https://oaklandside.org/2025/03/18/c...ast%20November.
Cybertruck crash report says witness could not open door to save victims
Three college students were killed in the November collision in Piedmont.
While the report does not conclude the stuck doors were the reason the students could not be saved, it introduces a potential technical issue that car engineering experts have previously warned as a safety risk.
But he noted that there have been published reports in the past few years of people who died inside Tesla vehicles because they couldn’t exit a damaged car or because bystanders could not open the doors.
The main issue is that the doors of a Tesla, as well as those of some other manufacturers’ electric vehicles, rely on electronic power “to disengage electronic latches,” the Detroit engineer said. The electronic design schemes rely on the car maintaining power to open the door instead of a simple mechanical latch.
On the Cybertruck, this entry-and-exit issue may be worse, as there are emergency pull cords in “obscure locations which often require rear seat passengers to remove door paneling to access,” Cook said in an email. This mechanism is described in the owner’s manual of both the Cybertruck and the Model Y vehicles.
“If vehicle power was lost, I am not sure how the Cybertruck doors can be actuated from outside of the vehicle. My suspicion is that they cannot,” Cook said.