel nor the door is broken yet :P