In the past, laminated glass was usually installed in the windshield, with side and rear windows being tempered only.
The difference is that tempered glass is per-stressed so that when it cracks, it shatters into many tiny and dull pieces. Laminated is the same thing, but with layers of plastic sandwiched with layers of tempered glass. Laminated glass will still shatter, but will be held together by the plastic layers.
In an emergency, small improvised, or purpose built tools meant to shatter tempered glass will be useless if the glass is laminated.
The problem wasn’t the glass.
The problem was using wtf touchscreen controls to shift between drive and reverse. Mrs. Chao confused the two then died.
Shitty UI kills another person. Tesla fucking up basic UI design is the real villain here.
I still blame Jeep for thinking a rotating selector was a good idea for a gear shifter. RIP Anton Yelchin.
I thought his jeep issue was that P on the dial didn’t actually guarantee the parking pawl was engaged to stop it from rolling. Separate from the lack of positive engagement with the P position, more about the physical disconnect between the two. Unless that was just the non-offensive language version of “user didn’t turn the dial all the way and our polite warning chime was too polite”
I’m more inclined to blame Tesla’s electronic locks and confusing manual override before blaming the windows though
Quick, do you know which panel to remove to find the non-electronic manual override in a Tesla? Car is sinking fast and the electronics just shorted out from the lake.
But sure, tons of bad design decisions here. It’s hard to blame any one of them as the singular cause. If Tesla had easier to use manual override doors instead of electronic locks, if the windows could be broken, if the screen wasn’t a confusing touchscreen mess, etc. Etc. Lots of factors and all are the cause.
Probably doesn’t help that Teslas guess which direction you want to go in and you have to change it if it’s wrong. https://www.autoblog.com/2021/01/28/tesla-new-gear-shifter-guesses-direction-you-want/
she could have not floored it into a lake, but maybe I’m the only person that doesn’t go balls out when they’re backing out of a spot.
Accidents happen, and people panic. Maybe she thought she was pressing the breaks and made the problem worse. I highly doubt anyone would do it intentionally.
One pedal braking makes this a bit tricky for people who are not used to it and/or panicking. You spend decades of your life having a seperate “go” and “stop” pedal, and then suddenly they’re the same one. You have your foot over the accelerator, lift a bit and feel the deceleration as if you’re pressing the brake.
Suddenly, something darts behind you, and your brain says “I’m feeling deceleration, so your foot is on the pedal that stops things” and you slam on it like you would the brake pedal. I’ve done it with the clutch/brake after hopping back and forth between a manual and automatic a few dozen times after a very long day of vehicle testing. Muscle memory is a powerful thing and your brain’s mental model of the world is not always correct.
No, I don’t see this at all. I suppose everyone is different but I fail to see how muscle memory if taking your foot off the pedal makes you press the same pedal. Those are opposite actions.
I definitely see the thing where you think you’re pressing the brake and don’t realize you’re on the wrong pedal so you press harder. That can happen on any car
Imagine if water spilled or leaked from the window onto the touchscreen, try using a wet smartphone… Could be touchscreen device malfunction or misclick causing the Tesla fatality
You seem to have very detailed information on how the accident happened. Care to share?
Within minutes of saying her goodbyes, she called one of her friends in a panic. While making a three-point turn, she had put the car in reverse instead of drive, she said. It is a mistake she had made before with the Tesla gearshift. The car had zipped backward, tipping over an embankment and into a pond. It was sinking fast. Could they help her?
it shatters into many tiny and dull pieces
Those pieces are not dull. They’re just not jagged and shaped like knives like normal glass. I accidentally broke the rear window on my truck and, thinking it was dull like you described, started to pick it up with my hands. Big mistake.
You just unlocked a very unpleasant memory of picking up small glass pieces with my hand. Like you said, big mistake and the worst was that I didn’t notice it was cutting at first…
One time I was climbing a rock in a park in Illinois, and reached up into a pile of finely-ground glass.
I managed to pick all but one little piece out of my fingers. That one piece was so far in I couldn’t get it.
Later on, I couldn’t find it. So I figured it had come out.
But a few weeks later my palm itched and that fucking piece of glass poked its way out of my palm.
This is astroturfing.
The issue with Tesla has never been that the windows are hard to break. The issue is that the rear doors are electronic with manual override hidden in a camouflaged panel at the bottom of the door pocket. A door pocket that was added to hold things. Those things will block access to the emergency door open.
This is coming up because of the recent drowning, right? Is someone saying the driver was unable to escape because she was unable to open a back door? It would make sense of there was an issue with rescuers unable to break rear windows, but how is the inaccessibility of the internal rear door emergency open cord relevant to this case?
