Tesla’s latest fatal fire is a reminder of why cars need old-school door handles

Four friends died on October 24 in a Tesla Model Y that caught fire after crashing into a safety barrier on Lake Shore Boulevard in Toronto. After the crash, it appears the car’s electronic opening mechanism stopped working, preventing the occupants and others from opening the doors. The only survivor, a woman in her twenties, managed to escape thanks to a passerby who used a metal bar to break the vehicle’s window.

The incident is only the most recent fire involving Tesla vehicles, and it’s a tragic reminder that we can’t depend on touch controls for safety-critical automotive functions. As Tesla details on its website, the Model Y features electronic door latches that require pressing a button to open via an electric mechanism. The car also has a mechanical emergency open system that many say would be nearly impossible to operate in an actual emergency.

Harper recalled seeing five to six feet of flames above the front hood of the car.Equipped with a fire extinguisher, Harper decided to pull over and help. @CTVToronto https://t.co/MDJjLYMhtM

“I couldn’t open the doors,” Rick Harper, the passerby who first responded to the crash, said on CTV Toronto. After Harper broke the back window, the young woman managed to crawl out of the car headfirst, desperate to escape the growing flames. Thick smoke obscured the rescuer’s vision, preventing him from realizing that there were more people inside. The other four occupants did not survive the incident. Authorities don’t know yet if they died because of the crash, because of the fire, or a combination of both.

“Safety-oriented design”

As is the case with all Tesla cars, opening the Tesla Model Y’s doors relies on electronic controls. If these fail, you need to use manual alternatives that can be hard to find. In the Model Y, the front doors have a small release mechanism next to the window buttons. Sandwiched between the door and the door handle, it looks to be part of the car’s plastic body interior. You need to know that it’s there and how to operate it. On the back doors this release mechanism is even harder to spot.

The vehicle offers a manual emergency release too, but it involves removing a panel from the door and pulling a cable. It’s a similar design for the Model S, whose rear doors have a manual release placed beneath the rear seat cushion. On the Model X, the falcon-wing rear doors have a manual release mechanism accessible by removing a speaker grille and pulling a cable. Most people traveling in these cars are clueless about these mechanisms.

Tesla claims that its cars feature “safety-oriented design” and insists that they are “the safest in the world.” The company hasn’t commented on this particular accident, but its recent history and multiple recalls present quite a different picture.

There’s also a difference between laboratory test ratings and actual road data. While the Model Y earned a 2024 top safety pick in the luxury segment by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a newly released study of all published data of the U.S. Fatality Analysis Reporting System between 2017 and 2022 shows that Tesla cars “have a fatal crash rate of 5.6 per billion miles driven. . . . The national average fatal crash rate for all cars in the U.S. is 2.8 per billion miles.”

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) currently has multiple investigations open involving issues such as “unintended brake activation” and “unintended acceleration” of Tesla cars. Elon Musk’s company also faces a criminal investigation and multiple lawsuits over misleading advertising about the safety and autonomous capabilities of its vehicles.

Even if you know where the emergency release is and how to operate it, imagine how hard it would be to find and remove a panel after a crash—trying to get your hand inside a cable in a hole in the middle of an electrical fire that’s producing dense and toxic smoke. It’s a task that would be nearly impossible for most occupants, particularly passengers who are unfamiliar with the car.

Digital controls are not safe

A mechanical interface with a mechanically operated latch would probably have prevented the problem with the Model Y. I get it, opening a door by clicking a button may seem cool—until it kills you. But the fact is that these buttons, just like the touch interfaces that control many car functions nowadays, are dangerous.

Studies have shown that electronic controls can increase the risk of accidents. Unlike physical controls, which drivers can operate instinctively without looking away from the road by using muscle memory, touchscreens demand visual attention. This distracts drivers from the important part of driving: looking at the road. It also removes the tactile feedback that helps drivers operate functions without further diverting their focus.

The trend of turning everything into a digital control is so dangerous that the European New Car Assessment Program (Euro NCAP) announced last March that starting in 2026, vehicles that delegate essential functions to touchscreens and fail to meet minimum physical control requirements will not qualify for the highest safety certifications.

According to Matthew Avery, Euro NCAP’s director of strategic development, “the overuse of touchscreens is a widespread issue in the industry, with almost every manufacturer moving key controls to central screens, forcing drivers to divert their eyes from the road and increasing the risk of accidents due to distraction.” Using touchscreens for basic functions like adjusting climate control or changing the radio volume introduces an unnecessary risk, and “minimizing the time drivers take their eyes off the road is fundamental for promoting safer driving,” Avery stresses.

While the Euro NCAP’s directives are not legally binding for manufacturers in Europe, consumers pay attention to its ratings, so there will likely be an impact on some brands. In 2026, the organization dictates, cars must include physical controls for core functions such as turn signals, hazard lights, windshield wipers, horns, lights (including high beams), radio volume, climate control, gear selectors, and releases for the trunk and glove compartment. These controls must also be intuitive and accessible without forcing the driver to look away from the road, ensuring the driver can react quickly and safely. Like it has always been until Tesla decided to put a giant screen on its cars and every brand in the world followed. So far, there are no indications that NHTSA, IIHS, or any U.S. consumer watchdog group might issue similar rules for car manufacturers.

Penny counters

Tesla and the rest of the brands that jumped onto this futuristic bandwagon sell it as “design innovation,” claiming that these clean dashboards are more beautiful and minimalistic than the previous paradise of physical knobs, buttons, and levers. They push what they say are better aesthetics—looking at any well-designed car from any time before the 2010s, I beg to differ—at the cost of sacrificing functionality.

The move to digital controls wasn’t Ramsian minimalism. It was the opposite. It was just lazy, dangerous, gross, and greedy. Especially the latter, because the truth is that many automakers adopted digital controls and touchscreens to reduce production costs. According to Maddie McCarty, an ergonomics engineer at Consumer Reports magazine, automakers have gone to touchscreens because they keep costs down.

By introducing centralized digital touchscreens, they eliminate the need for components like physical switches, rotary knobs, mechanical potentiometers, actuators, cables, and the dashboard apparatus required to properly house them. All of these mechanisms are expensive, especially if you want to give drivers a nice feeling and feedback when using them.

Brands also cut down on expensive human assembly costs. A screen just requires a digital board, relays, and some cables. Additionally, software updates can change or add functionality without any physical modifications or repairs, reducing maintenance costs under warranty. Double whammy.

Manufacturers like Hyundai are starting to realize that they need to abandon the illusion that digital controls represent improvements. They are right. The pursuit of alleged minimalism and cost-cutting cannot justify compromising driver and passenger safety. Returning to physical controls ensures maximum safety by allowing occupants to respond instinctively and quickly while driving and, most critically, during emergencies. If Tesla had implemented manual mechanisms instead of relying on electronic buttons, perhaps those four lives might have been saved.