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Burnend alive inside a Tesla as rescuers fail to open the car's door
- jeffrallen 1y agoHow to use the manual latches: https://insideevs.com/news/507202/how-escape-from-tesla-emergency/ https://insideevs.com/news/507202/how-escape-from-tesla-emer... And Tesla plans to change them because they are too hard to use: https://insideevs.com/news/772636/tesla-door-handle-fix-franz/ https://insideevs.com/news/772636/tesla-door-handle-fix-fran...
- jalapenos 1y agoI clicked the article and now I feel fucking angry that there's a detailed manual on how to open these cars' doors. "Open the door" is a standalone manual, as a sentence. If that's not the case, no doubt there's some Aspergers tech nerd involved. I'd like to see stuff like this elevated to conspiracy to murder through tech-shit means.
- smileybarry 1y agoFrom the original post: > According to the German Automobile Association, manual opening is only possible from the inside, which complicates rescue attempts for emergency services. The issue, other than complicated internal release, was the lack of an external way to manually open the doors. (e.g.: driver is unconscious with small kids who haven't read the manual)
- jackvalentine 1y agoI’m not an expert at this but I’m pretty annoyed that I now have to think about something as simple as door handles on a car? I thought this was a solved problem.
- jalapenos 1y agoAs a tech person I've been in enough meetings where some tech nerd was aggressively driving forward a dementedly overcomplicated and perspective lacking solution to know that the last thing these types want is a solved problem. To them, a wheel is detestable -because it's simple and easy to use, and they've got some idea of a superior complex polyhedron that's of course better and everyone else is dumb for not using it. It would be good if we could trace whatever technical dog shit killed these poor little kids back to whoever was involved, and... "offer them a non-technical solution to the causal factors".
- politelemon 1y agoI'm now imagining a developer telling a room of product managers that the car needs to run react on kubernetes and everyone just nodding along because they've heard those words before.
- ahartmetz 1y agoI wouldn't be surprised if there were a bunch of Docker containers running in some current cars.
- jalapenos 1y agoI guess your imagination isn't as dark as mine. I imagine the nerd confidently standing up in meeting room, his eyes wide with a psychotic look of conviction, stating with vehement certainly: "they wouldn't be dead if we'd written it in Rust!". But yeah, the 50 something checked out MBAs - just waiting for the end to the farce that was their "career" - would be nodding along.
- franktankbank 1y agoThis sounds like an idea forced on dev by some dumb shit who had to "make impact".
- Mistletoe 1y agoElon like to think he innovates when he just changes stuff for no reason that carmakers figured out a century ago. Anyone that has used the turn signals or wipers in a Tesla understands how stupid it is.
- anonymars 1y agoGuaranteed every Tesla owner (Model 3/Y at least, I haven't seen the others) has had to explain to new passengers how to properly open the door and to use the button to exit and NOT the obvious handle. Meanwhile how many times in one's life as a non-Tesla-owner have you had to explain to someone how to open a car door? They do say they're a tech company and not a car company, eh?
- tolerance 1y agoThere’s a Neil Postman talk from the late 90s where he voiced his disdain for and resistance against automatic windows while purchasing a new car. He was on to something.
- rchaud 1y agoThe age old advice of "just buy Toyota or Honda" still applies.
- floydnoel 1y agoUnfortunately not, I used that advice for three brand-new purchased Honda’s: a Fit, a Cr-V, and an Odyssey Touring Elite Minivan. The CRV was the last Honda I will ever buy. Honda stuffed too many computers into the car and it would kill the battery after one day. This is when I was traveling for work, making the vehicle useless. Honda dealer said “that’s how they all are now, because of the electronics the battery dies every few days” and they even claimed that they go around charging up all the vehicles on the lot with a portable battery charger every day because of it! Absolutely a lemon brand now. These companies just have a huge disrespect for software and quality in technology.
- colpabar 1y agoor subaru!
- metalman 1y agoin aircraft design there is something called the "failure mode", and every last possible thing is considered and reviewed from all possible scenarios and accident reviews. so things like wing bolts are obvious, but the door handles are also approved, and how the carpet is held down, as if it comes loose, and rumpples up under the rudder pedals, you die, and on and on and on. recently been a spate of helicopter accidents where loose objects (personal kit), have jammed controls, and the problem becomes, do you ban (shift blame) loose objects, or go all in and test and design for unjammable controlls.....which will require a slightly larger cabin with greater clearances, and controlls that are fully covered and therefor a bit heavier and harder to service.....which comes with it's own risks
- freetonik 1y agoI drive a VW ID.3, and while it has traditional door handles, there is a feature that drives me crazy: it auto-locks the doors when you start driving. There is no way to turn this off. In case of a crash, the doors won't open from the outside. But they will also not open from the inside in case the electronics related to the central locking is damaged in the crash. I don't understand how this is considered a safety feature. In every single other car I'd driven there was a way to permanently disable such feature. Not in ID.3.
