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.
How is this legal? Who let these vehicles on the road?
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.
Sarcasm (but also sadly likely Tesla’s take): How are you so sure they wanted to get out?
I remember something similar happening with the Delorean DMC-12, and they were absolutely ridiculed for it.
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.
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.
Probably the same person who let them on the road with a screen-swipe control for shifting with NO indicator of the gear you are in.
I did not realize how fucking stupid the gear selector was. I’m even angrier than when I started, and I started pretty angry.
Those are only the newer versions from the last year or so. They used to have regular fucking stalks. Even after they swapped the wheel for the yolk.
*Yoke
Elon
The manual door open on some models of Teslas require removing 2 panels that are not labeled and need a diagram to know how to remove them. Another requires removing the speaker grill and pulling an unlabeled wire.
Even once the manual door release is pulled, without power you need a firefighter’s upper body strength to open the door, and it’s likely that flames and poisonous smoke will be coming up any tiny gap you can create by pushing open the door a little.
Just willful disregard of your customers’ lives.
Honestly, this seems more like incompetence. They hired tech bros to make a car, not safety engineers. How these cars got through safety regulations is beyond me.
Simple, the regulations don’t talk about any of that shit.
US road regulations are a blend of smart, fucking stupid, and just plain missing regulations.
The fact any current “standard” pickup trucks are allowed on the road despite nearly half the population being short enough that they can’t see over the hood is just one of the most obvious examples that the US road regulations are pointless to try and make sense of.
At this point I don’t know why anyone is buying those death-traps. For me any benefit from the self-driving feature is outweighed by the safety and poor build quality issues.
I don’t know why anyone is buying those death-traps.
I’ve got good news, then! Fewer and fewer people are buying the illegal immigrant’s dangerous and overpriced swastikar, with new buyers dropping and trade-ins rising every day as public support for the emerald mine nepo baby nazi dwindles daily.
Instead they’re buying F150s and the like that are just as dangerous to everyone else on or near the road.
Because risk is statistically low and fuel cost savings are more tangible than believing you’re going to crash, let alone die. Humans are not logical. We know most conservatives don’t believe in EVs and outright liberals don’t want to support Musk, so who keeps buying them? Despite the reports of slumping sales, my area is continually renewing them despite being deeply blue. There’s another category: the real silent majority. The apathetic majority that’s being selfish and diminishing the weight of their actions.
“Selfish” implies they somehow gain something by purchasing one of these death traps.
Minimal fuel and maintenance fees. Flashy iPad in the dash. Quiet ride. Pretty good acceleration. I say fuck Tesla at this point because Elon just couldn’t stay quiet and just couldn’t stay reasonable with the product, but Tesla is the brand that put EVs Into the common household.
You need to grab the ripcord with your right hand, conveniently placed above the heart, and thrust it forward and up.
Cope cord.
I’ve driven a couple cars with electronic door poppers and I’m having trouble understanding why anybody would want them. The novelty of accomplishing a routine task by pressing an electronic button instead of pulling a mechanical lever should have worth off in 1985.
I would not expect US auto regulations to improve for at least 3.5 years, minimum.
