Deadly Toronto Tesla fire draws attention to risk of electronic door failure
Investigators are still probing the cause of one-car crash and fire on Lake Shore Avenue East, which left four people dead late last month
Since a crash on Lake Shore Boulevard took the lives of four young people last month, questions have been swirling about why the victims didn’t get out of their Tesla after it caught fire.
A fifth person survived the one-car crash on Oct. 24 after Rick Harper, a Canada Post employee, smashed the window with a metal pole.
“You couldn’t open the doors,” Harper recalled. “I would assume the young lady would have tried to open the door from the inside, because she was pretty desperate to get out.”
As soon as the rear window was smashed, the woman came right out, head first, Harper told the Star. The smoke inside the cabin was so thick, he said, that he was unaware there were others trapped inside and couldn’t see if they, too, were actively trying to exit the burning vehicle.
According to police, the car crashed at high speed after striking a guardrail on a troubled stretch of Lake Shore Boulevard East running underneath the Gardiner Expressway alongside the Keating Channel.
Local investigators are still probing the cause of the crash and fire.
Meanwhile, Transport Canada said it is aware of the incident and is assisting local agencies and the manufacturer in their investigations.
Teslas, like some Mazdas, GMs and Fords, have electronic doors that require power to open, according to Randy Schmitz, a captain with the Calgary Fire Department and chairman of Alberta Vehicle Extraction Association.
In a crash, that power can fail, leaving the doors inoperable using the normal buttons, he said.
