Wow, he referenced her death in his retirement statement, but I just assumed it was age related because… well… look at them.
Always remember, if your car goes in the water, you CAN’T open your door until the pressure equalizes. You have pounds of water pushing against the door, keeping it closed.
Mythbusters went over this… Undo your seat belt and let the water IN. When there’s enough water inside, open the door.
Better yet, smash the front wind shield (after seatbelt is off or cut) to get out sooner
Smash anything but a windshield. I’ve needed to violently remove a windshield when replacing it (time was running out and tool shops were closed). Wearing protective glasses and pushing with both legs is what it took to somewhat loosen it, but not immediately remove it. Windshields are a multilayer structure of plastic and glass. Side windows are just glass.
It was cold out, so she decided to take her Tesla Model X SUV for the four-minute drive rather than walk.
It says everything.
A four-minute drive is like a 20-minute walk. If it was really that cold, I may have done the same thing.
The way you portray it, “it says everything,” is not fair - and yes, I know we’re talking about a billionaire. Like, she deserved to die because she didn’t want to walk in the cold.
Her death shouldn’t have happened the way it did. And again, yes, I know she’s a billionaire, fuck billionaires, etc etc. But her mistake was her not being careful while driving, and potentially the car not being safe enough (e.g. doors jam-locked?)
It’s 100% Tesla’s fault. Mechanical way to open doors is not obvious and hidden, sometimes all together missing. And car relies on power to open the door, which runs out when submerged. Shit car with shit ideas. There’s a reason why windows easily shatter on cars and Musk and his cult followers seem to think getting out of car in case of emergency is less important than sounding cool.
The pressure of the water against the door would’ve prevented her from opening it regardless of the door’s mechanical features or power supply issues.
The windows not shattering is absolutely a Tesla design flaw, but there’s no way that woman was ever going to open a door from inside a submerged car.
True, but there’s some more.
Over here, ice roads are opened on typical winters on several smaller bays. The instruction to drivers is:
- don’t wear a seatbelt
- if ice breaks, open your door swiftly (get out first, then think about calling people)
- if you can’t open the door, lower your window swiftly
- if you can’t lower the window, break it (the side window, not the windshield - a windshield is multilayer laminate, too strong to break quickly)
Typically, if a car sinks on an ice road, people are likely to get out. A crank-operated window is handy in such a case. But regardless of instruction, sometimes folks do die. :(
In general, I would not like to experience any sort of extreme incident in an over-engineered car. I’d prefer something from the 1970-ties, but with airbags.
Tragic way to die. I wouldn’t wish this even on my worst enemies.
We all watch the videos of how to deal with this exact situation but in reality only a few people would be able to react accordingly to save themselves.
The article describes the area of water as a “pond” but the vehicle was fully submerged. Rescuers had trouble with rescue attempts due to the depth. Seems more like a lake to me.
I appreciate this. I’m astounded by the callous lack of empathy of some of these other comments.
