* Remove the mat from the bottom of the rear door pocket.
     * Press the red tab to remove the access door.
     * Pull the mechanical release cable forward.

Someone on Mastodon pointed out that not all Model Ys even have the manual release. I didn't believe this could be true - how could regulators allow this?

But it's actually listed on the Model Y page (https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modely/en_us/GUID-AAD769C...): "Note Not all Model Y vehicles are equipped with a manual release for the rear doors."

Not sure what the distribution is or whether it's just an "old version" problem?

"Tesla didn't account at all for what happens ..."

Tesla might not have, but you can. Always have a glass breaker and seatbelt cutter in your vehicle. Doors get crumpled and can't open regardless of make/model.

What is an "unlikely event" for any given passenger is nearly a 100% certainty for Tesla. The engineers and product managers who came up with that solution probably have trouble sleeping at night these days.

I'm always surprised to see this comment without seeing a response that this is required by law in the United States. Remember child locks? They are on all cars. The manual release cannot override the child lock so it has to be hidden to meet federal law.

Lexus’s latest cars have electrically controlled doors as well. The mechanical failover is a bit better mind you, you have to pull twice instead of pushing, but I am not sure how panic proof it is.

I live techlnology but IMHO it is overdone in modern cars. Please bring back tactile and mechanical controls where possible.

  > Note: Not all Model Y vehicles are equipped with a manual release for the rear doors.

Regulations are written in blood.. it’s really disappointing to see a car make it to production without an obvious mechanical way to open the door. I’ve been in many teslas and hadn’t given this much thought, figuring there’d surely be a way to open the door if I need to get out.

why are the doors electronically controlled to start with? is it cost savings?

Damn if only we had the tech to open doors mechanically. Imagine that world. I hope Elon takes a few weeks away from destroying the US Government in January to think about this./s

For real though, I hope the relatives of the deceased take Elon personally and Tesla as a company for all they're worth.

> Note that this involves removing the rear carpet in the Model S and the door pocket mat in the Model Y

Seriously? How many people would be capable of pulling this stunt off in a burning vehicle filled with smoke? Especially considering the fact that in this case the vehicle was packed (5 people in it)--it's hard enough to get your own feet out of the way.

If this passes the safety regulations, those regulations should be changed. Not just expecting car manufacturers to do it out of their good will because they won't.

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?

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

I don't buy safety/medical products from Amazon. There was a time (maybe even today still) where those products go into a big bin with no verification of who the actual supplier was (1st vs 3rd party). I don't know how to verify if the issue has been resolved today, but life-critical items such as tourniquets, meds, etc. are expected to be 100% made by the supplier. Unfortunately, the money in the industry is so big that "cheap Chinese knockoffs" are being sold as high-quality replicas, even though they may not meet all the required specs.

There were many cases a few years ago of people buying branded tourniquets, only to be sold fake ones. The item looked genuine, but the integrity of the plastic could not maintain the pressures needed and broke. An emergency is not the time to realize that mistake.

I'd add that for anything your life depends on, my general rule is don't buy from Amazon. Buy from the manufacturer. Way too many counterfeits on Amazon.

https://www.lifehammerproducts.com/app/uploads/2024/06/20240...

Lifehammers don't work on laminated glass, like your front windshield (that would be bad, as it would mean a rock chip would shatter your window).

But more and more manufactures are putting in laminated side windows in their cars both for comfort (noise) and rollover protection, so Lifehammers don't work there either.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptaIBTyiKkc

I believe in the USA lots of tests are actually done without seatbelts, and this makes the requirements harder to meet.

This isn't a solution though; the driver of an uber may have a lifehammer somewhere, but the passengers don't know about it. It is simply criminal not to have an obvious way to open the door.

Maybe cars should be designed with a small button and a system to do that when airbag is deployed.

If you carry a fireweapon, don't lose time finding the lifehammer (But then we need to choose between bulletproof glasses for external threats or breakable glasses for internal danger. Both options are exclusive).

Note that these tools don't work if you have laminated side windows, which many cars now do!

This is way too big for everyday carry, just in case my Lyft happens to be a model S. They should forbid those as cabs or take them off the road entirely.

It is the spark plug insulator. They are using the ceramic from it to break the glass. I remember hearing about this in the 90s with thieves carrying insulators on strings in their pockets.

https://www.carparts.com/blog/can-a-spark-plug-break-a-windo...

note from the article: "Keeping Spark Plug Shards Might Be Illegal in Your State" so keep that in mind

Are you living in a good neighborhood?

Perhaps you mean “roll it down all the way”, but it most definitely can roll down most of the way.

As someone with a large head myself, I can most definitely fit it out comfortably of mine.

That’s not really specific to Tesla. Lots of cars have rear windows that only hinge open slightly

This is an issue with many modern cars, not just Tesla. The rear windows physically can’t roll all the way down due to the shape of the doors.

One way to solve it might be to design a window mechanism where the glass rotates in the frame rather than just sliding on a single axis. But as always, there’s a cost and complexity trade off.

Real life problems. Thanks for sharing :-)

Wait until that same throwing out the accumulated wisdom is applied to the US government...

Pulling again is probably a pretty panic friendly procedure though.

older generation BMWs do this same thing; it's achieved by a ratchet system on the door handle that interacts with the mechanically actuated lock.

it isn't electronic in the case of BMW. I don't know what Chevrolet does.

Or teach them? Risk management is something any (and every) engineer should learn

That's what regulation and compliance is for. Engineers are actually very good with those.

How about a simple tiny safety hammer instead. The ones a lot of cars (at least here in the EU) are already outfitted with. As others have pointed out, any car should have such a hammer.

For a long time, I lived in an area with a lot of creeks and rivers. Since my first car with electric windows and locks, I keep something like this:

https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Emergency-Cutter-Window-...

in the glove box or center console. Call me paranoid, but I don't trust the electronic system to work if my car is sinking.

This is why it's so dumb to want "more" or "less" regulation; clearly, there is some regulation we want, and some we might not. We should always be arguing specifics, not generalities.

This is US law. You can't have a child usable manual emergency release on the doors where you might have child lock enabled.

They damaged at least one car when their launch pad was suddenly distributed over a large area, throwing concrete pieces at least 6.5 miles.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-04-26/spacex-sta...

I have two in the compartment between the front seats, and I also have an axe secured under the seat. However, accidents are random events; you never know what will happen. If these tools are still in place, can you reach them, and are you able to use them, among other things? So I wouldn’t count on it in the slightest.

It is said that the glass breaker no longer helps with laminated side windows. What then. Kicking the window out, if that's even possible, could be the only way.

arnt car seat headrests designed for this use? You remove it from the seat and the "poles" are tapered for this purpose...

If they're going to legislate anything it should be that door handles (internal and external) just can't be like that in the first place. I say external and internal because a few articles went around HN a little while ago of parents ending up with their kids locked in teslas on hot days and unable to get out because the stupid thing had no mechanical external door handles.

It really troubles me that in many countries we have to ponder legislating something as fundamental as car door handles. Like, yes, regulations are written in blood, but door handles? Do we really need to be told to make door handles mechanical and where door handles go? It's just absurd to me that these doors were designed as such in the first place.

Would those hammers work on Tesla windows? IIRC, they now use laminated glass (like windshield glass) on the door windows as well.

I suppose we should be glad they're just being silent, not auto-responding with a poop emoji like they previously have.

Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

>It is correct to blame them for the way the door locks work though and therefore can be blamed for the excess injuries/deaths that result from the design decision.

This is what is being discussed here: that four people burned to death because they were unable to exit the vehicle.