"Door Handles Wouldn't Work": Tesla Driver Dies in Burning Car after Crash

Trying to compare this to a combustion-engine crash is not going to work. Gasoline fires do not rage for *days* after they've been put out--do not reach thousands of degrees--and no gasoline vehicle today can burn to the ground, almost to ash, in under five minutes! Tesla battery fires are something to be greatly feared, imo--far more so than petrol tanks, no question about that at all. Most likely, the guy burned to death before he could be helped.
 
In other news and to lighten the mood.

Naa its more fun to re-ignite the fire, pardon the pun...

tsla-osha.png
 
DUmb question. But i was under the impression that if a hydrogen tank ruptures, it cant explode, just like if you cut a natural gas line, it cant explode. It cant mix with oxgen fast enough to cause an explosion. Well at least if it was leaking outside the car. Pretty sure if it ruptured inside the cab, or inside the house, yea everyone would be dead of deaf.
Have you ever lit a test tube 1/8th full of hydrogen? Now imagine that spread out over 30-40 cubic feet.
It isnt the tank that explodes. Its the hydrogen. I'm not sure where this idea that hydrogen cant explode comes from. Tell that to the families of the Challenger shuttle. I believe that was an H2 tank iirc.
 
This is just fud. Take any ICE mobile, crash it into a tree at 70+ mph and it has as much as a chance to catch on fire like any EV with a compromised battery. You just don't see news about ICE cars catching on fire because it's not sensationalized news. I mean shit, if EVs are so dangerous, we should ban phones too because they have batteries in them.
 
An ICE vehicle will not combust in this manor reliably every time where as the Lion battery powered car pretty much will. Gasoline/ diesel is more stable. This is not saying it does not have the potential to ignite, but a gasoline fire can be contained, the Lion battery fire is best to just run from and can go off like fireworks. Lets face it. biting a phone battery can cause the battery to explode. Some catch fire on their own.

More car fires are due to electrical issues than gasoline ruptures. Years past gasoline ruptures were more common but tank placement and construction has come a long way.
 
Naa its more fun to re-ignite the fire, pardon the pun...

View attachment 145725
BTW, there is a lot wrong with this table. How much of the car do these 'car companies' produce themselves vs tesla for example.
How many inspections (its not the same when you are opening vs up and running inspections)
 
If any oil company reps are reading, I will happily take a job scouring newswires for any stories that portray EVs and Tesla in particular as unsafe deathtraps.

?

You realize tesla's use a huge fucking amount of oil right. So does everything else, including the food you eat. This is a nonsensical statement.
 
?

You realize tesla's use a huge fucking amount of oil right. So does everything else, including the food you eat. This is a nonsensical statement.
how so? he wants a job with big oil to demonize EVs.
 
BTW, there is a lot wrong with this table. How much of the car do these 'car companies' produce themselves vs tesla for example.
How many inspections (its not the same when you are opening vs up and running inspections)

Its self explanatory, its a chart of tsla's osha violations. Here's a link to the article which basically discusses how tsla is cooking its books. There's a lot of investor sentiment these days that's negative for tsla.
 
Its self explanatory, its a chart of tsla's osha violations. Here's a link to the article which basically discusses how tsla is cooking its books. There's a lot of investor sentiment these days that's negative for tsla.
Cooking the books, in modern America? I think i peed a little.
Quick jail everyone in finance./s
The osha shit, so does the sheet metal manufacturer for kia in which a worker got crushed to death count against Kia? Its a bullshit table with no proper context.
 
The automatic door handles and lithium batteries are why this is a worse problem than an ICE car.

In a high speed crash, there are two areas where the Tesla door handles can fail (electrical/mechanical), instead of one (mechanical).


Secondly, lithium catches on fire when it is exposed to AIR - gas requires an ignition source. There is also a much greater surface area for lithium to be exposed - the batteries run underneath most of the entire body, versus just inside the rear wheels.

Despite its defenders, this would make Teslas inherently more dangerous.
 
If only there was a reason they created and named the "Jaws of Life"...
 
The automatic door handles and lithium batteries are why this is a worse problem than an ICE car.

In a high speed crash, there are two areas where the Tesla door handles can fail (electrical/mechanical), instead of one (mechanical).


Secondly, lithium catches on fire when it is exposed to AIR - gas requires an ignition source. There is also a much greater surface area for lithium to be exposed - the batteries run underneath most of the entire body, versus just inside the rear wheels.

Despite its defenders, this would make Teslas inherently more dangerous.


The doors have mechanical releases. So it's no different than automatically locking doors on any other car if the driver is unable to open the door from the inside.

Lithium metal ignites when exposed to air, but Li-Ion batteries do not have Lithium metal. Exposing them to air does not cause them to ignite. Physically damaging them or exposing them to hight heat however might, but that's not much different for gasoline and gas tanks.
 
The automatic door handles and lithium batteries are why this is a worse problem than an ICE car.

In a high speed crash, there are two areas where the Tesla door handles can fail (electrical/mechanical), instead of one (mechanical).


Secondly, lithium catches on fire when it is exposed to AIR - gas requires an ignition source. There is also a much greater surface area for lithium to be exposed - the batteries run underneath most of the entire body, versus just inside the rear wheels.

Despite its defenders, this would make Teslas inherently more dangerous.


You mean like a hot engine, right? ICE cars catch on fire all the time, but only a handful of EVs do and usually only in highly serious accidents, yet this makes them so much more inherently dangerous?
 
I like this idea......


I don't think hard foam would be too healthy for the gray stuff sloshing around in your head? Plus they'd probably cheap out on the foam and use some chemical with a vapour that causes cancer or some degenerative nerve disease. Excuse me while I go spread my cheer elsewhere :)
 
Correct me if im wrong but the Model S has an emergency manual door release? Its required by law.
 
