Awkward Tesla Robotaxi incident proves they are putting optics over safety

I'm wondering how safe these cars are in real life emergencies! There's no manual door handle on the back doors. Only a pull that's hidden below the rubber mat in the door pockets. How the hell is a random, unsuspecting passenger, not familiar with this supposed to get out of the back seat if there's an accident that incapacitates the vehicle and disconnects the power?

He didn't mention her name but damn were there some shots fired at Kathy Wood.

There is something strange in this video that I missed the first time I've seen it. Pause at 26 seconds: https://youtu.be/RnrgVkoj334?si=B0IQBp0UFQsixrlX&t=26 Why is service area shown in the app back to the previous size? Three weeks ago they doubled it, there were videos from the new area but you can see in the app the size shrunk to the previous size. You can compare the areas here: https://teslanorth.com/2025/08/03/tesla-expands-robotaxi-service-area-in-austin-again/ What is going on here?

Then they suck at optics, too.

It’s Teslas strategy, passengers that burn with the car won’t press charges. Tesla simply needs to take care of any remaining family as well.

I'll give them this, so far we haven't heard of any crashes. It's obviously not Full-SD and it will break traffic rules and it will glitch out, but so far no accidents, no pedestrians run over, and no deaths within a highly geofenced and mapped out area. I'm slightly surprised that nothing serious has happened yet.

I’m shocked that wasn’t edited out completely

Give it time. I’ve driven more miles this year than Austin Robotaxis have, and I haven’t killed anyone either. If/when they remove the safety driver and expand territory more broadly, I’d bet that we will see plenty of serious accidents.

a. Musk signature. to be sure

[This comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/s/LdO3zB5Rbm) I made earlier in the TSLA Terathread fits equally well here.

How hard is it to just have a damn door pull on the door? It can't possibly be taking up significant amounts of in car space. Like... Come on. I hate it.

That should make for another good 10% run-up of TSLA. Lol stuff is memeing already again.

Sounds like the stories of Chinese drivers backing over stricken pedestrians to ensure that they’re dead.

THATS the thing that proves it? Fuck Tesla

<Insert Pam from "The Office" Meme that says, "They're the Same Thing.">

When the car catches on fire he wants you to die in it.

They have moved on from their dick joke apparently.

But more automated, and cost saving. Not having physical door handles is easier than having someone reverse and drive, reverse, do burnout. Drive off.

They have them on the front doors! Use the same fucking handles and pulls on the rear doors.

Kathy "One Hit Wonder" Woods. Got Tesla right in the beginning and hasn't struck it rich on anyone else so she's still out pumping Tesla.

Maybe they recorded this before that...

That would be my guess

I feel more sorry for the safety person in the front seat have to listen to all that drivel these influencers and so called investors spew out on camera.

Yes there's been a crash. Not a serious one; quite minor actually. But in July one ran into a parked car. It's easy to say it doesn't really matter because not a lot of damage was done but driving directly into a non-moving vehicle at a slow rate of speed is a failure at the most basic level since parked cars are both easy to see and predict and the software had plenty of time to detect it. https://www.engadget.com/transportation/a-tesla-robotaxi-inexplicably-drove-into-a-parked-car-171004400.html That of course reminds me of a point someone else made. The Boeing 737 Max was flawed and doomed to eventually have a crash before the first one was ever delivered. However a fleet of them flew thousands of flights before those first two crashes happened. The fact that a crash didn't happen on Day 1 just means sometimes the math just takes time to math. In Tesla's case we're talking about a handful of vehicles only running a handful of Tesla Influencers on any given day. Odds are they just haven't ran enough runs for that first incident when the kill switch doesn't get hit fast enough to actually have happened. The fact that we're seen as many glitches as we're seeing when everything is being controlled and manipulated to look as positive as possible is kind of a huge red flag.

They did hit another vehicle about two weeks in. Was a minor incident and more or less just a scratch but was fault of Tesla and more so, was absolutely no reason it should have happened. Was not in some unusual situation. Do not forget. This is fanbois only. For every incident released, there are likely 20 that are supressed by these same people.

Ya I found that incident to be particular alarming. Not because it was a significant accident but because it happened in a fairly normal situation. Was low speed and no one was making unpredictable movements. Complete failure of FSD in a simple situation.

Just give them a free Tesla,

Cheaper not to have it.

Do vehicles with child safety locks need to have those disabled in ride-share or taxi vehicles? I mean they should be, but that could be the same situation.

Have what disabled? If the power goes out that little button on the door pull won't open the door electronically. You'll have to drive around the pocket, lift out the mat, find the pull and then open the door. If it's dark, you're dead.

Right. I totally agree. But it brought to mind the automatic child safety locks on rear doors. Those need to be disabled on non-Tesla vehicles used for passengers for the same reason. If you can’t open the doors in an emergency, that’s bad. And they can be turned on way too easily by accident.

Elon thinks he's some sort of messiah, and I'm guessing a lot of his Tesla designers are suicidal over design decisions. I heard there was a conventional truck design which probably would have sold like hotcakes if it was cheaper than Rivian and then you gain a conventional SUV with not that much more development cost. They could have given it a beefier suspension and better offroad capability like a 4Runner and people would have dug it. It's like where there is less brightly colored safety warnings in Tesla factories because Elon doesn't like the way it looks.

This is similar in various other SEA countries. Its cheaper to pay for the funeral than to have to pay for the medical bill.

At least they aren't expected in interact with the douche bags.

Heard Boeing has some contacts that could help regarding this...

You're supposed to exit through the front or the trunk, officially. Model 3 doesn't even have the pull lever in the back, or at least they didn't in 2024.

Shush! Otherwise Elon might get idea of subcontracting services for Boeing.

It probably helps that they are restricted to areas with (I assume) fairly low speed limits.

Elon 2019 -- "Game, Set, Match on autonomy" Elon 2025 -- "Waymo will never drive on freeways dude to sensor conflict"

Elon's vision of Tesla has become myopic. His bet-the-company decision on vision-only will not pay off. I suspect he is looking at buying Aurora, Pony, Nuro, or one of many others who have developed the technology more like Waymo's. Established customers will howl, but investors will hold steady.

Depends. Rear doors have to be locked during travel. In the event of an accident that stops the current button from operating there wouldn't be power to sent to unlock the door. Now there would be the physical lock that you can use to override the system, but now that means to unlock the door electronically you have to have a strong actuator to do so. As someone who had those actuators jam up in 3 different vehicles and having to pay $200+ to have it fixed each time, it's not exactly a great time. There is a lot more engineering that goes into a door handle like that than you would think. On top of that it also needs to be designed then in a way where a child lock can be enabled to prevent the child from escaping from a moving vehicle. That means ontop of the above, you actually have an even more complex mechanism that you will have to design into it (especially if you want the child locks to be controlled by up front instead of by opening a door and toggling a switch).