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Comment by ThePowerOfFuet | Hacker News Reader

>It is correct to blame them for the way the door locks work though and therefore can be blamed for the excess injuries/deaths that result from the design decision.

This is what is being discussed here: that four people burned to death because they were unable to exit the vehicle.

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It's not entirely fair to say it happened in a vacuum, either, since car doors are damaged and fail-shut enough that almost every fire department has hydraulic rescue tools to force open trapped cars.

The spontaneous combustion of Tesla's battery pack was the proximal cause of death here, but that's an EV problem in general, and will probably only grow as they take over the car market.

Maybe we need the car version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUBSAFE to account for EV combustion risks that prevent FDs from responding in time for locked doors.

It's not correct to blame them for the way the door locks work. This is the case on all electronic door handles, now becoming common on new cars. The reason you can't have an emergency manual override easily accessible is that a child could use it when child lock is enabled. The US government created this problem.

That is incorrect. This is not the only legal way to design this.

I own a Volkswagen ID.4, also an EV with electronic door handles. The door handles also function as the mechanical emergency release. When the handle is only slightly pulled, the electronic release opens the door. When the handle is fully pulled twice, the mechanical release opens the door. The car also has (electronic) child safety locks, and is legally sold in the US.

And they had survived the impact, and were capable of, but unable to, exit.

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