From the New York Post:
Dad died in burning Tesla because its futuristic doors wouldn’t open, lawsuit claims
A Tesla driver burned to death after a crash because the “futuristic handles” on his car trapped him inside and rescuers couldn’t open the doors, it is claimed.
Dr. Omar Awan, 48, lost control of his car, skidded across a road and smashed straight into a palm tree in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in February.
Smoke and then flames engulfed his blue Model S Tesla shortly after the crash.
A police officer arrived almost immediately, and crowds gathered outside the vehicle, but no one was able to save the father of five because of the “inaccessible door handles,” a lawsuit claims.
The car’s retractable door handles are meant to “auto-present” or pop out when they detect a key fob nearby.
But it malfunctioned, stopping first responders from opening the doors and saving Awan, it is claimed.
This post touches on two things I’ve written about before.
First, is the Tesla is the Apple iPhone of cars. It is designed (poorly) with all the features and gewgaws that Silicon Valley phone makers love to stuff into their products, with no intent on device (or vehicle) longevity, or ease of service and maintenance.
This reliance on digital thinking causes these Silicon Valley-type engineers to forget to build in manual overrides.
When your laptop gets the blue screen or spinning rainbow of death, you don’t die.
When your car has a software hiccup and faults, you do.
It could be your door handles don’t work or your drive by wire steering and breaking cut out at highway speeds.
It doesn’t matter, you die because those wonderful, slick features don’t have a manual override.
I am a meat space engineer. I want to make sure than when I pull on my door handle my door opens. The battery can be dead, the engine on fire, I don’t give a shit. I want an all-metal linkage to connect my door handle to a lock that works when I tug on it.
Also, buy a Zak Tool window punch, a Lifehammer, or just keep a good of fashioned axe within reach of when you sit in the driver’s seat so you can manually extricate yourself out of your vehicle.
I have a Zak Tool clipped to my first aid/blowout bag in the center console and a Fiskars hatchet in the driver’s door pocket.
Call them a portable manual override.
I was wondering why the cop didn’t just … break the windows.
The inside door handles do have a mechanical linkage to the lock. The complaint is about the external door handles.
But in many cases the doors are locked while driving (a number of cars do this automatically, and if not, a lot of prudent drivers do it manually). The exterior door handles don’t open the door when the door is locked, of course. So rescuers can’t count on getting into a crashed car without a glass breaker tool. If they had used one, they would have gained access to the interior door handle which would open the door (or would have been able to extract the victim through the window opening).
In other words, I don’t understand what the issue is, or why the claim that Tesla is different in a significant way. I know some people have built cars with fly-by-wire features that are scary, but I don’t think Tesla is one of them. It has power steering but a mechanical linkage between steering wheel and the road (I know, I have driven the car with the power steering out of order). Likewise, it has power brakes but they are a conventional hydraulic pedal to brake caliper design.
One of the things that I had to do in past jobs is design and build “fail safe” devices and code. Most people don’t really understand what “fail safe” means.
It simply means: If this fails, it has to fail in a safe manner.
For example, the electromagnetic lock plates in a lot of buildings these days. The door will not open until the power to the lock plate is cut. At which point there is no resistance to opening the door.
This is a “fail safe” in that if power to the door fails, you can still exit. On the other hand, a simple solenoid plunger could also keep that door closed. Supply power to the solenoid, the plunger withdraws, the door opens. If the door is closed and locked with the plunger and power fails, you can’t open the door.
This could also be a fail safe, for example if that solenoid plunger was keeping a bad person locked up or if it was keeping a safe closed.
Fail safe means different things in different situations. Regardless, it is about making sure that when, not if, something fails, it fails in the safest way possible.
In the case of some of the newer cars, we don’t know what sorts of fail safes are involved. If an older car suddenly has the motor stop, put it in neutral and drive onto the shoulder. If one of these drive by wire cars has a motor failure, can you get it into neutral?
If your power locks fail, can you still open the door? I hope car manufacturers continue to do the right thing when creating new cars. Making sure that they fail safe.
I am also a (retired) meat space engineer. No one can predict every failure, but if one keeps in mind that “Murphy is an Optimist” and one works through the likely scenarios, things will work out better.
Redundancy and diversity in equipment controls are your friend. Manual override should be mandatory, although its use requires some operator training to know when the computer is lying to you. I have concerns about the increasing role of computer automation controlling potentially dangerous equipment. The 737 MAX issues come to mind.
My first car was a 1967 VW microbus. It was given to me by my parents when I turned 16. I got rid of it in 1987. At the end of its life the gas gauge didn’t function nor did the speedometer. The only indicators that actually worked were the idiot lights and odometer.
I carried a 5gal Jerry can of gas “just in case” but I knew when to fill the tank based on the odometer reading. I had enough experience to know how fast I was going by judging what was moving past me (Plus, it had a top speed of 65MPH)
Today, my kids have a hard time finding the button to start the car. The key hole is just a black square rectangle in the dashboard.
Yeah, drive by wire is a bit scary. On the other hand, I do like the CAN standard.
Well written and wonderful article full of information. Thanks for sharing such a great article with us:-)