Another similar incident happened around a week after that one: https://www.channel3000.com/news/dane-county-sheriffs-office... .
One thing to note is that the car doors in Teslas are electrically controlled and a different failsafe method of opening the doors is required when the electrical system isn't working. Here's the steps for manually opening the Model Y's rear doors (car in the story the post links to): https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modely/en_us/GUID-AAD769C... and here's the steps for manually opening the Model S's rear doors (car in the story I linked to): https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/models/en_us/GUID-AAD769C... . Note that this involves removing the rear carpet in the Model S and the door pocket mat in the Model Y, and that the Model Y instructions note that some cars aren't even equipped with manual rear door releases. It seems like Tesla didn't account at all for what happens if passengers who aren't familiar with the car need to quickly exit in an emergency, especially if the driver's incapacitated and can't give them directions.
* Remove the mat from the bottom of the rear door pocket.
* Press the red tab to remove the access door.
* Pull the mechanical release cable forward.
Every Uber I take in a Tesla would practically need an airline safety briefing for this. There’s no way I’d find it on my own.
Cancel and rebook (another brand).
They've had huge pushes to add EVs to their network, which is great but this means it’s an increasingly likely for someone to get stuck. I’d include these instructions in their in-app safety center if I were them…
Wouldn’t the average car safety be significantly below a Tesla Model Y anyway?
Tesla has the highest fatality rate, so that is ruled out! :)
Secondly, it is the coupling of electronic controls with unintuitive manual backups that create the danger.
> Tesla has the highest fatality rate, so that is ruled out! :)
Do you have a source? Genuinely interested. From the little reading I've done Tesla seem to have put quite a bit of thought in to making their cars perform well in crash tests so it seems surprising that they'd have a high fatality rate.
That statistic is not controlling for the drivers. It's interesting, but it may be biased by who buys Tesla and how they drive. Similar to likely "cars with aggressive custom paint jobs have higher fatality rate".
Doesn’t matter if you’re getting in someone else’s car.
Maybe. Taxi drivers have different incentives/experience/routes than the other population. It may apply to them, or not. For ride share, the choice of Tesla may have been mainly economical for them.
Especially egregious considering it's likely kids will be back there. And the release is in a place thats probably impossible to get to from the front seat (in the model Y)
I have written this before [1].
I had to kick the rear door of the family car after an accident when I was about 11. The car blocking both doors on the other side was on fire, and I was later told our car was also on fire.
I wouldn't have known to lift the carpet and pull some release tag, and with the door badly damaged from a collision I also wouldn't have been able to kick it while pulling the tab. It was night, so finding and using a glass-smashing tool also seems unlikely.
Munroe on YT complained about exactly that 4 years ago :/
Why not do the first two steps, and stow the mat and access door on a shelf in your garage?
Someone on Mastodon pointed out that not all Model Ys even have the manual release. I didn't believe this could be true - how could regulators allow this?
But it's actually listed on the Model Y page (https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modely/en_us/GUID-AAD769C...): "Note Not all Model Y vehicles are equipped with a manual release for the rear doors."
Not sure what the distribution is or whether it's just an "old version" problem?
"Tesla didn't account at all for what happens ..."
Tesla might not have, but you can. Always have a glass breaker and seatbelt cutter in your vehicle. Doors get crumpled and can't open regardless of make/model.
> Always have a glass breaker
Isn't this advice becoming dated now that most new cars have side windows with laminated glass?
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a28422725/car-windows-glas...
Kick out the window with a very forceful boot kick with both legs.
That advice will work for significantly limited number of population. Like, it's true, but also "hope you have enough mass/strength/flexibility". My little-old-lady neighbour could not do it.
Still probably easier to kick out a laminated window with cracks in it.
"Police say area man had burglary tools and weapons in his vehicle at the time of the arrest..."
What is an "unlikely event" for any given passenger is nearly a 100% certainty for Tesla. The engineers and product managers who came up with that solution probably have trouble sleeping at night these days.
Someone told me something that stuck with me: "for any system with millions of users a 1 in a million event happens multiple times a day"
I bet they wanted something more obvious but were overridden by someone who wanted to keep the vehicle sleek and futuristic. If so, it's the worst kind of "I told you so" :/
But who at Tesla would do that?
