Instead of a window hammer, in the US you could probably use a handgun to shatter the glass instead.
The Cybertruck though uses "bulletproof glass", so you can't even shoot your way to escape - it'll just make a hole to make the car sink faster.
So it sounds like it's a mixed bag from a safety perspective — you're less likely to be ejected, but more likely to drown. It's not crazy to choose this type of design if ejections are much more likely.
However, it seems like any car sold with this glass should come with a warning and perhaps an included safety tool to escape. I wonder if the AAA testing utilized window hammers or just regular brute force.
On the other hand, there's a bunch of safety and maintenance gear you could load in your car that most people will never need and it's not clear how much of that makes sense unless you routinely travel to remote locations outside of cell phone service.
I have no idea how hard it is to open a door with a mechanical pull if you drive into a lake although I imagine I could learn online.
Here's how to do it in a Model 3. [1] Apparently it differs by vehicle.
I watched a video on car safety about this [1] - initially regulators only tested for head-on collisions, but when they started testing for slightly skewed head collisions (which is also a common crash scenario), all the cars that passed with flying colors previously failed in this new test.
My '07 ICE vehicle has non-manual windows. I thought basically everything except the very very cheapest did these days.
Other brands that aren’t Tesla don’t go to such great lengths to hide the emergency releases, too.
If I backed into a pond, I'd pull the flap and get out before the car sinks.
EDIT: looks like this only applies to the newer models.
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/model-x-emergency-op...
It isn't very easy on an older model x