We all know online Tesla crazies will jump through any hoop to avoid admitting that Tesla and Elon Musk are incredibly flawed. Um, actually, it’s a good thing that service times are so long because any part you use to repair a car is a part you can’t use to keep building cars. Also, Musk can send rockets into space. I think he knows a little more about running a social media company than you do. So it probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise to hear that when a so-called falcon wing door closed on a kid’s head, many of them blamed the kid and his parents.
The video below comes to us by way of /r/ModelX and shows the door closing on his head. According to the Redditor who posted it, this isn’t a new thing either. “My son is 4 y/o he is the latest member of our family to get ‘chopped.’ Grabed his lunch box and went back for his toy…These wings don’t descrimate, got my 71 year old father in law too. Only perspn left to be christened is my 18 month old daughter. #chopped,” they wrote.
You would think the response would be an overwhelming, “Oh no, that’s awful! Tesla really needs to fix this. That is not acceptable.” You would also be wrong. There were certainly some people who responded like normal adults, but so many more were just total assholes for no reason. “Maybe your family isn’t ready for automatic doors,” wrote one. Another added, “You think that’s crazy? My kid dropped a cinder block and it did not levitate above his foot. It actually smashed his toe!” Not only that, but many comments expressing sympathy for the kid were downvoted.
Now, if you open the Tesla Model X’s owner’s manual, it does include a warning that says, “It is important to keep your hands clear of the falcon wing door frames at all times. Proactively check the door frame area prior to closing, and monitor the movement of the door during closing to ensure that it does not come into contact with a person or object. Failure to do so can result in damage or serious injury.” Then again, it also promises, “The falcon wing doors are equipped with several sensors that detect the presence of people and objects and, if an object is detected, the door stops moving. Based on detected objects, the doors may adjust their outward and upward movement in an attempt to avoid contacting the object.”
So, theoretically, owners have been warned, but it’s also completely reasonable to think that Tesla should prioritize making sure that its doors reliably detect when they’re closing on a person or object and stop before it crushes them. And while that may be what they’re supposed to do, as another commenter pointed out, getting the Model X’s rear doors to do anything reliably can be an exercise in futility.
“The sensors are wildly hit or miss…literally. I’ve had my drivers door swing wide open into traffic (I assumed it’d use the cameras or sensors to see passing cars), I’ve had my FWD not open because the sun was shining on it, I’ve had my FWD not close because I’ve walked underneath it yet I’ve seen family still get hit by them, I’ve had my trunk not open when using the kick sensor but also close in the middle of unloading groceries,” they wrote.
Yeah, we’re going to side with the “this shouldn’t happen, and Tesla should fix it” folks, not the “that kid deserved what he got” ones. The technology is there, and it’s completely reasonable to expect that it will work as intended on an $80,000 crossover.