If you’re underwater you’re not gonna be able to open the doors without breaking the window unless there’s an explosive. But partially submerged when 20% of the door is still above water then yes it should be possible to still open the door
But partially submerged when 20% of the door is still above water then yes it should be possible to still open the door
Partially submerged, the door would be very hard to open, due to water pressure. The water pressure needs to fully equalized between the inside and outside of the car.
Did we learn nothing from Mythbusters?
As Mythbusters proved, you wait until the car is almost full of water, and then open the door.
Someone important died drowning in a Tesla so it’s in the news. This story attempts to get the general population to think the problem is hard to break glass to deflect from Tesla’s design flaw.
Instead of, “Tesla has a serious design flaw that will trap passengers.” everyone is talking about, "all cars have hard to break windows.
It’s a strawman. No one has complained about hard to break glass windows. Emergency window hammers have been sold since the 1940’s. But people have been trying to bring Tesla’s unsafe doors to public attention.
Sheriff’s deputies even stood on top of it during the rescue efforts, trying to bust open a window.
I think it’s ok to let people know that the little window breaker doohickey they have stashed in their console for emergencies might not do shit if they have laminated windows (many newer cars).
There are lots of reasons this can be an issue outside of Tesla making shitty doors- a child or dog trapped in a hot car, an unresponsive/unconscious person, doors jammed during a crash and occupants are injured or unconscious.
If anything is being distracted from here, I think it’s probably that the woman may have been drunk. She was celebrating with old friends, it was after a late dinner. She was on a private road on an estate where it wouldn’t have been a crime to drink and drive. It’s easy to confuse forward and reverse in a Tesla, apparently, but she launched herself over an embankment and far enough into the middle of a pond that rescue workers didn’t have a long enough cable to reach the car. Most people don’t just floor it from the get go.
It’s one of the various factors.
The whole issue is that those window hammers won’t work as well with laminated windows, and now laminated windows are mandated. Maybe someone can point to data suggesting that the laminated windows are safer on average for some reason though.
Another is unintuitive door open versus emergency door open. First car I ever saw do that was a Corvette, and yes people have gotten trapped in those without knowing what to do either. At least older Tesla model got it right, the emergency open is opening it harder. Well except exterior handles not working on an emergency, which Cadillac lyric and mustang Mach e also get wrong.
Broadly speaking, also sticking all the features into touchscreen or capacitive touch is also a bad and industry wide trend, which Tesla is the poster child of taking it too far.
Also, early on cars were trying to figure out human factors of transmission, and safety problems caused “PRND” to be mandated. Now we had that actor killed by Chrysler’s fancy shifter, and Tesla also having a weird shifter that might have contributed to this accident.
Also you have the fact you had a pond near a car travel area with no fencing or guardrail. Another is the consequence of choosing to have a private 900 acre residence in a remote area and what that means for speed and quality of rescue attempts. So it’s not all about car design, but there are multi important factors to consider.
Also the thousands of non billionaire deaths we don’t specifically talk about have a lot to say about what we may do better
How is this not about Tesla still… It literally has Tesla in the title?
It’s stretch mate.
Control the narrative. Rich woman died. Tesla marketing team going on defense.
You see this a lot every time a Tesla kills somebody.
LOL those poor people who have to pump a bunch of disinformation through social media sites that contain potential buyers to help excuse their owner away from repercussions.
But also go fuck them, and the bastardization of the information era we are in because everyone has realized flooding the narrative with alternative and even wrong takes makes it impossible to sift through for the average person.
So what you are saying is that maybe you should read the fucking manual before piloting a two ton death machine at highway speeds?
When you bought your car did you physically check to see how the rear seatbelts are operated or did you assume they were standard because of safety standards?
People buy products assuming the minimum standard of safety that has been there for 50 years is still there.
On the model X that was involved in the drowning, no one should be expected to read the user manual to find out the door open latch is a pull string behind the speaker grill.
First of all, yes - I do believe that we should normalize knowing how to operate the safety systems in the cras we drive. It’s crazy to me that’s even controversial. I do actually read the manuals for all the cars I own.
But second, I think there is some confusion here. For the driver and front passenger, there is a clearly visible manual release on the door in the model X. It’s so prominent, most inexperienced users and guests believe it is the primary release The pull behind the speaker grill is the manual release for the rear seats.
Good news for 2023 Honda HRV owners, because the rear glass shatters spontaneously on its own.
Kia/Hyundai from 2011 to 2022 have that beat with their entirely key less ignition and universal free ride share program.
We need HARD rules and regulations for car door handles and common controls. This push for screens and lack physical elements needs to stop.
