Four dead in fire as Tesla doors fail to open after crash

> 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.

Not to mention the way these things burn. Basically an inferno. . .

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.

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.

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?

To be fair we’ve been ruled by corporations for a while.

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.

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).

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.

Unlock doesn't mean unlatched, right?

The emergency release cable is to unlatch the door.

This is taking it to another level.

After all the other levels it's been taken to? Surely not!

This is completely true, but it does mean his cars will be unsellable elsewhere in the developed world.

> This seems like a huge failure on the part of the NTSB.

This is a deep misunderstanding. NTSB is not an organization with a regulatory power - it is an "investigative" agency. It does not have any mandate or power to stop anyone from doing anything. It can investigate and issue recommendations and reports to other agencies that have the actual power - FAA, FHA, NHTSA, etc, etc.

As someone else has pointed out, a car with electronic opening won't open even an unlocked door without power, so the Tesla could be compliant without meeting the spirit of the recommendation.

US safety standards require that a child cannot manually open a rear door if child locks are engaged. An emergency manual release can't appear and disappear depending on whether the electronic button is enabled. Children die this way in all cars.