US doctor dies inside his burning Tesla as automatic doors couldn’t be opened

Tesla Model S (Tesla)

The family of Dr Omar Awan, 48, who died while driving his dream Tesla car in February, has sued the company for “faulty design”.

He had lost control of his swanky Tesla Model S and rammed into a palm tree while driving down a road in South Florida. However, his family lawyer has claimed that the vehicle’s design is to blame for his demise, as it prevented him from leaving the car even when it was up in flames.

A Daily Mail report states that the victim’s last moments were spent in excruciating pain, as his body slowly got charred from feet up, while the poisonous gases suffocated him. Tesla’s lithium-ion battery had caught fire after the crash and begun emitting smoke. A crowd had gathered at the accident site, but even they could not help Awan, as the car door refused to open.

Notably, the Tesla Model S, that the deceased owned, has state-of-the-art retractable door handles, which are supposed to “auto-present” themselves when they detect a key fob close by. However, that malfunctioned and did not open even when a cop approached it to try and rescue the doctor.

Therefore, a wrongful-death lawsuit was filed by his family. It read: “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. These Model S defects and others rendered it a death trap.”

Awan’s family attorney Stuart Grossman further said that he had opted for the Tesla Model S because “he was environmentally sensitive and safety conscious” and this car model had once earned “the best safety rating of any car tested”. Yet, his choice ended up killing him, he argued.

The lawyer also claimed: “These things, they just love to burn. The car is so overengineered. It’s so techy, it makes you want to buy a Chevy pickup truck.”

The automobile company’s public relations team is yet to respond to the lawsuit filed in October.

Anyway, Awan’s death is not a stray incident of Tesla cars malfunctioning. A similar lawsuit was filed when a May 2018 crash killed two youths. This one also blamed the car’s battery of catching fire, killing at least one of the victims of the accident.

Tesla, however, has defended itself saying that vehicles usually catch fire during high-speed crashes, regardless of whether the car runs on gasoline or batteries.