By Shawn Henry 
Tesla’s got another legal nightmare brewing, this time over those sleek-but-deadly electronic door handles. A horrific crash near Tacoma turned fatal when a Model 3 plowed into a pole last January, bursting into flames with Jeffery and Wendy Dennis trapped inside. Good Samaritans rushed to help, but those fancy flush handles? Useless when the battery’s fried. Wendy didn’t make it; Jeffery barely did, his body scorched by the inferno.
Here’s the kicker: people smashed windows, clawed at doors, did everything short of a superhero rescue—yet Tesla’s design left them helpless. The lawsuit alleges the company’s known for years that these gizmos could turn death traps if things go sideways. No power? No escape. And let’s not even start on the lithium-ion fireworks or those infamous phantom acceleration gremlins.
This isn’t some lone horror story. Wisconsin, California, Virginia—same song, different verse. Doors that won’t budge. Releases buried where no panicked passenger would find them. Firefighters wrestling with battery blazes while victims burn. Even regulators are finally waking up: the NHTSA’s poking around Tesla’s handle fiasco, with rumors the probe could snowball. Overseas, they’re cracking down on these hidden-handle gimmicks before more bodies pile up.
Ford and VW aren’t off the hook either—their cars had their own door dramas—but Tesla’s the poster child here. The real scandal? Crash tests check if you survive impact, not whether you can crawl out afterward. With cars becoming rolling circuit boards, are engineers even thinking about no-power, no-luck doomsday scenarios?
Three years after the crash, this lawsuit lands like a grenade in Tesla’s lap. The EV giant’s under a microscope like never before—not just for its tech, but for whether flashy design is costing lives.