“You couldn’t open the doors.”

Terrible ending

Four people were killed in Toronto after adze they were riding in crashed into a pole and burst into flames.

A fifth rider, an unidentified woman in her twenties, narrowly survived the crash after a bystander broke the window, allowing her to escape the burning vehicle.

According to the onlooker hero’s account, the electronic doors of the Tesla Model Y could have been to blame for the reason why the passengers were trapped inside the electric vehicle.

“You couldn’t open the doors,” the rescuer, Rick Harper, he told him Toronto Star in a new interview. “I would suppose 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 others trapped inside because the smoke was so thick.

“I don’t know if that 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 utility pole. conformable CBCcatches fire on impact.

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

The Elon Musk-owned automaker has a disturbing history of owners who receive locked in their cars powerless. 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 being poorly designed and placed unintuitively for certain models, which often requires intimate knowledge of the car – something most owners, let alone a panicked passenger, are unlikely to have.

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

Fire hazard

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

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

Another driver he almost met the same fate in 2021. When the Tesla Model S caught fire, he claimed he was briefly trapped inside due to the vehicle’s faulty high-tech door handles, though he eventually managed to escape.

Given that EV battery fires are some of the most formidable out there and often require tens of thousands of gallons of water and man hours to put out, a reliable way to get out of one of these vehicles in a pinch is the least you could ask for.

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