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Four people have tragically perished in a Tesla fire, as the electric car was caught in a blaze and seemingly failed to open its doors. Only a woman in her 20s was rescued from the October 24 crash, with a Canada Post employee called Rick Harper managing to break the windows and pull her from the wreck in Toronto.
Harper was able to rescue the woman when he smashed the Model Y's window with a metal pole.
Sadly, 25-year-old Neelraj Gohil, 29-year-old Ketaba Gohil, Jay Sisodiya, and Digvijay Patel sadly all died in the crash.
Speaking to the Toronto Star, Harper said the survivor 'couldn't open the doors' from the inside, which is thought to be an issue with the vehicle's electric handles. Tesla vehicles are equipped with a button that opens the doors, but in cases where the power fails during a crash, the doors can become stuck.
Police say the Tesla crashed into the guardrails on Toronto's Lakeshore Boulevard, while Harper adds that the smoke was too thick for him to realize there were others inside the Model Y. He told the outlet: "I would assume the young lady would have tried to open the door from the inside, because she was pretty desperate to get out.
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"I don't know if that was the battery or what. But she couldn't get out."
Local investigators are still looking into the cause of the crash and the resulting fire, as Transport Canada assists local agencies and the manufacturer in investigations. The official Tesla site states: "Tesla vehicles are engineered to be the safest in the world. Each one combines powerful on-board technology with an all-electric design to help protect every driver, passenger and pedestrian on the road."
According to Randy Schmitz, a captain with the Calgary Fire Department and chairman of Alberta Vehicle Extraction Association, many people won't know where the manual override is in the case of an emergency: "Part of the problem is (salespeople) don’t inform the vehicle owners of this feature so it falls on the vehicle’s owner to seek out the information in their service manual that comes with every vehicle."
There have been similar incidents of people perishing in Tesla fires, with a 49-year-old man dying when he couldn't get out of his Model S in 2019. A Vancouver man was forced to kick the window out of his Model Y to escape a fire in 2022, and in August 2024, a Cybertruck seemingly caught fire following a collision with a fire hydrant.
Despite the Model Y having a five-star safety rating from the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the NHTSA website lists at least one complaint about doors becoming inoperable and a passenger becoming trapped inside following the car losing power.
There have been continued concerns about the operation of doors in electric vehicles following a crash, with a spokesperson for Transport Canada telling the Toronto Star: "A vehicle’s condition and an occupant’s injuries and mobility as a result of a high-severity crash may influence the ability to exit any vehicle."
UniladTech have reached out to Tesla for comment but have not had a response at the time of writing.
