Four people were killed in a fire after a Tesla Model Y lost control and hit a pillar in Toronto last month. The four people were reportedly unable to open the doors of the car after it caught fire and a fifth passenger only survived the crash after onlookers smashed a window and dragged them from the wreckage.
The Tesla Model Y electric SUV reportedly lost control and hit a pole in downtown Toronto on October 24, reports CBC News. After striking the pole, the front end of the Tesla caught fire and the flames quickly spread to the rest of the car:
“Upon impact, the vehicle then caught fire,” Sinclair told reporters.
When firefighters arrived on the scene, the car was fully engulfed in flames, said Deputy Fire Chief Jim Jessop, who spoke alongside Sinclair.
Once the blaze was extinguished, firefighters found four people inside the vehicle. All four were pronounced dead at the scene, Sinclair said.
A fifth passenger was able to exit the vehicle after a postal worker driving past the scene smashed one of the car’s windows with a bar they had in their truck. The 25-year-old woman was pulled from the back seat of the Model Y and taken to safety where she was “shaken” and “wasn’t able to say anything,” adds CBC.
Authorities are now investigating the crash and looking into why the four other people inside the car weren’t able to escape the burning vehicle, reports Futurism. The site adds that the findings so far “implicate to some degree” the electric doors that Tesla fits to cars like the Model Y, which require emergency latches to open if the car has no power:
The Elon Musk-owned automaker has a troubling history of owners getting locked in their cars without power. Some of these cases may be down to user error, since most Teslas come with manual release levers.
However, these emergency measures have been criticized for being poorly designed and unintuitively placed for certain models, often requiring intimate knowledge of the car — something that most owners, let alone a passenger in a panic, aren’t likely to have.
Moreover, with the Model Y in particular, not all vehicles come with manual releases for the rear doors, as Tesla warns in the car’s manual. It’s unclear if the Model Y involved in the crash was equipped with the emergency feature.
In Model Y cars, the front doors can be opened when there’s no power by pulling up on the manual door release that’s located in front of the window switches. When it comes to the rear doors, however, the process is much more complex.
On examples equipped with them, emergency release latches for the Model Y’s rear doors are hidden beneath a mat at the bottom of the door pocket. Once that’s removed, a red tab opens an access hatch that reveals an emergency release cable.
Tesla cars have already trapped occupants inside on baking hot days, with a Model 3 trapping a TikToker inside while the sun slowly baked the car and another Tesla locking a baby inside on a 109-degree day.