Tesla is back in the headlines and this time it is a very serious issue. A fatal accident in Washington has ended with a new lawsuit against the company. According to the complaint, a Model 3 suddenly accelerated, without the driver being able to control it, crashed into a pole… and ended up engulfed in flames. The most serious problem came right after, because no one was able to open the doors to get the occupants out. Not the witnesses, not the rescuers. Nothing.
The lawsuit claims that the handles became useless after the impact, pointing directly to a “defective design” of the opening system, a huge failure that cost the life of one of the occupants of the vehicle and left her husband seriously injured.
Is Tesla putting users’ safety at risk just to gain market share?
The accident
According to the lawsuit, the Model 3 shot forward for no apparent reason and the driver completely lost control. The car crashed into a pole and began to burn within seconds.
Inside were Wendy Dennis and her husband, Jeffery. Outside, several people ran to help. But when they tried to open the doors, nothing worked.
Some even grabbed a baseball bat to break the windows, but they could not do it either. Wendy died trapped. Jeffery managed to survive, but with very severe burns on his legs.
A horrible scene… and unfortunately, not new for Tesla.
Did Tesla know these doors failed?
According to the lawsuit, yes, Tesla already knew that its doors could become locked after a crash and yet did nothing to redesign them…
According to the attorneys, a damaged low-voltage battery can render the doors useless and the company already knew the risk but did not take any action to fix it.
But the curious thing is that there are mechanical releases inside, something not very useful when the situation is full panic and total chaos.
Other accidents
There have already been similar accidents, the lawsuit in fact mentions them, and the same thing happened.
- A crash in Wisconsin where five people died trapped in a burning Model S.
- A case in California with a Cybertruck whose occupants also could not get out after an accident.
Why Tesla doors can fail after an impact
All Teslas have two batteries, a large one (which powers the car) and a small one, for the most basic things, like opening doors, lowering windows, interior lights… Well, if that small battery is damaged in an accident, everything that depends on it… stops working. Including the handles, of course.
And although Tesla includes a mechanical system inside the car, almost no one knows how to use it, and maybe an accident where your car starts burning is not the best moment to start looking for a lever…
Consequences for Tesla
Every incident further damages Tesla’s image, they have already had open cases for sudden unintended acceleration, failures in automatic braking, fires, and now this case that leaves one fatal victim…
And their competitors are right at their heels…
A before and after
The Dennis family could end up being at the center of a historic case. If a court rules in their favor, Tesla could be forced to change the design of its doors, add more accessible mechanical systems from the outside, or even face a wave of new lawsuits for similar accidents.
But we know nothing will be enough for that family that trusted a brand and could not get out of the car to save her life…
Tesla can no longer keep looking the other way when these things happen, Tesla has to reflect on what vehicles it is putting on the road and whether it can continue sustaining so many errors…