The futuristic door handles on the Tesla Model S are getting faulted in the website traffic death of 48-year-old anesthesiologist Dr. Omar Awan in Davie, Florida. According to the accident report, Awan was traveling on a Florida Parkway when he lost handle of his leased Tesla and it crashed into a palm tree. The loved ones has filed a wrongful death lawsuit with Broward County State Court faulting the hide-a-way door handles.
According to the lawsuit, a police officer couldn’t open the doors simply because the handles have been retracted and bystanders watched as the vehicle filled with smoke and flames. The suit additional alleges that the fire originated with the car’s battery. The lawsuit lists the lead to of death as smoke inhalation and states that Awan had sustained no internal injuries or broken bones in the crash.
The handles have a dubious history going back to a Customer Reports report displaying that the door handles breaking was the quantity one particular complaint about the vehicle, followed by not getting capable to access the vehicle when the handles have been frozen more than with ice. A 2018 a Wired report reported that Tesla CEO Elon Musk insisted on them even although it “was unanimous amongst the executive employees that the complicated door deal with thought was crazy,” Major security advocates have also gone on record attacking the door handles as a security problem for initially responders.
Door handles aside, this and other accidents are teaching initially responders about the particular situations surrounding fighting a lithium-ion battery fire. In this case, the police have been initially on scene and applied their fire division authorized extinguishers, which are useless against lithium-ion battery fires. These batteries are prone to a chain reaction referred to as thermal runaway which needs a lot of water to extinguish. Firefighters ultimately doused the flames with water, which seemed to function, but the wrecked vehicle reignited twice much more immediately after getting towed away.
This is not the initially lawsuit filed against Tesla faulting a lithium-ion battery fire immediately after a higher effect crash. Earlier this month there was a different filed in San Jose, California. Tesla, as per usual concerning pending legal situations, had no reply to concerns about the lawsuits.