Regulations are written in blood.. it’s really disappointing to see a car make it to production without an obvious mechanical way to open the door. I’ve been in many teslas and hadn’t given this much thought, figuring there’d surely be a way to open the door if I need to get out.
Lexus’s latest cars have electrically controlled doors as well. The mechanical failover is a bit better mind you, you have to pull twice instead of pushing, but I am not sure how panic proof it is.
I live techlnology but IMHO it is overdone in modern cars. Please bring back tactile and mechanical controls where possible.
why are the doors electronically controlled to start with? is it cost savings?
To make the marks they're selling the death sedans to feel like they have something special until the vape batteries under the car spontaneously combust and roast them like a gas station hotdog
They use frameless windows, so the electronic release slightly lowers them to avoid them scraping the door frame.
There were plenty of older frameless doors where the door itself opens mechanically and the window lowers slightly. A lot of the older subarus for example.
What's special about Tesla (or any of the other newer cars with full electrical door opening mechanisms) that makes this not an option?
> What's special about Tesla (or any of the other newer cars with full electrical door opening mechanisms) that makes this not an option?
Cost-cutting, mostly.
Dropping the windows on frameless doors goes back to at least the 90s and mechanical door handles.
I wouldn't be surprised if it goes back even earlier and someone even tried it entirely mechanically without electric windows...
Update: it looks like it was first done on 1946 Buick convertibles.
In 2008 I had a BMW Convertible with frameless doors. When you pulled the door handle the window dropped. Same from the inside.
Every car with frameless windows does this without the need for a death-trap electric door release, i work in McLarens and the windows will drop if the battery gets low so you can open the vertical doors with a dead battery.
Why do they want frameless windows?
Frameless windows are aesthetically pleasing to many people. Tesla aren’t alone in that preference, they are just one of the few brands that use frameless by default even on the lowest end vehicles they sell, so there’s a higher number out there.
at the funeral...
"at least they had pleasing windows."
Why do they want glued-on RAM and SSDs?
A lot of cars have electronically controlled doors.
It’s due to the frameless windows. Opening the door requires the windows to roll down slightly to avoid damage to the outer trim.
The doors still have a mechanical release so there’s no cost savings involved. For the front door they’re right next to the electronic release. For the rear doors they’re hidden under the passenger door pocket.
Edit: to everyone replying I never said it was a necessity. I explained why they did it. I’m aware of alternate approaches.
Not necessarily. Many cars have manual doors and frameless windows. A 1996 Subaru comes to mind. Tesla could easily make the windows dip when a mechanical handle was activated.
Electronic door latches are fine, it’s the backup mechanism that is the problem. Some cars have the mechanical alternate forward of the electrical release such that if you are grabbing frantically you would eventually pull it. This still looks minimal if that is more important than safety.
Most current BMWs with frameless windows still have mechanical door openings (e.g. BMW i4).
Indeed, my 2001 E46 BMW had this. It’s not complicated or new.
This is a design choice, not a requirement.
My frameless-windows 2007 car uses a mechanical door latch and the window rolls down slightly as I pull the latch.
Also every convertible ever
I always thought it was a luxury item like soft close doors on high end luxury cars. Supposed to feel premium compared to actually pulling a mechanical handle.
It is more cyber that way. Also, yes, electromechanical systems are easier to design.
There’s still a second mechanical release so this is strictly more complicated than simply having a mechanical system to begin with.
Routing the mechanical linkage to a place in the door that would make sense for a door handle to be is the difficult and expensive part.
Bowden cables are dirt cheap.
The cables are cheap, designing a door latch system to be easy to install/cheap to manufacture is not. Why do you think all parking brakes on all ICE vehicles have turned electric now?
Probably because forgetting to pull the handbrake is a very common cause of accidents?
Damn if only we had the tech to open doors mechanically. Imagine that world. I hope Elon takes a few weeks away from destroying the US Government in January to think about this./s
For real though, I hope the relatives of the deceased take Elon personally and Tesla as a company for all they're worth.
> Note that this involves removing the rear carpet in the Model S and the door pocket mat in the Model Y
Seriously? How many people would be capable of pulling this stunt off in a burning vehicle filled with smoke? Especially considering the fact that in this case the vehicle was packed (5 people in it)--it's hard enough to get your own feet out of the way.
If this passes the safety regulations, those regulations should be changed. Not just expecting car manufacturers to do it out of their good will because they won't.
