The children of Jeffrey and Michelle Bauer have filed a lawsuit against Tesla, accusing Elon Musk’s EV giant of negligence in a fatal car crash that claimed the lives of their parents and three others. The lawsuit claims that multiple people survived the crash, only to be trapped in the burning Tesla by the company’s electronic door handles, which have led to other lawsuits making the same claim.
The New York Post reports that in a tragic incident that occurred in November last year, a Tesla Model S slammed into a tree and burst into flames, resulting in the deaths of all five passengers. Now, the children of two of the victims, Jeffrey Bauer, 54, and Michelle Bauer, 55, have filed a lawsuit against Tesla in Wisconsin state court, alleging that the car’s door design prevented their parents from escaping the burning vehicle.
According to the complaint, the Bauers survived the initial impact but were unable to escape the fire because the doors locked them inside. A nearby homeowner who called 911 reported hearing screams coming from inside the vehicle, while the local sheriff’s office found a cluster of bodies in the front seat, suggesting they may have been struggling to get out.
The lawsuit argues that Tesla’s design choices created a highly foreseeable risk, where occupants who survived a crash could remain trapped inside a burning vehicle. Although the doors can be manually opened from the inside, many owners and passengers are unaware of the location of the manual door release, especially in a crisis situation.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers contend that regardless of the cause of a crash, automakers have a responsibility to design vehicles that allow for timely escape in the event of a fire. They allege that Tesla disregarded these principles, instead manufacturing vehicles prone to fires that ignite and spread rapidly upon impact, and whose escape depends on electronic systems known to be liable to fail.
This lawsuit is not an isolated case. Tesla faces several other legal challenges related to its door design and alleged defects. In September, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced an investigation into whether some Tesla doors are defective, following incidents where exterior door handles stopped working, trapping children inside vehicles.
Breitbart News reported in October on a lawsuit that claims Tesla’s door design led to the deaths of three teens in a fiery Cybertruck crash:
According to the 36-page complaint, Tesla’s Cybertruck doors are powered by a 12-volt battery, which can fail during a crash, causing the electronic door mechanism to malfunction. The lawsuit also states that the interior manual release is hidden and difficult to locate, effectively trapping occupants inside the vehicle.
The Tsukaharas’ attorney, Roger Dreyer, described the incident as a “horror story” and accused Tesla of being aware of the issue but failing to address it adequately. “Tesla knows that it’s happened and that it’s going to happen, and they are doing nothing but selling the car with a system that entraps people and doesn’t provide a way of extraction,” Dreyer said in an interview.
Another lawsuit involves the death of Michael Sheehan, 47, who was burned alive in a Cybertruck after veering off-road and slamming into a culvert near Houston. The complaint states that the 5,000-degree fire trapped Sheehan inside the vehicle, causing his bones to disintegrate, and argues that the crash forces were survivable, except for the fire, ergonomic shortcomings, and deficient crashworthiness.
In response to these incidents, Tesla’s design chief, Franz von Holzhausen, told Bloomberg that the company is working on a redesign of its door handles to make them easier to use “in a panic situation.”
Read more at the New York Post here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
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