- gpderetta 1y agoThere are crash sensors to trigger air bags, pre-tension seatbelts, cut off the fuel pump and so on. You would think that some engineer must have thought about auto-unlocking doors!
- siva7 1y agoOnly after the user story has been written in blood.
- dfox 1y agoThe reasoning behind the auto-locking feature is that when the doors are locked it adds to rigidity of the car and thus decreases the likelyhood of the passanger cabin collapsing on the occupants. Auto unlocking the doors would completely defeat the reason for that feature. The actual mechanism of how the door works as kind of "configurable deformation zone" usually involves somewhat thick steel rod running down the middle of the door that on hinge side abbuts similar strength member in the chasis and on the latch side connects to the latch. The latch has two distinct positions depending on whether the door is just latched or locked and the only latched position is not strong enough to hold the potential impact forces..
- alwa 1y agoHuh! Autolocking behavior has bothered me for as long as I remember seeing it, and I’d love to believe that it improves safety against crashes (rather than notional “bad guys trying to open the door on your journey” or something). It’s only ever inconvenienced me, never helped. I’m having trouble finding more formal explanations for what you’re describing, though. I see a lot of talk about how the latching behavior links the door’s steel into the rest of the body, but very little about the structural aspects of the locks that link the handles to the latch’s release mechanism. I’m the farthest thing from a car engineer, but I wonder if you’d know of anyplace I could read more about this structural aspect of locking design? Every time I accidentally lock out a passenger, I get frustrated: I’d find grace and patience easier to muster if I understood how someday it might save both our lives :)
- ajross 1y ago[flagged]
- chasd00 1y agoNo flag from me, situations like what you described are why the “jaws of life” were invented. It allows rescuers to cut through a crushed car to reach the crash victims.
- tcbawo 1y agoHow often are all doors of a car inoperable after a crash? Getting out the other side of a burning vehicle is an option I want
- ajross 1y agoI don't have numbers for you, but the answer is likely of the order "almost always after a rollover". The cage will protect the occupants from being crushed, not the high-tolerance door and hinge clearances. And rollovers are common. Again, the confirmation of priors effect is extremely strong here. People are leaping from "Tesla manual door handles are difficult to open from inside the cabin" to "All Tesla accidents are the fault of the interior door handles".
- orwin 1y agoOf course you can very often open doors after a rollover, maybe it's very different in US cars but here we have complete stress and collision tests, and if doors can't be opened after a rollover, your car won't pass and won't be sold on the European market (unless you get an exemption for collection/luxury vehicles, but Tesla won't qualify).
- ajross 1y agoCitation? I've never heard of such a test. The opposite is routinely tested: making sure doors don't pop open (and potentially eject occupants) during rollovers. Demanding the very tightly engineered door mechanisms to survive that kind of stress and remain operable with mere handles simply isn't feasible. Even in Europe.
- Zak 1y agoWhen I have driven cars with electronic door poppers, I found them to be a downgrade from traditional mechanical door handles. It's even possible to make the latter sit flush, and cars have been doing it since at least the 1960s. I'm all for trying new things in the hope that there might be a better way, but make sure it's actually better before putting it into a volume product where it has safety implications.
- dsego 1y agoRight, aren't the old style flap type handlers aerodynamic enough? It doesn't have the handle sticking out.
- isuckatcoding 1y agoWhich model???
- ourmandave 1y agoAt least the cybertruck comes with breakable windows. /s
- jccc 1y agoWhy is this issue not caught by regulators? There must be something I don’t know about how that kind of regulatory approval happens.
- orwin 1y agoRegulation in Europe mandate that doors have to unlock when airbags are triggered. If the model involved was legal in the EU, it was either a mechanical issue or an electronic one, and maybe not exclusively Tesla's fault, but it was caused by their poor engineering/assembly practices. If it's in the US and they have no regulations on this, I don't want to be cavalier but they should reflect on their anti-regulation culture, and Tesla does not deserve to be scapegoated (not a fan of the brand, but I try to be consistent).
- josefritzishere 1y agoTeslas are plastic death traps. I'd rather drive a Kia.
- OutOfHere 1y agoIt is why I have asked those in my family to never enter a Tesla. If I ever get a Tesla for Uber/Lyft, I immediately cancel it. Also, if Tesla's cars are this bad, its robots could only be worse.
