A man in the US has died trapped inside a Tesla Model S which caught fire after a crash and the futuristic doors wouldn’t open, the lawsuit filed by his family says. Omar Awan was driving a Model S when he lost control on a South Florida road and slammed into a palm tree. His family’s lawyers said that it wasn’t the impact that killed Awan but the car’s futuristic features that led to his death.
After the crash, the Model S’ lithium-ion battery pack caught fire and the car cabin was filled with smoke and then flames. A crowd gathered outside but couldn’t help.
Tesla Model S features ‘auto-present’ door handles. The retractable door handles can be used when the system detects a key fob nearby. On Awan’s Model S though, the system malfunctioned and first responders were unable to open the doors in time to save his life.
“The fire engulfed the car and burned Dr. Awan beyond recognition — all because the Model S has inaccessible door handles, no other way to open the doors, and an unreasonably dangerous fire risk,” the complaint reads according to a Washington Post report. “These Model S defects and others,” the suit says, “rendered it a death trap.”
Family attorney Stuart Grossman says that Awan, a 48-year-old anesthesiologist and father of five, leased the Tesla Model S for two reasons – he was concerned for the environment and was safety conscious.
In the past, Tesla has claimed that the Model S has achieved “the best safety rating of any car tested”. Grossman says that Awan could’ve bought something like a Mercedes-Benz but he chose the 2016 Tesla instead.
“These things, they just love to burn,” he said. “The car is so overengineered. It’s so techy, it makes you want to buy a Chevy pickup truck.”
Tesla’s public relations team did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit, filed this month, and the company’s lawyers have yet to respond in court.
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This is one of the several incidents that have been blamed on Tesla’s technology. A lawsuit from a May 2018 crash also claims that a battery fire was responsible for the death of at least one of the two teens killed. Another incident from April this year involved surveillance footage from a car park in Shanghai showing smoke billowing from a Model S before it burst into flames.
Also, there have been cases that attribute deaths to Tesla’s autonomous driving features. “Tesla failed to warn users about the scope and extent of the defective and unreasonably dangerous conditions of the Model S,” the complaint filed by Awan’s family says.