Driver dies in crash because he was speeding. That's what I get out of this.

People get trapped in car crashes all the time and some even die from the car catching fire and no one being able to get them out of the car in time.
It most certainly is not the fault of the car.
Depending on how the car was damaged from hitting the tree the door could have been compressed in a way that not even a normal door handle would have worked.
Random people saying door handles didn't work is a non point in this. It is why they have "jaws of life" to open up cars with trapped people because the door handles and door are damaged into a non working condition.

Just more sensational "Tesla bad!" story.

Thank you.

Huurrrr, battery tech isn't good enough...yeah, and rolling around with 10+ gallons of explosive liquid in a tank is any safer. God, I hate these fucking "hit pieces."
 
28 gallons just in the tires, not telling how much more in the plasticy interior.


derp
derp nothing. you dont make any sense. who the fuck cares how much "oil" is in it, he just wants a job demonizing them.
 
derp nothing. you dont make any sense. who the fuck cares how much "oil" is in it, he just wants a job demonizing them.

no it's was a passive aggressive remark about big oil conspirators controlling the media and demonizing poor tesla.

Big oil is fine, they don't care about electric cars.
 
Correct me if im wrong but the Model S has an emergency manual door release? Its required by law.

Yup, infact its where a normal person would reach for a normal door handle. Basically you have to look for the door open button, but the e-release is right were a normal mechanical release would be.

Infact tesla dealers have a problem because most noobs use the e-release to open the door on hte S/3, which can cause trim damage over time.
 
That wasn't my point at all. Minutes should be plenty of time to get someone out of a crashed car baring some other factor. Whether or not it was a defect in the car is something that should be looked into. I mean if the handles stay recessed and people outside can't open doors...that's a problem. I'm not saying it did or didn't happen....just that it could very easily be a car defect.
The issue is how one frames the "problem." One could discuss the growing concern over rising cancer rates but it'd be an incomplete analysis without acknowledging the rising average lifespan along with it. The longer one lives, the more one is prone to mutations like cancer. More people might be dying from cancer now but they are living longer, in general.

Similarly, can we effectively discuss the rising rates of passengers dying in burning vehicles without discussing the simultaneous increase in passengers living through severe crashes they wouldn't have survived in past years? It sounds counter-intuitive to argue some of these vehicles may in fact be safer even though more people are dying from crash-related fires than they did previously, but the reality could be that less people are surviving in other accidents thereby showing a spike in these kinds of deaths that doesn't accurately reflect the total risk.

That is, surviving a crash in a Tesla even if it means you die to a fire may still be safer odds than being in the same crash in a traditional vehicle where you die from the crash instead of the fire (or even no fire occurring).
 
The problem here is that since the air bags did not deflate, It was damn hard to get the guy out of the car with a closed door before the fire halted the rescue. Whoever made the airbags has a lot of 'splainin to do.
Class 101: "How to break a car window and deflate an air bag with a sharp object".
as stated above, break glass, deflate airbag, pull guy out? they had minutes to watch it happen. speaking of, no cam footage? not that i want to watch a dude burn alive but they are everywhere now...
 
as stated above, break glass, deflate airbag, pull guy out? they had minutes to watch it happen. speaking of, no cam footage? not that i want to watch a dude burn alive but they are everywhere now...


I guess that you are more awesome than the people that were there.

“Davie police spokeswoman Vivian Gallinal says the car hit some palm trees and burst into flames Sunday afternoon crash. An officer was nearby and tried to break the car’s window, but couldn’t get the driver out.”

We had only a couple of min.

My husband tried to break the back window out. The airbags didn’t deflate after the crash and trapped the person inside. We couldn’t even see inside the car because all of the bags filled the car.
 
Trying to compare this to a combustion-engine crash is not going to work. Gasoline fires do not rage for *days* after they've been put out--do not reach thousands of degrees--and no gasoline vehicle today can burn to the ground, almost to ash, in under five minutes! Tesla battery fires are something to be greatly feared, imo--far more so than petrol tanks, no question about that at all. Most likely, the guy burned to death before he could be helped.

Are you kidding? My EGT gauge in my old Subaru would hit 2200f under throttle. If you take an infrared thermometer to an open petroleum fire its over 1000f.

Gasoline is highly volatile and explosive.

Cars are dangerous period. Stop pretending like Teslas are rolling nuclear warheads. If you ask me there are hundreds of millions more gas engine vehicles on road than teslas and far far far far to the power of 10 people die from gasoline cars than Tesla.

And you cant prevent death. Havent you seen final destination movies lol. Its gonna get you when it's your time.
 
I guess that you are more awesome than the people that were there.

“Davie police spokeswoman Vivian Gallinal says the car hit some palm trees and burst into flames Sunday afternoon crash. An officer was nearby and tried to break the car’s window, but couldn’t get the driver out.”

We had only a couple of min.

My husband tried to break the back window out. The airbags didn’t deflate after the crash and trapped the person inside. We couldn’t even see inside the car because all of the bags filled the car.
guess not ;)
the cop should have had a break tool. side current airbags will hang there and cover the windows. maybe that is what they were seeing and assumed.
 
U
guess not ;)
the cop should have had a break tool. side current airbags will hang there and cover the windows. maybe that is what they were seeing and assumed.

What squad car does not have a glass breaking tool? Don't get me wrong that makes more sense of what actually happened but it still seems fucky somehow like everyone panicked, which is understandable?
 
Happened right up the road I live on.
But this is why I always carry a window breaker, to save me or someone else.
 
No officer that I've ever worked with would have any trouble breaking a typical car window with any type of metallic tool. Pretty sure I could do it with my radio without much trouble if I had to.

Since they were trying to break the rear window, it sounds like they were driven away from the driver early on by the fire.
 
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