Tesla Owners are Installing DIY Rip Cords to Avoid Being Trapped in Their Vehicles in Case of Fire - FuelArc News
fuelarc.com
Tesla owners have started doing something wild… installing DIY emergency escape rip cords inside their vehicles so their passengers don’t get trapped if the car catches fire. That’s not a joke. That’s just how badly the doors are designed. Here’s why: Tesla doors are entirely electronic. When you want to get out, you hit a […]

Tesla owners are modifying their cars to be escapable if the car catches fire, because the doors stop working like normal and you need to rely on well-hidden mechanical overrides.

Which… feels pretty dangerous, like that’s the worst possible time for the doors to stop working like normal.

    • KayLeadfoot@fedia.ioOP
      42·
      2 days ago

      I, for one, am baffled.

      How didn’t this get recalled after the first escapable entrapment death? I could find 12 fire deaths where the occupants were evidently trapped, and that was just my dumb ass Googling for an afternoon for recent cases, I’m sure there’s more.

      • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.worldEnglish
        12·
        2 days ago

        If a new car built by my company leaves Chicago traveling west at 60 miles per hour, and the rear differential locks up, and the car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside, does my company initiate a recall?

        You take the population of vehicles in the field (A) and multiple it by the probable rate of failure (B), then multiply the result by the average cost of an out-of-court settlement ©.

        A times B times C equals X. This is what it will cost if we don’t initiate a recall.

        If X is greater than the cost of a recall, we recall the cars and no one gets hurt.

        If X is less than the cost of a recall, then we don’t recall.

      • Ilovethebomb@lemm.eeEnglish
        5·
        2 days ago

        I remember something similar happening with the Delorean DMC-12, and they were absolutely ridiculed for it.

      • Hegar@fedia.io
        4·
        2 days ago

        And some of those are really horrific. I think in one of the CA crashes, one person was able to be pulled out a window before the battery cooking off got too hot for anyone to approach and help the three others who were trapped and died.

        • KayLeadfoot@fedia.ioOP
          2·
          2 days ago

          Reading that coverage was fucking heartbreaking. Pointless, stupid, preventable.

          And you know what? The rescuer kid and the rescued kid are both going to be haunted by that forever.

    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      9·
      2 days ago

      You don’t tend to write a rule stating “passengers must be able to easily escape the vehicle in an emergency” until some tech bro makes it hard.

      • Ilovethebomb@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        Thing is though, this happened with the Delorean back in the day, so it’s not a new problem at all.

        • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          1 day ago

          Oh did it? I hadn’t known it had difficult to open doors. Was it by design or just something to do with the gullwings?

          • Ilovethebomb@lemm.eeEnglish
            4·
            1 day ago

            It’s far dumber than that. The door release was electric, and the alternator wasn’t powerful enough to run everything on the vehicle. So, if you were driving at night, with your headlights, wipers, heater etc running, you’d be slowly running your battery down, until the voltage got too low to run the ignition, and the vehicle would shut off.

            And you’d be trapped in a dead vehicle on the side of the road, in the dark, with no lights.

    • WanderingThoughts@europe.pubEnglish
      9·
      2 days ago

      Regulators figured nobody would be stupid enough to mess that up and no paragraphs are needed to make things explicit. Then came Elon who thought that technically correct is the best kind of correct so he made this abomination of a manual release.