- seltzered_ 1y agoRelated articles on electronic door handles and issues with emergency opening: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-tesla-dangerous-doors/?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc1ODI2MjY4MSwiZXhwIjoxNzU4ODY3NDgxLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUMkQ3T1NHUEw0MVMwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiIzNDVFQTA0MjNBMUQ0NTI2QjY1QkNBNUZDRUJGQThGNiJ9.9wpi73-InLDQjP2_U86fkO1adg7jqoqp4bkeIEilMKo https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-tesla-dangerous-door... ( Dana Hull for Bloomberg , via https://bsky.app/profile/danahull.bsky.social/post/3lz67zsyuq22o https://bsky.app/profile/danahull.bsky.social/post/3lz67zsyu... )
- dvh 1y agoJoerg Sprave from Slingshot channel designed and is selling new type of glass breaking hammer that has foldable car glass saw.
- reaperducer 1y agoJoerg Sprave from Slingshot channel designed and is selling new type of glass breaking hammer that has foldable car glass saw. Sounds like the same window hammer what my uncle had in the glove box of his 1971 Cadillac, next to his cigarettes and his gun. He said each was for use in different types of emergencies. Just because it's on YouTube doesn't make it new.
- BrandoElFollito 1y agoThe cigarettes were for which kind of emergencies?
- reaperducer 1y agoKnowing my uncle, picking up female hitchhikers.
- tedggh 1y agoDespite how horrific this is it doesn’t tell us what really happened. Doors can get stuck in any car after an accident. Teslas are very controversial today for obvious reasons so every time there’s some tragic news the brand has to be mentioned. Like recently they found a dismembered body of a woman and of course it was found inside a Tesla. In any case the lack of handles should not be a problem as there’s a latch inside which is easy to access and operate. It’s up to each car user to get familiar with the car to drive it safely.
- gwbas1c 1y agoThe article doesn't mention which vehicle. The Model S and X have truly retractable door handles. The Model 3 and Y have flush door handles that you need to push in to get the latch to pull out. As far as I know, the 3/Y handles should work with the power disconnected; although many people who haven't ridden in one don't know that you need to push, then pull, the handle. (And probably won't figure it out when panicking.) I don't know if there's a way to bypass the S/X handles. My Ioniq 9 has retractable handles, and if you push on one corner of the driver's door handle you can work it out. I don't know about the other doors, and I don't think someone could figure it out if panicking.
- Driver8 1y agoThe Model 3 and Y handles do not work with the power disconnected. The article says that it was a Model Y that they were unable to open. My Model 3 had a power issue and the doors would not open. More instances: https://www.msn.com/en-ca/autos/electric-cars/tesla-under-investigation-after-parents-say-faulty-door-handles-trapped-their-kids-in-the-back/ar-AA1MEROD https://www.msn.com/en-ca/autos/electric-cars/tesla-under-in...
- gwbas1c 1y agoCareful: The article shows a picture of a model Y, and mentions a separate incident with a model Y. (I went back to check before I wrote "The article doesn't mention which vehicle.")
- prmph 1y agoThe windows could not be broken? A small nit: It's "burnt", not "burnend"
- ndsipa_pomu 1y agoWhy does the title have "Burnend"? As far as I can tell, there's a Burnend distillery that produces Scotch Whisky, but I fail to see the connection with Teslas.
- raffael_de 1y ago"crashed into a tree" People have been trapped in burning cars due to impact and deformation since cars exist. Such tragedies are not specific to Teslas.
- anigbrowl 1y agoI live near an intersection where the road design encourages people to speed, and there's an accident about month. So far I've encountered flipped over cars, cars wrapped around mapposts, embedded in walls, and cars on fire. I've been first on the scene in a lot of accidents, around 40 over the years. Never once have I been unable to get the door open to talk to the driver and help them out of the vehicle.
- zenethian 1y agoArticle deleted?
- bananapub 1y agogood example of where regulation is useful - there's zero reason for idiots to be making things like this worse, no matter what dumb justification they have. people shouldn't have to bear in mind "is this the one that burns you alive if the door power goes out or they ship a door software bug?" when shopping.
- tnel77 1y agoMaybe I’m under-thinking this problem, but they couldn’t just break the window? Nobody wants to get hit with broken glass, but I’ll take some cuts over being burned alive.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoVirtually all cars (except maybe Cybertrucks and armored vehicles) use tempered glass for side windows. This is how first responders do it. Sometimes, in roll-over and very bad accidents, the windshield or the back window have to be used, but this can take a lot more effort.
- rcdemski 1y agoTesla windows are dual pane laminated glass now for acoustic reasons. Really great at keeping noise down, really difficult to break through.
- deepfriedchokes 1y agoThis needs to be regulated for safety. Immediately.
- jaybrendansmith 1y agoThese vehicles are a menace. The fact that this can even happen is horrifying ... there is no more painful and horrible way to die then to be burned alive. This was a father and his two children. I cannot believe people are still buying Teslas, especially with this Nazi leader of theirs, and especially in Germany.