Four passengers perished in a terrible incident in Toronto after the Tesla Model Y they were riding in collided with a pillar and caught fire, trapping them inside. The driver lost control, hit with a fence, and collided with a pillar, causing the electric car to catch fire. The collision happened on October 24. Rick Harper, a spectator, bravely broke a window to aid a young woman in her twenties, the fifth occupant, escape, narrowly avoiding death. Harper described how the electronic doors of the Tesla seemed to keep her and the others from fleeing.
Harper claimed that the woman appeared incapable of opening the door from the inside, most likely due to the panic and heavy smoke. Harper told The Toronto Star, “You couldn’t open the doors,” and that the thick smoke prevented him from seeing that other passengers were stranded. Examining the collision, police and fire investigators are looking into possible causes of the fire and whether the vehicle’s electronic locking mechanism played a role in the unfortunate event.
Tesla is, however, among the companies that use electronic door mechanisms that essentially require power to open. Tesla vehicles do have manual release levers as a backup, but these features have been criticized as somewhat non-intuitive, especially for passengers who are not familiar with the vehicle. In some versions of the Tesla Model Y and other models, for example, certain configurations of the Model Y, there will be no provision for a manual release lever for the rear doors. This will leave rear passengers in such versions of Model Y vulnerable in an emergency.
This is not the first time that Tesla door systems have come under scrutiny. One other fatal incident involving a Model S took place in 2019, where it was reported that the auto-retracting door handles did not deploy; this time, the individual inside the car could not be saved by rescuers from a fire. Because electric car fires are hard to put out, reliable emergency exit options have gained more importance in terms of passenger safety.
