The trial blames the design of the handle of the Cybertruck door after a fatal accident

Parents of two students who died in a Cybertruck accident last fall continue Tesla, alleging that the truck door design trapped the victims inside.

Distinct proceedings filed Thursday by the families of Jack Nelson, 20, and Krysta Tsukahara, 19, claim that the design of cybertruck, including electric doors with hidden manual versions, made almost impossible for students to escape after the accident, according to Bloomberg.

Legal actions come while Tesla’s electric doors have already been examined in recent months. In September, American regulators launched a probe on defective door handles on certain Tesla models. And a Bloomberg’s investigation earlier this year also revealed several cases in which people were injured or even died when Teslas lost power, generally after accidents, and their doors would not open.

This accident occurred on the night of November 27, 2024, in Piedmont, a suburb of San Francisco. According to a report by California Highway Patrol, Cybertruck accelerated in a residential street when it collapsed in a tree and caught fire. The accident caused a dysfunction of the electric doors of the truck, trapping the four passengers inside. Three of them – Nelson, Tsukahara and another passenger – did not survive. The fourth passenger survived after being removed by a broken window.

Tesla cybertruck lacks traditional exterior door handles. Instead, the doors open with small electronic pimples near the windows. There are manual versions inside the truck, but they are difficult to find, especially for passengers at the rear. To open the rear doors of the truck, the runners must lift a carpet in the door storage pocket and pull on a hidden cable below. Combined with cybertruck stainless steel panels and reinforced armor glass windows, which make life -based rescue operations, the prosecution argues that these design characteristics are at fault for the deaths of passengers.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comments from Gizmodo.

Complaints land at a time when Tesla’s electric door handles are already under regulatory control. Last month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened a preliminary survey on failing door sleeves on vehicles from the Y 2021 model after receiving several reports from parents unable to return inside their cars with children who have remained trapped inside. This survey covers nearly 175,000 cars and will assess if the defect has a serious security risk.

Bloomberg’s survey revealed that the NHTSA has received more than 140 complaints since 2018 about Tesla doors, without opening or failing.