The glass hammers and spring loaded glass breaker devices like Resqme won’t do jack on laminated windows, and most people won’t keep a spare charged Sawzall in the car:
Unlike tempered glass, vehicle escape tools can’t break the stronger material BOISE – (July 16, 2019) – Due to a revision in the federal motor vehicle safety standards, an increasing number of late-model vehicles are now equipped with side windows made out of laminated glass, a stronger material...
info.oregon.aaa.com
The X, like a lot of recent cars, has all laminated windows and no tempered glass. I think that’s by recent recommendations because those are safer supposedly.
Now I don’t know if you had a Resqme in there and used it like 20 times, could you then kick it out? If not, her only hope was to wait until the car was almost full of water and then open the door.
In a civil suit, the prosecutor could make hay of the X’s on screen gear shifter being confusing I suppose or the mechanical door release being obscure. The former is bs and the latter I think is a legit concern.
Tesla could mitigate this by having an onboarding process for any new driver profile in the car where they have to demonstrate they know the manual door release before they can start driving it.