> That is terribly difficult underwater and can be even more so when trying to bash through tempered glass or sturdier laminated glass, which most car companies use today. Those are the two types of glass that Tesla may have used in its 2020 Model X, according to company documents. Laminated glass, in particular, is lauded for its safety qualities, such as preventing a driver from being ejected during a crash; however it is nearly impossible to break underwater, according to testing done by the American Automobile Association.

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.

An accessible window hammer is probably not the worst thing to carry.

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.

Given how discombobulating it would be to drive into a lake, it would probably make sense to have a window hammer on both sides, or watch a youtube video or two about ways to break out of cars without window hammers. This would be less necessary if you're in a vehicle with mechanical door pulls, where window egress would not be as crucial.

I assume the vast majority of cars have mechanicaal door pulls. In fact, I'm a bit surprised to learn it's not universal--seems like a big potential safety hazard.

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.

I believe it's hard when the vehicle doesn't have water inside, since you're effectively pushing against the external water pressure. But once the car is full/near-full of water, it becomes much easier — just like opening a door regularly.

They all have mechanical door pulls, it is mandatory.

Yeah, I just talked with a Rivian engineer (who owns a Tesla) and he said that all these vehicles have mechanical pulls, but the problem is that they are hidden and people don't know where they are. It's kind of odd the article didn't mention this fact and enlighten the readers as to how to avoid the same fate!

Here's how to do it in a Model 3. [1] Apparently it differs by vehicle.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu-tJc-BgaI

On the X/Y/3 front doors the pull handles are kind of where you expect it on a normal car, at least the ones I've seen.

I think it's a case of car manufacturers not optimizing for safety where there's no federal regulations for. There's no incentive for manufacturers to make their cars safer for scenarios not tested by regulation.

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.

[1] https://youtu.be/OnWpZKhDgAo