Mother sues Tesla after son died in burning car
A Syracuse University student, Samuel Tremblett, died after a Tesla Model Y crashed and caught fire in Massachusetts last October.
Trapped inside, he called 911 saying, "I can't breathe. It's on fire. Help. Please. I'm going to die."
Despite police arriving quickly, the flames were too intense for rescue.
Now, his mother is suing Tesla, claiming the car's design flaws—especially the electronic door handles that stop working when power is lost—kept her son from escaping.
Tesla is working on redesigning door handles
The lawsuit points out that while there are manual door releases in Teslas, they're hard to find in an emergency.
After similar reports and a federal investigation into these door failures, Chinese regulators finalized rules requiring mechanical fallbacks for vehicles with electronic actuators.
Tesla says it is working on redesigning door handles to combine electronic and mechanical releases, making backups easier to access if the electronics fail.