Tesla Cybertruck Doors Blamed in Fatal California Crash
Families Claim Design Flaws Trapped Occupants in Flames
Key Takeaways:
- Families of two students killed in a November 2024 Cybertruck crash in Piedmont, Calif., sued Tesla, alleging defective doors trapped victims in the burning vehicle.
- The suits cite years of complaints about Tesla door malfunctions and argue the truck’s electronic buttons, armor glass and steel doors made escape nearly impossible.
- Tesla faces growing litigation over alleged safety defects as regulators investigate its door designs, with a trial in one of the cases scheduled for February 2027.
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Tesla Inc. was sued over claims that defects in the doors of a crashed Cybertruck made it a “death trap” by preventing three college students from escaping from the fiery wreck before they died of smoke inhalation.
The allegations against the world’s most valuable automaker stem from a middle of the night crash in November 2024 on a residential street in the San Francisco suburb of Piedmont. A friend of the Cybertruck’s occupants was able to pull one passenger to safety while three others remained trapped inside.
ձ’s door handles have drawn attention after a Bloomberg Newsinvestigationuncovered a series of incidents in which people were injured or died after they were unable to open doors after a loss of power, particularly after crashes. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has received more than 140 consumer complaints related to doors on various Tesla models getting stuck, not opening or otherwise malfunctioning since 2018, Bloomberg found.
NHTSA, the U.S. auto safety regulator, disclosed last month that it’sinvestigatingwhether some Tesla doors are defective, citing incidents in which exterior handles stopped working and trapped children inside. ձ’s design chief told Bloomberg the next day that the company isworking on a redesignof its door handles intended to make the handles more intuitive for occupants in “a panic situation.”
Lawsuits Add to ձ’s Safety Challenges
Elon Musk, the electric-vehicle maker’s CEO, has often called Teslas the safest cars on the road. But the company has been grappling with a growing pile of lawsuits that blame its technology for fatal accidents, including a handful citing post-crash entrapment and several alleging defects in its Autopilot driver-assistance software.
Tesla prevailed in two Autopilot cases that went to trial in 2023. But in its first major setback, it was hit in July for$243 millionin damages after a Miami jury found the company partially responsible for a 2019 Model S collision with a parked vehicle in the Florida Keys that killed a woman and severely injured her boyfriend. Tesla hassettled several other casesconfidentially before they got to trial.
(Bloomberg Television via YouTube)
In separate complaints filed Oct. 2 in California state court, the families of 20-year-old Jack Nelson and 19-year-old Krysta Tsukahara alleged that they would have survived but for ձ’s failure to ensure the Cybertruck was crashworthy — despite the company knowing for years that its door handles were problematic.
“This case arises from catastrophic design defects in the Tesla Cybertruck that turned a survivable crash into a fatal fire,” according to the Nelson family’s complaint.
Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Cybertruck’s Electronic Doors Cited as Hazard
With no exterior handles, the only way to open a Cybertruck’s doors is to press an electronic button on the pillars next to the doors — and the buttons may not work if the vehicle loses power. Tesla vehicles are equipped with interior manual releases, but the locations can be hard to find, particularly for passengers in the rear seats.
In the Piedmont crash, the Cybertruck with four students home from college for Thanksgiving was speeding at more than 80 miles (129 kilometers) per hour at about 3 a.m. when it veered off the road, crashed into a tree and a retaining wall, became wedged between the two and caught fire. A toxicology report found that the deceased driver had a high level of alcohol and drugs in his system.
The complaints in Alameda County Superior Court lay out in grim detail the scene that unfolded as the Cybertruck burst into flames.
Matt Riordan, a friend and former high school classmate who was driving behind the Cybertruck, told police he turned the corner and saw it engulfed in a blaze.
He repeatedly pressed the buttons on the front and rear passenger doors in an attempt to save his friends, but neither opened. He grabbed a tree branch to bash open the front window and managed to drag the front passenger to safety. He tried unsuccessfully to extricate Tsukahara, who was screaming from the back seat for help.
Tesla Faces February 2027 Trial in California
The Tsukahara family initially filed a wrongful death suit against the estate of the driver in April. The family’s lawyer, Roger Dreyer, said the decision to add Tesla as a defendant Oct. 2 followed an inspection of the Cybertruck wreckage.
The suit also alleges that “ձ’s ‘armor glass’ windows and stainless-steel doors, marketed as nearly impenetrable, make forcing entry extraordinarily difficult.”
“The evidence is very clear that Tesla manufactured a car that was dangerous to occupants if an event like this happened,” Dreyer said in an interview. Krysta Tsukahara “was trapped in that electrical fire, felt the heat, then felt the flames and suffered what has to be the most excruciating way to be killed. The level of fear and panic is hard to comprehend.”
Both suits accuse Tesla of negligence and seek punitive damages against the manufacturer on top of compensation for the families’ losses.
The Nelson family’s suit also names the driver’s estate as a defendant, though the family said in a statement that this is just a legal requirement and the Nelsons “do not seek to punish any families.” Representatives of the estate of the driver, Soren Dixon, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
“This is a case where two things can be true at the same time,” said Matthew Davis, a lawyer for the Nelsons. “There can be people responsible for the crash and there is a company responsible for the fact that they couldn’t get out.”
A trial is set for February 2027 in the Tsukahara case.
The cases are Nelson v. Tesla Inc. and Tsukahara v. Dixon, 25CV120058, both in California Superior Court, Alameda County.
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