A personal injury lawyer representing the family of a man who burned to death in a Tesla blames “overengineering” for the fatal accident. Dr. Omar Awan, a 48-year-old anesthesiologist, husband, and father, was trapped in his Model S Tesla after running into a tree when the lithium battery caught fire and the retractable door handles failed to deploy. As a result, first responders on the scene were unable to open the vehicle.

According to the family’s wrongful death lawsuit, Awan was burned “beyond all recognition…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.”

“Unsafe at Any Speed”?

Tesla has claimed that its Model S had achieved “the best safety rating of any car tested.” Not long after Awan’s fatal car accident in February, a spokesperson for the company told local reporters that although they were “deeply saddened” by Awan’s painful and gruesome demise, their vehicles “…are engineered to be the safest cars in the world.” She also pointed out that Tesla vehicles have been driven over ten billion miles since they were introduced.

While it may be true that Tesla vehicles are statistically among the safest automobiles on the road, it is also a fact that Awan’s accident is not the first time that drivers and/or their occupants have been killed because of Tesla’s “innovative technology.” In May of 2018, a fatal crash killed two teenagers and the family of one of them claims that a battery fire was to blame for their child’s death. A month earlier, a security camera in Shanghai captured footage of a Tesla Model S bursting into flames in a parking garage, leading to an internal investigation at the company.

Personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits filed by other plaintiffs blame the Tesla “autopilot” feature. While Tesla’s advanced driver assistance system is known to have reduced the number of accidents attributable to driver negligence or fatigue and is “overwhelmingly appreciated” by owners, it is admittedly a “work in progress” according to one technophile blogger.

According to a Washington Post report, Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk has also drawn fire from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for overstating claims of his vehicles’ safety.

“They Love to Burn”

Personal injury attorney Stuart Grossman, who is representing Awan’s family in their wrongful death lawsuit, is not as sold on Tesla’s high-tech features. “They just love to burn,” he told the press. “The car is so overengineered…so techy, it makes you want to buy a Chevy pickup truck.”

Tesla has pointed out that any high-speed crash can cause a fire, regardless of whether it is powered by liquid fossil fuels or electricity. However, Grossman notes that Awan survived the impact – what killed him was his inability to get out of the vehicle. This, says the Awan’s complaint, makes the vehicle genuinely dangerous when the door handle issue is taken into consideration along with its “inherently unstable” lithium battery.

The press noted that after the fire was extinguished and the Tesla’s remains were taken to a wrecking yard, the battery once again burst into flames.