I thought about this solution as well and I came to the conclusion that it might worsen the situation even more: people panicking trying to force the overhead c

I thought about this solution as well and I came to the conclusion that it might worsen the situation even more: people panicking trying to force the overhead compartment could slow the evacuation even more. You need just one panicked passenger trying to force the lock to block a whole plane. It would also be a quite challenging technical problem: are compartments locked the whole flight? Are they locked only on emergencies? If so: who thinks of locking them when an emergency occurs? I admit I don't know much about emergency procedures for flight attendants.