They Survived the Crash. The Door Handle Needed a User Manual.

On Thanksgiving Eve 2024, a Cybertruck carrying four college students hit a tree in Piedmont, California, at high speed.^[1] All four survived the impact. A friend in another car grabbed a fallen tree branch and hammered the front passenger window ten to fifteen times before it broke. He pulled one person out, but three of his friends burned to death inside the wreckage. Krysta Tsukahara was nineteen, Jack Nelson was twenty, and Soren Dixon was nineteen. Autopsy results showed they died of smoke inhalation and burns, not from the collision that trapped them.

A Bloomberg investigation published in December 2025 identified at least 15 deaths in crashes where Tesla's electronic door handles would not open, along with 140 separate reports of occupants trapped inside Tesla vehicles after power loss or impact.^[2] NHTSA has opened a formal defect investigation into 179,071 Model Year 2022 Model 3 sedans, examining whether the mechanical backup release meets safety standards for emergency escape.^[3] A defect petition filed by a Tesla owner called the manual release "hidden, unlabeled, and not intuitive to locate during emergencies."

Five days after the Piedmont crash, a Model S in Verona, Wisconsin, left the road and struck a tree. The lithium-ion battery pack caught fire, and the electronic door systems failed. Jeffrey Bauer, 54, and Michelle Bauer, 55, were passengers. A homeowner called 911 after hearing screaming from inside the vehicle. All five occupants died.^[4] Court filings describe what the Bauers' surviving children say rear-seat passengers would have needed to do to escape: lift the carpeting and find a concealed metal tab. In a burning car.

A Door You Cannot Figure Out in a Fire

Traditional car doors have a mechanical latch connected to a handle. You pull, the latch retracts, the door opens. It works without power, without instructions, without thinking. Modern electronic door handles replace that mechanism with a button or sensor that signals an electric motor to retract the latch. When the car has power, it works beautifully. When it does not, you need the backup plan.

Tesla's backup plans vary dramatically by model, and none of them would pass a usability test conducted inside a burning vehicle. On the Model 3, the front doors have a small release tab above the armrest that many passengers never notice until they need it. On the Model X, Consumer Reports documented a process that requires removing a speaker grille and pulling on a hidden release cable before manually pushing the falcon-wing door upward.^[5] For the Model S rear seats, the Bauer family lawsuit describes a metal tab hidden beneath floor carpeting.

No crash victim has ever opened a speaker grille while their car was on fire. That procedure belongs in an engineering manual, not in a passenger vehicle.

Thirteen Automakers, One Bad Idea

Tesla catches the lawsuits, but electronic door handles are spreading across the industry. Consumer Reports identified vehicles from Audi, BMW, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Fiat, Ford, Genesis, Lexus, Lincoln, Maserati, Rivian, Tesla, and Volvo that use some form of electronic door release.^[5] Cadillac and Rivian owners have reported being trapped inside their own vehicles. Some brands handle the backup better than others. On certain models, overriding the electronic latch means pulling twice or pulling harder. On others, it means finding something that does not look or feel like any door release a human being has ever encountered.

Why the industry went electronic is straightforward: flush exterior handles cut aerodynamic drag, which matters enormously for EV range. Auto-presenting handles look expensive and buttons replace moving parts, so every engineering team that adopted electronic handles had a reason. None of those reasons are worth a single person burning alive because they could not find the manual release.

Legislation and the Counterargument

Rep. Robin Kelly of Illinois introduced the SAFE Exit Act, which would require vehicles with electronic door latches to include intuitive, labeled, manual fail-safes for occupants and external access for emergency responders.^[6] Consumer Reports endorsed the bill. Over 35,000 people signed a CR petition demanding safer handles. Chinese auto safety regulators have begun drafting their own standards for electronic door releases.^[5]

Both Tesla and Rivian told Bloomberg in September 2025 that they may redesign emergency release mechanisms on future vehicles.^[2] That is an implicit admission that the current designs are inadequate.

Strongest Case Against This Story

Tesla vehicles earn excellent crash-test ratings. The Model 3, Model Y, and Model S routinely receive five-star NHTSA ratings and IIHS Top Safety Pick+ awards. The structural engineering that protects occupants during impact is genuinely world-class. Fifteen deaths across millions of vehicles and hundreds of billions of miles driven is, statistically, a rounding error. The Piedmont crash involved a driver who was intoxicated and traveling at high speed. Most electronic door handles function perfectly in the overwhelming majority of scenarios. And regulatory action remains preliminary, with no recall ordered to date.

All true. Also irrelevant to the three teenagers who survived a crash and then died because a door required a user manual.

What You Can Do

If your car has electronic door handles or buttons instead of a traditional mechanical latch, open the owner's manual right now and find the emergency release procedure for every door. Front and rear, then practice operating them once so you can show your passengers where they are. If you have children who ride in the back seat, show them too. This takes three minutes and it may be the most consequential three minutes you spend with your car this year.

Consumer Reports maintains a guide to emergency manual releases by brand and model at consumerreports.org.^[5] Bookmark it.

Source: Bloomberg investigation (December 2025), NHTSA ODI, Consumer Reports, court filings. Death counts from Bloomberg refer to cases where electronic door failure was alleged as a contributing factor. Crash investigations are ongoing and no final regulatory determination has been made. See methodology for caveats.