Omar Awan was driving his dream car when he lost control. The sleek, blue Model S Tesla careened across a road in South Florida and slammed into a palm tree.
But it wasn’t the crash that killed him, his family’s lawyers said – it was the car’s futuristic design features.
The last moments of Awan’s life were gruesome and excruciating. After the crash, the Tesla’s lithium ion battery caught fire. Smoke – and then flames – filled the car, suffocating Awan and burning him from his feet up. Outside, a crowd gathered, but couldn’t help.
That’s because the car’s retractable door handles, which are supposed to “auto-present” when they detect a key fob nearby, malfunctioned and first responders weren’t able to open the doors and save Awan, alleges a wrongful-death lawsuit.
“The fire engulfed the car and burned Dr. Awan beyond recognition – all because the Model S has inaccessible door handles, no other way to open the doors, and an unreasonably dangerous fire risk,” the complaint reads.
“These Model S defects and others,” the suit says, “rendered it a death trap.”
Awan, a 48-year-old anesthesiologist and father of five, leased the Model S for two reasons, family attorney Stuart Grossman said: he was environmentally sensitive and safety conscious.
ht/ jd hasty
Why didn’t someone simply break the window?
With Tesla’s reputation, maybe his real dream was to burst into flames.
MAJack….do you really think nobody thought of that. Probably too much heat and smoke to get close enough.
At least he went with a smug on his face
Horrible way to go.
He should have been “careful what he wished for.”
Most things purported to be “green” (another euphemism which obscures rather than enlightens) are designed to destroy – either directly or indirectly.
izlamo delenda est …
I wonder how many Teslas have to survive their expected life time in order to make up for even a single Tesla that turns the whole city into a toxic wasteland when it burns.
That’s a shame.
Hmm…
“After the crash, and after firefighters extinguished the blaze, Awan’s Tesla was transported to a tow yard. Once there, it reignited and burned again.”
Just can’t make shit like this up…
I wonder where my closest dealer is?
A window isn’t as easy to break as one might think.
Not by hand, anyway, which is probably all anyone had with them in the short time they had to try to break it.
Use this incident to consider how well you are equipped to escape from a burning car, particularly one with electric windows and door locks that may not be working in a fire.
It doesn’t hurt to be prepared.
Tesla should be convicted of BATTERY
Sounds like they need to recall these unsafe at any speed Tesla cars.
It cost him dearly to trade in his camel, Or maybe he traded his magic carpet. In either case he should have stuck with the tried and true methods of arab transportation instead of trying to be trendy. Besides he probably had the excess money to fritter away on that car because he was fleecing the medicare system.
Omar Awan, any relation to Imran?
I have a window breaking/seat belt cutting tool in my door pocket. Although I do not drive a Tesla I carry it just in case I end up in a bar ditch filled with water or a playa lake in one of our ferocious Texas storms.
Nothing like owning and driving around in a lithium fire bomb. I drive around in a bomb, but it’s not lithium.
Didn’t see that coming,
his first car was a Pinto.
Movin on up, movin on up, to the sky high.
Makes you wonder what the response would be if that was a Toyota or a Volkswagen instead of a Tesla–the favored electric car of the greenies.
Over 7,000 18650 Lithium Ion batteries in a Tesla.
What could go wrong?
I’m worried about ONE in a flashlight…
Seems to Me, He ended His Life, like a Candle in the Wind…
the marketing campaign of Tesla Cars is really catching fire….
what, too soon?
At least my car didn’t burn when I drove off the bridge with Mary Jo in ’69
Tesla Torch
@Truckbuddy … This fact stunned me – to think that they use a crappy flashlight engineered battery to power their car in huge quantities. I saw the STEM Battery system being offered at Office-Building Scale to mitigate Peak Loads – and I had to bite my tongue when they indicated that the entire battery assembly was nothing more than a 12,000 count of 3.7 V cells. I won’t be buying that.
Can we go back to roll-down windows too? People have drowned in cars that careened into canals and lakes because they couldn’t get the windows or doors open.
He should have waited for the new Teslas. I hear they are going to come with a windmill attached to the roof so you don’t ever have to plug it again. Now that’s a genius carbon saving plan if there ever was one.
Tesla: Funeral Pyre model
Imran’s brother. DWS or Hillary have yet to make a statement.