Regulations are written in blood. This is likely the first time a mass produced car went this far in not caring about the humans inside. I would say that they will be new regulations soon, but given the political climate in the US, I'm unsure if it will actually happen.
We can only hope that Canada and other countries takes the lead and forces the improvements to passenger safety.
> Tesla has faced criticism in the past for the design of its manual release levers, which are considered poorly designed and unintuitively placed. These emergency measures require intimate knowledge of the car, something that may not be feasible in a panic situation.
First, how is this remotely legal? Are there not safety standards to ensure adults can easily exit a vehicle on fire?
Second, regardless of regulations, what on earth were they thinking at Tesla? Cars catch on fire and need fast emergency exit. Do they not care that their passengers might die?
I am absolutely horrified by this. Those poor passengers.
This seems like a huge failure on the part of the NTSB. Tesla is getting a lot of attention for this incident, but are there other manufactures that would have had the exact same problem given this same incident?
The entire point of organizations like the NTSB is to prevent unsafe cars from going into production.
The NTSB has given this type of door opening a green light. WHY?
In reading a bit on this topic: According to the NTSB, vehicle models with automatic locking doors should automatically unlock after an accident.
This begs the question did the door automatically unlock? Perhaps the vehicle was so damaged that the door could not be opened due to structural damaged to the door itself.
Unlock doesn't mean unlatched, right?
The emergency release cable is to unlatch the door.
Unfortunately the NTSB doesn't actually have that power...
It's an investigative agency, intended to investigate accidents and make recommendations. Unfortunately, they're just that: recommendations, not mandates. It's up to the agencies that govern the respective industries to issue regulations enforcing those recommendations (i.e., the NHTSA or FAA).
Not to mention the way these things burn. Basically an inferno. . .
The tolerance on many doors is such that even with a slight amount of damage, they are "physically" unable to open. The latch mechanism can get "jammed". Per the NTSB, they recommend that all electronic locks disengage in the case of an accident. Does Tesla follow this recommendation?
It's possible the vehicle was damaged in such a way that none of the door could open because of mechanical interferences.
Actions speak. Also, think of the many hours, spent by many people, designing, testing, writing the manual, manufacturing, etc. Lots of people need to sleep at night.
On the other hand, many in our society devalue human life in the name of progress, anti-liberal politics, etc. If society shrugs at Covid deaths, war deaths, oppression, climate change death and costs - why worry about this?
And now he's bought his way into US aristocracy so he can do whatevr he wants and no one can stop him. He doesn't like criticism from the NTHSB? Well he can deem the NTHSB "inefficient" and have it downsized and the leaders sacked. Does the FTC think he's lying about his self-driving claims? Well maybe the FTC is inefficient and he just makes a call to Trump and the DoJ won't be investigating anything either. The US is now completely an oligarchy and kleptocracy.
This is completely true, but it does mean his cars will be unsellable elsewhere in the developed world.
To be fair we’ve been ruled by corporations for a while.
This is taking it to another level.
After all the other levels it's been taken to? Surely not!
Don't worry, I'm confident that with Enron Musk at the Department of Government Efficiency, if this is illegal now it won't be for much longer. People like Musk are just natural born problem solvers.
I’ll leave a thought that isn’t a Tesla criticism (because the others are good): everybody should carry a lifehammer in their car. If not for saving your own life, it might come in handy for saving somebody else’s.
https://www.amazon.com/Lifehammer-Brand-Safety-Hammer-Nether...
Don’t buy the cheap Chinese knockoffs.
I don't buy safety/medical products from Amazon. There was a time (maybe even today still) where those products go into a big bin with no verification of who the actual supplier was (1st vs 3rd party). I don't know how to verify if the issue has been resolved today, but life-critical items such as tourniquets, meds, etc. are expected to be 100% made by the supplier. Unfortunately, the money in the industry is so big that "cheap Chinese knockoffs" are being sold as high-quality replicas, even though they may not meet all the required specs.
There were many cases a few years ago of people buying branded tourniquets, only to be sold fake ones. The item looked genuine, but the integrity of the plastic could not maintain the pressures needed and broke. An emergency is not the time to realize that mistake.
I'd add that for anything your life depends on, my general rule is don't buy from Amazon. Buy from the manufacturer. Way too many counterfeits on Amazon.
https://www.lifehammerproducts.com/app/uploads/2024/06/20240...
