
Tesla owner asks $1m in Model X fiery crash with Falcon Wing doors not opening - fmihaila
https://electrek.co/2017/04/23/tesla-model-x-fire-crash-falcon-wing-doors-stuck/
======
jmcdiesel
Why do people keep expecting Tesla to pay for crashes when the vehicles
perform better than the average other vehicle on the road? I was involved in a
crash, a drunk pulled in front of me, and the chassis bent a bit and i could
open either front door, and had to crawl out the back... thats just a normal
thing in car accidents, and it cant be avoided... and there is room to get out
of the vehicle from the front.

Tesla has been proven safer in crashes, and less likely to be in a crash in
the first place. The driver crashed into a stationary object, sue the driver,
not the car company.

~~~
juice_bus
The allure of a big payout seems to cloud a lot of people's judgement. Do
people try to sue/demand money from Ford/Honda/etc the same way these stories
are popping up for Tesla?

I'm curious if we're only seeing these stories because Tesla is such a hot
topic.

~~~
JKCalhoun
IDK, the Ford Pinto got handed it's ass some decades back.

Ralph Nader made a name for himself writing a book about car companies selling
death-traps.

This is how the industry changes — Tesla is not the first.

Or maybe their owners, paying $100K or so a car, feel a little more entitled
to receive a safe car for all that dosh?

~~~
jmcdiesel
JKCalhoun, that would be applicable if the Tesla was less safe than other
vehicles, but its consistently shown to be more safe than most vehicles...
Even the battery fires everyone goes on and on about, Teslas (based on
accident rates, to scale the data) are much less likely to catch fire than a
gasoline powered car. They are safe in impacts as well...

~~~
zkms
There's an issue with the door _so they 're getting sued for the door issue_.
It's not some kind of general indictment of Tesla nor Elon Musk, it's just
that lawsuits are alas one of the very few ways that disputes can be resolved
in our non-centrally-planned economy.

Does liability law sometimes cause bad collateral damage (like you mentioned
here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14187563](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14187563)
with general aviation)? Yes. But that doesn't mean that every lawsuit over a
vehicle is inappropriate.

Tesla vehicles are safer than most other vehicles but that isn't an excuse for
sub-par design around emergency egress. This story have been "my Tesla crashed
and has battery fire but the conveniently-located door override nevertheless
let me get out fast" \-- I'm disappointed because _Tesla could have done
better_.

------
eridius
So they want $1m because.. they have nightmares about what would have happened
if they couldn't get out of the car? Tesla certainly isn't to blame for the
crash, and it sounds like they're not to blame for it catching on fire either.
In addition, the passengers didn't even try the emergency door release levers
(presumably because they didn't know about them, even though they're
documented in the physical owner's manual).

Honestly, this just sounds like a money grab to me.

~~~
joezydeco
_...The owner of the vehicle and her boyfriend were sitting in the second-row
seat..._

Um, where was the _driver_? Did he/she flee the scene or something? Killed in
the crash?

~~~
21
Says in the article they had a chauffeur.

~~~
joezydeco
I meant, where was the driver when it came to helping the couple out of the
wrecked vehicle?

~~~
21
I've been in an accident once and immediately after I was in a state of shock,
very confused and on auto-mode. Or maybe the driver dies in the accident, so
I'm not really sure how this is relevant.

------
jamesred
The Falcon wing doors were a mistake. Not having a manual way to open the door
is also a mistake.

I'm not sure if these people deserve compensation but there should be a way to
open the doors manually without relying on hydraulics.

~~~
21
It's just another case of aesthetics coming before function or safety.

See airplane doors for a comparison:
[http://c8.alamy.com/comp/DK7AW8/airplane-door-cabin-door-
on-...](http://c8.alamy.com/comp/DK7AW8/airplane-door-cabin-door-on-a-
commercial-jet-airliner-airbus-a321-DK7AW8.jpg)

Of course, there is no need to have such "ugly" or big notices, but certainly
a small text "Remove cover here and pull lever to open" is doable.

~~~
zkms
That "carefully remove the speaker grill" is the chosen phraseology means that
these are instructions meant for maintenance and service, not instructions
meant for emergency egress. Furthermore, the latch release cable doesn't
provide much leverage and access at all, given it's literally _at floor
level_. It's also possible that the latch release cable requires a lot of
force to pull (if you have to pull against springs or pull against frictional
forces on contact surfaces of latches). These factors make me conclude that
this system was never designed for emergency egress purposes.

