Why isn't there a manual mechanism for the door? Why didn't the passengers use an emergency glass hammer? Why isn't there an emergency release for the door?
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I'd expect that the passengers may not have known about the emergency releases. It's also possible the releases failed, but all of them?
The article does a poor job of mentioning that those releases are standard to the vehicle. It's discussed elsewhere in this thread too, where they also provided the Model Y's manual.
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modely/en_us/GUID-AAD769C7-88A3-4695-987E-0E00025F64E0.html
When my friend was riding in a tesla they just assumed the emergency latch was the proper way to open the door and pulled that one instead, didn't even see the button.
Edit: also note, some model Ys don't have that rear emergency one. Guess you could climb out of the car using the trunk latch.