Lifehammers don't work on laminated glass, like your front windshield (that would be bad, as it would mean a rock chip would shatter your window).
But more and more manufactures are putting in laminated side windows in their cars both for comfort (noise) and rollover protection, so Lifehammers don't work there either.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptaIBTyiKkc
I believe in the USA lots of tests are actually done without seatbelts, and this makes the requirements harder to meet.
Note that these tools don't work if you have laminated side windows, which many cars now do!
Ouhh didn’t realize that cars switched up windows so much. Is there a modern alternative tool that a common person could use?
I don’t know much about laminated windows, but would a $5 hammer from a hardware store work?
laminated windows have a layer of plastic in them. You need a cutting tool.
https://youtu.be/DyZrQ3Q0ZR0?t=75
Also I know this video has a firefighter in it but I will tell you that FFs are more likely to use a sawzall than a hand tool.
This isn't a solution though; the driver of an uber may have a lifehammer somewhere, but the passengers don't know about it. It is simply criminal not to have an obvious way to open the door.
The model Y's inability to roll down its rear windows is another safety liability. I had to vomit out of an Uber and had much difficulty getting my head out the tiny opening.
Perhaps you mean “roll it down all the way”, but it most definitely can roll down most of the way.
As someone with a large head myself, I can most definitely fit it out comfortably of mine.
I don't have a large head. There is zero chance of crawling out the window if you're trapped in these cars.
That’s a different point entirely. You talked about being unable to fit your head out comfortably. I addressed that.
If the door won’t open electrically, then very likely the power windows won’t work either.
So to be able to crawl out the window, you’d have to break the glass, which would make the full size of the opening available.
That’s not really specific to Tesla. Lots of cars have rear windows that only hinge open slightly
This is an issue with many modern cars, not just Tesla. The rear windows physically can’t roll all the way down due to the shape of the doors.
One way to solve it might be to design a window mechanism where the glass rotates in the frame rather than just sliding on a single axis. But as always, there’s a cost and complexity trade off.
Real life problems. Thanks for sharing :-)
Just calling out the poor way this (and many) articles write about car accidents. I’m not a Tesla fan at all but blaming Tesla for the crash is incorrect.
(It is correct to blame them for the way the door locks work though and therefore can be blamed for the excess injuries/deaths that result from the design decision.)
From the article:
> Four people were killed in a fire after a Tesla Model Y lost control and hit a pillar in Toronto last month.
> Five people were trapped inside a Tesla Model Y after it crashed and burst into flames The Tesla didn’t lose control, the human driver lost control of the vehicle.
From a previous article the day after:
> Police said the driver of the Tesla lost control of the vehicle while travelling at a high rate of speed and collided with a guard rail. The vehicle then struck a concrete pillar, they said, before bursting into flames.
If it wasn’t for the irresponsible driving on the part of the human driver, this incident wouldn’t have occurred in the first place. The driver paid for this with their and others’ lives.
>It is correct to blame them for the way the door locks work though and therefore can be blamed for the excess injuries/deaths that result from the design decision.
This is what is being discussed here: that four people burned to death because they were unable to exit the vehicle.
Don't trust software engineers to handle edge cases and failure modes
I'm waiting for a new regulation that requires all EVs to have a sledgehammer in the passenger cabin.
How about a simple tiny safety hammer instead. The ones a lot of cars (at least here in the EU) are already outfitted with. As others have pointed out, any car should have such a hammer.
I'd assume it doesn't do much with laminated (rear) windows. It would require way too much force to break them enough to crawl out.
Also, I've only seen those on busses, never in cars (I'm in the EU as well).
For a long time, I lived in an area with a lot of creeks and rivers. Since my first car with electric windows and locks, I keep something like this:
https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Emergency-Cutter-Window-...
in the glove box or center console. Call me paranoid, but I don't trust the electronic system to work if my car is sinking.
Don’t Tesla gloves boxes require the touch screen to open?
> This tragic incident has sparked a debate about the safety features of electric vehicles and the necessity for more intuitive emergency mechanisms.
Tesla is an ever-more-irritating case study in what happens when you throw out all the accumulated wisdom of an industry, dismissing them as aging dinosaurs, because you know code.
