“You couldn’t open the doors.”

Horrible ending

Four people were killed in Toronto after the Tesla they rolled, crashed into a pillar and caught fire.

A fifth person, an unidentified woman in her 20s, narrowly survived the crash after a passerby broke a window, allowing her to escape the burning vehicle.

According to one heroic bystander’s account, the Tesla Model Y’s electronic doors could be the cause of why passengers were stuck inside the electric vehicle.

“You couldn’t open the doors,” said rescuer Rick Harper. said the Toronto Star in a new interview. “I suspect the young lady would have tried to open the door from the inside, as she was quite desperate to get out.” Harper added that he didn’t realize there were other people trapped inside because the smoke was so thick.

“I don’t know if it was the battery or what,” Harper said. “But she couldn’t get out.”

Death trap

Police said the accident, which occurred on October 24, occurred after the driver lost control of the vehicle, hit a guardrail and then crashed into a pillar. speak Radio-Canadacatching fire on impact.

Authorities are still investigating the crash and fire. But the details we have so far to some extent involve electronic doors used by Tesla and other automakers, which require power to open.

The automaker owned by Elon Musk has a disturbing story owners get locked in their car without power. Some of these cases may be due to user error, as most Teslas come with manual release levers.

However, these emergency measures were criticized for poor design And non-intuitively placed for some models, this often requires extensive knowledge of the car – something most owners, let alone a panicked passenger, probably don’t have.

Additionally, with the Model Y in particular, not all vehicles come with manual unlocking for the rear doors, as Tesla warns in the car manual. It is unclear whether the Model Y involved in the accident was equipped with the emergency function.

Fire risk

This is not the first time occupants have died after allegedly being trapped in a Tesla.

In 2019, a father of five was burned to death in his Model S after the car’s self-retracting door handles failed to deploy, his family said. alleged in a lawsuitpreventing bystanders and first responders from freeing him from the intense fire.

Another pilot almost suffered the same fate in 2021. When his Tesla Model S caught fire, he claimed to have been briefly trapped inside due to a malfunction in the vehicle’s high-tech door handles, although he eventually managed to escape .

Considering that EV battery fires are some of the most formidable on the market and often require tens of thousands of gallons of water and hours of labor to put it out, a reliable way to get out of one of these vehicles in the blink of an eye is the least you can ask for.

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