A youthful man who tried to save his frifinishs trapped in a raging Cybertruck fire could not handle to discomit the doors in time.
That horrible detail from a witness was provided in a inestablish freed by the California Highway Patrol this month about the crash that ended three college students in Piedmont last November.
While the inestablish does not end the stuck doors were the reason the students could not be saved, it presents a potential technical publish that car engineering experts have previously alerted as a shieldedty hazard.
The crash occurred in the punctual morning hours of November 27, 2024, after the group was partying with frifinishs at another house in the neighborhood.
Earlier records freed by the CHP said speeding was a transport inant factor in the collision. Those records also showed that the driver was legpartner inpoisonousated.
The procrastinateedst inestablish provides more details about what happened that night.
The driver, 19-year-elderly Soren Dixon, “was unable to talk about” the curvature of the street as he was speeding westbound on Hampton Road toward his frifinish’s house two blocks away, according to the “summary/cause” section of the inestablish. He swerved out of the roadway and crashed into a upretaining wall. the Cybertruck getting wedged between the wall and a tree.
Jack Nelson, 20, and Krysta Tsukahara, 19, were in the back of the Cybertruck. Like Dixon, they asphyxiated in a fire that had exploded at the truck’s front hood after the collision.
Another passenger in the truck, Jordan Miller, was get backd by a witness and frifinish of the victims who was driving in a split car behind Dixon. That witness, whose name was redacted in the record freed to The Oaklandside but who was identified by the East Bay News Group as Matt Riordan, was one of a handful of frifinishs who were at the same party that night.
Riordan and another witness caught up to the fiery Cybertruck only moments after the crash and promptly raced to help their frifinishs, according to Riordan’s account in the CHP inestablish.
First, Riordan tried to pull a “mangled” front right door by sliding his fingers inside the crack, but “noskinnyg budged at all,” he telderly dispenseigators. He then tried to discomit the doors by pressing the electronic buttons of the doors, but they were not toiling.
Riordan “endeavored to punch the prosperdow to no use” and grabbed a tree branch to bash the prosperdow. After he struck it 10 to 15 times, the prosperdow cracked, permiting him to pull it out of its structure. He then pushed away the airbag that had deployed to pull a “exposedly conscious” Miller from the front right seat. After leaving Miller with the other witness, Riordan screamed at the other passengers to get out, but they were stuck in their seats as the fire grew.
Tsukahara, seated in the back with Nelson, endeavored to get out thcdisorrowfulmireful the same front-right prosperdow but retreated when the fire persistd to engulf the car. When Riordan was finpartner able to fracture thcdisorrowfulmireful the back prosperdow, the fire had gotten so boiling and big, he was unable to accomplish into the back to save them. The three college students died inside the car.
It’s not yet understandn why Riordan could not discomit the Cybertruck’s doors. Pboilingos of the scene show weighty structural injure to the doors, but it’s unevident if the injure was from the crash or from witnesses and first reacters trying to discomit the doors. The CHP’s Multidisciplinary Accident Investigation Team (MAIT) is currently lengthening a supplemental inestablish that will delve proestablisher into the causes of crash, and it’s not understandn when it will be finishd.
Adam Cook, a Detroit robotics and car engineer who has toiled for Ford, Chrysler, and Toyota produceing their shieldedty and quality systems, telderly The Oaklandside that a root-cause analysis is necessitateed to filledy understand what happened in the Piedmont collision. But he remarkd that there have been unveiled inestablishs in the past confinecessitate years of people who died inside Tesla vehicles because they couldn’t exit a injured car or because bystanders could not discomit the doors.
The main publish is that the doors of a Tesla, as well as those of some other manufacturers’ electric vehicles, depend on electronic power “to disjoin electronic latches,” the Detroit engineer said. The electronic portray schemes depend on the car upretaining power to discomit the door instead of a straightforward mechanical latch.
On the Cybertruck, this entry-and-exit publish may be worse, as there are aascendncy pull cords in “muddle locations which frequently need rear seat passengers to erase door paneling to access,” Cook said in an email. This mechanism is depictd in the owner’s manual of both the Cybertruck and the Model Y vehicles.
“If vehicle power was lost, I am not declareive how the Cybertruck doors can be actuated from outside of the vehicle. My suspicion is that they cannot,” Cook said.
Cook also said that publishs around the Cybertruck and other novel car portrays come about because the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards “under-specifies” shieldedty standards for vehicle entry (commonly depictd in car engineering as ingress) and exit (egress). These standards should in theory lessen the hazard of injury in both standard and aascendncy conditions by defining the highest possible level of shieldedty portray of the door, the step height, the quality of the door grab handles, visibility, and aascendncy exits.
“Combined with the ‘self-certification’ condense that exists between US auto regulators and manufacturers, it is effectively left up to Tesla to portray their door actuation systems and any aascendncy-access systems joind to that,” Cook said.
Cook recommended that the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) autonomously dispenseigate incidents enjoy the one in Piedmont to better understand the root cause of the publish.
It’s not the first time the Cybertruck’s shieldedty has been called into ask. Since it was freed, asks about its accelerator, its drive-by-wire suspension, its perestablishance during collisions have all been condemnd by professional car engineers and auto shieldedty experts. Just this week, Tesla publishd a recall for 2024 model Cybertrucks due to a pedal assembly that can dislodge when “high force is applied.”