For most of the last century and change, cars have had some predictable behaviors. In the event of a total power loss (engine, electrical, etc), you can still steer the car, brake the car to a safe and controlled stop, and get out of the car. As far as I knew, these were basic certification requirements, once those things came around. You can't do a pure drive-by-wire system, because when (not if, when) things go badly wrong, you still need to be able to control the vehicle. This is why we have mechanical linkages between the steering wheel and the front wheels, hydraulic brakes that function without booster vacuum, mechanical door opening levers, etc.
In a panic situation, say, "car is on fire," people are not going to calmly consider how to remove bits of carpet and access the emergency release mechanism they don't know about. They are going to yank on the normal door opening lever, repeatedly. It should be a basic certification requirement that this works, at least for the front doors (I'm willing to grant that the rear doors can have the "interior handle disabled" child safety things, but also, once your kids are out of car seats, this shouldn't be left enabled).
Tesla's arrogance about the lessons learned by the last century of the auto industry is killing people. I'm sure they've justified it internally as "Well, once our self driving stuff is working, our cars will never crash or fail so this doesn't matter," but come on. It's been a decade and that stuff still isn't working, so maybe put some mechanical door handles on your cars.
Wait until that same throwing out the accumulated wisdom is applied to the US government...
I recently had a break-in to my Tesla. All captured on sentry mode. The thief got in with a subtle, barely visible stab of their wrist. The Tesla service person who replaced my window figured it was a spark plug. In the video they barely make contact with my window and the whole window shatters, completely.
So maybe at least storing spark plugs in each door bin.
(Btw none of the relevant police jurisdictions cared a whit about the break in. There were cameras where it occurred. I’m not sure what the societal discouragement is for car break-jns. Seems like the relevant authorities have basically granted permission to car hooliganism. They took the police report but explicitly acknowledged no one would look at it.)
It is the spark plug insulator. They are using the ceramic from it to break the glass. I remember hearing about this in the 90s with thieves carrying insulators on strings in their pockets.
https://www.carparts.com/blog/can-a-spark-plug-break-a-windo...
note from the article: "Keeping Spark Plug Shards Might Be Illegal in Your State" so keep that in mind
Are you living in a good neighborhood?
You want less regulations, so deal with the consequences.
This is why it's so dumb to want "more" or "less" regulation; clearly, there is some regulation we want, and some we might not. We should always be arguing specifics, not generalities.
There are keychain sized glass breakers available, maybe a good christmas present for a Tesla owner? Although I don't know if they still carry keys.
You know, I was really sad when the Shuttle retired in 2011 (which itself had numerous safety problems they probably had to fix). And this glowing idea SpaceX will aid us onwards into the future, blah blah.
I hope to god SpaceX doesn't act in a careless way like Tesla has been accused of doing
They damaged at least one car when their launch pad was suddenly distributed over a large area, throwing concrete pieces at least 6.5 miles.
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-04-26/spacex-sta...
My Chevrolet truck while having an actual door latch, doesn’t open the doors if they’re locked. You have to pull twice.
Is that an electronic counter (likely) or mechanical? If the latter, no big deal, if the former it’s even worse than the Tesla - at least my MY has a separate mechanical over ride.
older generation BMWs do this same thing; it's achieved by a ratchet system on the door handle that interacts with the mechanically actuated lock.
it isn't electronic in the case of BMW. I don't know what Chevrolet does.
wow. That's genuinely scary. Sitting on top of a lithium fire while locked in seems terrifying.
I wonder whether legislators should require inclusion of one of those glass break hammers in each car?
Would those hammers work on Tesla windows? IIRC, they now use laminated glass (like windshield glass) on the door windows as well.
Train windows (or usually one train window on each side of the carriage) have some emergency escape method.
I've noticed on the newest trains, it's not just "break glass with hammer" but there's a specific place on the window which must be hit.
An alternative is a rubber thing to pull, which removes the rubber seal from all around the glass, which then falls out.
I think this is because the windows are very useful for keeping people inside the train if there's a crash/derailment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sollbruchstelle_ICE1.jpg
https://www.alamy.com/signage-and-instructions-for-an-emerge...
> Not all Model Y vehicles are equipped with a manual release for the rear doors.
Yikes. Makes me wonder if this is market-dependent. I mean, do you expect "Emergency manual door release" to be a line item in Tesla's configurator? Didn't think so.
Everyone should have a glass breaker in their car. Even if the car has mechanical doors.
It is said that the glass breaker no longer helps with laminated side windows. What then. Kicking the window out, if that's even possible, could be the only way.
