Sheriff’s deputies even stood on top of it during the rescue efforts, trying to bust open a window.

I think it's ok to let people know that the little window breaker doohickey they have stashed in their console for emergencies might not do shit if they have laminated windows (many newer cars).

There are lots of reasons this can be an issue outside of Tesla making shitty doors- a child or dog trapped in a hot car, an unresponsive/unconscious person, doors jammed during a crash and occupants are injured or unconscious.

If anything is being distracted from here, I think it's probably that the woman may have been drunk. She was celebrating with old friends, it was after a late dinner. She was on a private road on an estate where it wouldn't have been a crime to drink and drive. It's easy to confuse forward and reverse in a Tesla, apparently, but she launched herself over an embankment and far enough into the middle of a pond that rescue workers didn't have a long enough cable to reach the car. Most people don't just floor it from the get go.

It's one of the various factors.

The whole issue is that those window hammers won't work as well with laminated windows, and now laminated windows are mandated. Maybe someone can point to data suggesting that the laminated windows are safer on average for some reason though.

Another is unintuitive door open versus emergency door open. First car I ever saw do that was a Corvette, and yes people have gotten trapped in those without knowing what to do either. At least older Tesla model got it right, the emergency open is opening it harder. Well except exterior handles not working on an emergency, which Cadillac lyric and mustang Mach e also get wrong.

Broadly speaking, also sticking all the features into touchscreen or capacitive touch is also a bad and industry wide trend, which Tesla is the poster child of taking it too far.

Also, early on cars were trying to figure out human factors of transmission, and safety problems caused "PRND" to be mandated. Now we had that actor killed by Chrysler's fancy shifter, and Tesla also having a weird shifter that might have contributed to this accident.

Also you have the fact you had a pond near a car travel area with no fencing or guardrail. Another is the consequence of choosing to have a private 900 acre residence in a remote area and what that means for speed and quality of rescue attempts. So it's not all about car design, but there are multi important factors to consider.

Also the thousands of non billionaire deaths we don't specifically talk about have a lot to say about what we may do better

The fact they couldn't break the window to get to her is the main talking point ive heard?