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Father and son incinerated after ‘self-driving’ Tesla suddenly slammed into tree
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2026
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Is this considered Darwin award material? At least the dad paid for and chose this. The son was more a bystander.
No, being deceived by carefully planned propaganda is not Darwin Award material. Very few people actually know the dangers of the vehicle they drive.
Idk if I believe that anymore. News like this has been popping up for years now.
This isn't new information though. It's been happening for years
I wouldn't buy one of these things under any circumstances for many, many reasons, safety being one of them. I will not, however, participate in victim blaming. Especially when two human lives were lost in such a horrific way due to the arrogance of whoever decided sleek futuristic looks are more important than the safety of their customers.
Yes. Karmic as well. Patron shitty billionaires, burn to death in their shitty cars.
If you don't know how dangerous lithium ion batteries are when punctured you are kind of a smooth brained fucking moron.
I've had a pretty ugly car accident with my previous EV. Not a tesla. My car was totalled and I'm alive by miracle (I was in a traffic jam, an articulated lorry's driver was distracted, didn't see the line of cars and hit mine full force because I arrived just before it).
My car didn't catch fire. I was severely injured, but the car didn't catch fire and the doors were opened by someone from the outside without any help from me.
I agree that you shouldn't patron shitty billionaires, but this kind of accidents happening only to teslas do for a reason.
I hope you fully recover.
I'm almost completely recovered. Two bars in my back are helping the broken vertebra to heal, but for the rest, I'm well, even back to work, thank you!
This is the most important point: is there anything Tesla should have done differently to get a result like your or was theirs severe enough that you can’t really do anything
My car was destroyed, the firefighters came to isolate the battery before it caught fire because the damage was extensive to everything. Still, my car had normal handles, so when the car was hit and everything went to shit, the doors still worked and I could be evacuated from the vehicle. Everything worked as intended, airbags, safeties...
In the Tesla accident, the first thing that didn't work was the damn door handle. This is the most basic thing of a car: a functioning door. And they fail at that, and not just once, this is commonplace in teslas.
It’s really not commonplace, it gets attention because of the horror. In particular I’ve seen several times cars on the side of the road ripped open by jaws of life. Apparently those were also too damaged to get people out of the doors. Where are those headlines?
I’d rather see results of a fair investigation whether there was anything that could have gone better, rather than internet speculation.
The difference is that the jaws of life only come into play if the door is mechanically blocked, because the car is so bent that the door is binding or because it rolled.
The Tesla door design stops working if battery power is lost.
Then you have to ask "ok, but what does the car get from that change". The answer is absolutely nothing. Some will claim improved aerodynamics, but the Model 3 exterior handle is fundamentally mechanical and is flush, but still interacts with an electrically actuated door latch. The electronics could have been replaced with a mechanical system with the same aerodynamic profile.
But fine, they have a mechanical backup. But it's not the same place as you would operate normally. This means during an emergency, whomever is trying to operate the door needs to know that not only does the outside handle not work (common enough with locks) but the normal/obvious interior door release control also won't work and you need to know about the hidden backup mechanical release. Other cars have done the electronic door with backup mechanical and the backup operation is simply "pull the handle a little harder" or somewhat worse but still "pull twice", which is intuitive, but Tesla made the backup mechanical different than normal opening. Normal opening is a button, and you don't really learn intuitively to use the mechanical latch that is in the front. To be generous, at least the front handle is vaguely guessable. The rear they hide the mechanical release on a cable under a plastic cover under the rubber mat in the door storage.
The point is this can and has contributed to people trapped in cars in panic situations, and there's zero upside to it.
Note that Tesla isn't quite alone, I saw a Corvette similarly obsessed with 'button to open door', but it's a stupid thing to do regardless of manufacturer.
At the same time, the vehicle’s electric-powered door handles became inoperable once the battery system caught fire, preventing the two from getting out or rescuers getting in – a serious issue that has similarly doomed others riding in Teslas – Shantorria Herring’s complaint alleges.
This could have gone better. This doesn't happen on other cars and this is also the reason why europe wants to ban this kind of door handles