However, these are not an inherent issue; it's certainly possible to store
energy (compressed gas, auxiliary battery, springs, pyrotechnic charge) to
provide a redundant opening system in case the main power supply is offline.
Using stored energy to activate emergency safety apparatus (hi, airbags) is
not a new thing in passenger vehicles. Hell, some cars have _pyrotechnic
cable-cutters_ that isolate all non-essential 12V/HV circuits _with
explosives_ milliseconds after a severe collision are detected (to avoid post-
crash fire/heating and electronics damage).

To solve a eminently predictable post-crash problem with "take off a speaker
grill that's on the floor (right next to a battery fire) and pull hard on a
Bowden cable" is simply not acceptable and the state of the art in post-crash
systems indicates that Tesla could have done much better.

------
mdekkers
Some semi-hidden latch is shockingly poor UX, and frankly I am surprised this
is coming out of Tesla. It appears as though _nobody_ has gone through an
emergency scenario with these doors. It isn't fucking hard either - the basic
rule is: "when in an emergency situation, 99.999% of the population will not
turn into Rambo or Bear Grylls, but instead their faculties will drop to
basics. We start to see in flashes as opposed to "streaming" and we start to
perceive the world in black and white as opposed to color. The amygdala will
be in control, and is really good at pumping us full of go-fast juice, and
kinda sucks at higher level reasoning."

So to cater for an emergency scenario, make everything simple, obvious, and
wherever possible, dependent on muscle memory. The emergency release should
depend on whatever mechanism is already used for that door (no idea what it is
now), but _more_ \- if it is a latch, have some mechanism where if you pull
the latch _much harder_ it becomes a mechanical device that opens the door. In
the case of these wing doors that move up, make the whole door drop off the
hinges or something. In the case of an electric button, make it so that if you
depress it even more, again it becomes a mechanical device. etc. WTF, Tesla?

------
kuschku
So, the only way to leave the car in case of an accident is not documented in
the digital version of the manual?

That has to be a major oversight, especially for people able to afford a
driver it’s unrealistic to expect they’d read the manual (they’ve got better
to do with their time), or to expect that they give the one single physical
copy they have to a driver (instead, usually, the driver gets a PDF on a
kindle – you might replace the driver a few months later again, and might not
get the manual back otherwise).

So it’s not surprising that the passengers and the driver didn’t know about
that.

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gumby
This is the typical Tesla response:

> First of all, the lives of the owner and passengers were not threaten.

Reminds me of Tesla's section to the decapitated driver: "A human wouldn't
have seen the truck either" or the unroll.me response.

Seems like their life _was_ in danger. How about, "Sorry to learn what
happened" and to look at changing the accessibility of the manual release.
This is why we have consumer safety regulations.

------
Grue3
I can't believe people are actually defending Tesla here. Truly there's no
limit to fanboyism.

------
rdl
My first thought in a car crash where the doors didn't open (which happens on
regular doors, too, if they get physically damaged), would be to smash out the
window with a glass breaker. Are Tesla windows particularly challenging to
break?

~~~
ctvo
And where would you get a glass breaker? I wouldn't be surprise if you had one
on your keychain, but is the expectation that most people will?

I don't understand the mindset where commenters chime in with what they'd do
in the situation (most of the time they've read the manual front to back, they
have a dozen gadgets in their cargo pants for just this occasion).

Isn't it more worthwhile to discuss what the expectation would be for the
average consumer? Imagining someone like my grandmother in that situation
tends to set expectations well.

~~~
rdl
I actually keep them in my car velcroed into the door pockets (the combo
seatbelt/glass breaker kind). I'm arguing that Tesla probably would be better
off providing a tool like that (easy) vs. trying to figure out how to do a
good manual override (hard).

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alphabettsy
I wonder if any other companies with electrically actuated doors have faced
similar lawsuits? Chevrolet Corvette comes to mind with the push buttons...

~~~
DiabloD3
Doesn't matter: Model X's doors can be opened with a physical emergency latch
in the event of power failure.

Apparently, the owner of the vehicle couldn't be bothered to read the manual.
_Oh well_.

~~~
alphabettsy
It's hardly an emergency latch if you have to read a manual first.

That would be like hiding a fire alarm or exitinguisher behind a painting and
placing a small sign underneath indicating it's presence, hardly useful in a
real emergency unless people are informed.

This is more accurately described as a manual backup since you apparently have
to remove a speaker grill to access it.

