Rescuer at Fatal Tesla Cybertruck Crash Says Car Doors Wouldn't Open
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A fatal Tesla Cybertruck crash has raised concerns about the car's door design, with a rescuer claiming the doors wouldn't open, sparking a heated discussion about the vehicle's safety features and design choices.
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Oct 2, 2025 at 11:47 PM EDT
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I don't need to worry about the programming of the computer controlling the door handle in a Honda civic - it's mechanical and will work in basically all circumstances excluding catastrophic mechanical damage - in which case there's 3 backups on the other doors or I'm crushed anyway and it's irrelevant. Meanwhile I hear story after story of various components on Teslas failing in all sorts of ridiculous circumstances - I recall cybertrucks having issues in car washes.
It's insanity.
A design group that refuses to use lasers or radar for navigation does not prioritize sound engineering of any type let alone worst case design planning.
I think Apple native package version control is worse than IIS pre-version 7, and that's saying something (maybe it's better now, but that used to be the worse).
Apple computers now use more or less the same architecture as their phones, based on ARM. That is why you can install most iPad apps on macOS, and they typically work surprisingly well without any customization. Shared GPU and RAM are a game-changer for efficiency, speed, and battery life.
What is the distinction between computers and phones/tablets you're referring to?
PS FWIW I've used IIS all the way back in Windows XP days. It worked well enough for my needs at that point to run a basic web server from my home computer!
Exactly. That mean that if you have two ruby versions, or god's forbid, two Php version (along with php server dependencies), and don't have brew, you're basically fucked. It's unusable. Shoot out to brew developers, they made mac usable.
Let's say i have spent a lot of time setting up Hadoops, installing different ETLs developped on different platforms, and application version control without brew on Mac is still one of the most excruciating thing i've ever done (not difficult, just randomly hard and time consuming. Also hellish to debug)
> What is the distinction between computers and phones/tablets you're referring to?
Can't install anything one phone and tablets. Phones i don't care, because i understand why some user want a walled garden, and you have other choices. Tablets, i don't get. You don't have any terminal access, you can't do anything on it. Maybe new version have changed, but each time my father ask me to fix something on his mac tablet, it's hours of finding the issues. On Mac i usually find/fix the issue in minutes (last time was picture ordering). You also have to run a webkit browser, so you have a way inferior adblock, which make the web less usable.
> FWIW I've used IIS all the way back in Windows XP days. It worked well enough for my needs at that point to run a basic web server from my home computer!
I'm sure it was great for personnal project, as long as you don't have to run multiple versions of software. I had to run php4 alongside php 5.1 (or 5.3, not sure) and php 5.6, with different crypt libraries and different everything, it was hell. Less hellish than running two different versions of Ruby on Mac without brew though, and ruby is more opiniated than php about how it is installed, so it is generally easier to manage dependencies, to my original point.
“It’s not exactly the same as Linux” is not a valid complaint for me, in case that’s the root cause of concern. Yes it’s not, and never tried to be. If “near full” isolation is the goal, Docker-style containers are always an option. Then it’s basically the same as Linux.
Also, Python is notoriously finicky with the slight differences between versions. I mostly use the JVM nowadays and that’s a breeze to run any version on the same macOS using a tool like jenv (which is available for Linux, macOS, etc). I believe Python has some of those tools also to make isolated “environments”.
PS In terms of block ads: I literally just “solved this”. I used to run the likes of AdGuard which works decently but I never felt too good about it because it’s a bit opaque about how it actually works. Here’s how you can get your own DNS-based adblock on Mac for free, in just a few minutes:
1. Install dnsmasq https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnsmasq
2. Get a dnsmasq-compatible .conf blocklist from https://github.com/hagezi/dns-blocklists
Sample dnsmasq config:
listen-address=127.0.0.1
conf-file=/path/to/chosen_blocklist.conf
#google dns or pick your own
server=8.8.8.8
server=8.8.4.4
3. In your Network settings, set the DNS to 127.0.0.1 This will pass all DNS requests through dnsmasq first
4. Enjoy system-wide (including native apps!) ad-free experience
That said, a lot of other newer cars already do not have the classic locking lever and handle arrangement.
It's completely unclear to me from this article if they failed to open because of computer control or mechanical damage. The car was on fire, I think, that's not exactly a trivial crash (though the 2nd article a fire chief says it didn't look like heavy damage to cause a fire) And they only got 1 of 4 out before the rest died? It doesn't take much to make a door hard to open or a lock fail to operate. They were also intoxicated.
What scares me, as a new volunteer fire/ems, with these is how prone to fire they are and how hard it is to stop the fire once thermal runaway has started. Especially when you are trying to pull someone out.
But as I said I have no idea from this article what happened, incredibly badly written. I'm not a fan of tesla but it almost feels like a 0 data hit piece. It's very hard to understand anything from this article.
Easier said than done when you have to shuttle water with tenders as we often do.
• buy a car where the doors and not mechanical
• buy a car with a huge screen in the middle
• drink and drive
• do cocaine
But the mechanical latches are not accessible from the outside, and they should be. That's why I call them half mechanical.
I’ve heard a lot of complaints about the safety of non-mechanical doors. But are these auto-locking mechanical doors any better?
What could be simpler after getting into a crash?
And there is no reason to talk about how people burn to death in Tesla's at ~4x the per-mile rate of the average car. I mean, Tesla releases intentionally deceptive statistics on their website [1] to convince you that you have ~8x the probability of getting into a fire in a non-Tesla and just intentionally not informing customers about the part where those fires are ~32x more likely to kill you. And that 4x excess fire death rate only results in like 4x as many excess fire deaths per year as the Ford Pinto; so really what is the harm?
[1] https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport
Do you have a source for that?
https://old.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/1h6fzvr/tesla_bu...
For the Cybertruck in particular you can see my post about their fatal fire rates from 8 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43039925
Tesla Cybertruck has ~40x the vehicle-year normalized fire fatality rate of the average car and was responsible for excess annual fire deaths on the order of the excess annual fire deaths of the Ford Pinto.
Hardly a surprise that the Tesla engineers come from the same breed.
Source: my brother and a tree.
[1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/306430144366
More recent, today:
Tesla Is Sued by Family Who Says Faulty Doors Led to Daughter's Death
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45456032
Weird way to end the story. I mean, what happened next? She died of the fire I presume?
Stupid af to do drugs and drive, very sad for everyone involved.
From this[1] earlier article.
I've heard plenty of stories of regular cars having their doors get stuck in crashes, due to the frame bending, and firefighters having to cut the vehicle to get people out.
That said, seems[2] the electronic latches have been an issue for some time:
On October 24, just after midnight, a Tesla Model Y with five people inside crashed into a guard rail on a Toronto street, bursting into flames.
The car’s electronic door latches wouldn’t open, so rescuers couldn’t get in -- and the victims couldn’t get out.
And it’s not the first time something like this has happened. Back in 2019, a doctor in South Florida crashed his Tesla Model S into a palm tree, and the electronic doors wouldn’t open. He was trapped inside and died.
[1]: https://www.newsweek.com/3-dead-after-tesla-cybertruck-crash...
[2]: https://www.azfamily.com/2024/11/22/deadly-crash-highlights-...