Funnily enough the first comment in the article is "oh yeah, if you're in Tesla good fucking luck, their doors fail and the releases are incredibly hard to find in emergency"
> Use caution when using the manual door release; the window will not automatically lower when the door is opened and damage to the window or vehicle trim may occur.
Manually opening the rear doors is a destructive operation!
Is it actually "destructive" or is it more of a "cramming the door seal over the window and flexing the widow assembly in a way that would result in more failure under warranty than they want if done regularly" type thing.
I think that's exactly what they recently got sued for. Car caught fire, electrical stopped working (and therefore the doors stopped working) and a teen burned inside
It's wild how my car won't let me change basic settings while vehicle is in drive (too much menu nav as to be distraction & I've had cars that would only let me edit the navigation destination while in park) yet - this exists as well
You're forgetting the "people who don't care, they just want to be seen looking like they care so they make a bunch of noise" factor.
Once you multiply the safety problem by the this factor it all makes sense.
A small non-problem that every screeching jerk will be exposed to is a bigger actual problem more likely to get addressed than a potential real problem that will mostly go unnoticed.
Also rear doors are kinda optional. They still make 2door 2-row cars. Heck, they made 2-door 2-row SUVs pretty recently. And child safety locks are a thing. So there is an argument to be made there (not that I think it holds up on modern stuff).
The front ones vary and certain models are atrociously designed. If you get in an accident and have a concussion, and adrenaline, add a 10x difficulty factor
This is almost certainly what killed those kids in piedmont
I didn't find them hard to find (in the front seat). When I first got my car it kept complaining because I instinctively reached for that lever instead of the button. The computer claimed I could break the window if I kept using the manual lever, and I had to figure out where the button was.
Not saying the car is great, just that I found the door lever easily. I'd still rather have real controls (and a real sensor) for the wipers and the reliance on software and software updates makes me very nervous. You can't even open the glove box without a voice command or touch screen (as far as I can tell).
A better design would be for the 'button' to be a normal lever in the normal location, and the emergency manual release to be triggered by pulling that lever extra hard.
There is no wrong way to open the door. Any suffering on the owner's part is caused by the manufacturer building the car that way. A car like that clearly isn't meant to carry untrained passengers. If the car owner insists on buying an unsuitable car, then that's on the owner. It's no different from buying a two seat sports car as a family of four.
