Family of deadly Cybertruck crash victim sues Tesla claiming car's design didn't allow her to escape
PIEDMONT, Calif. -- The parents of a college student killed in a Tesla Cybertruck crash in Piedmont say she was trapped in the car as it burst into flames because of a design flaw that made it nearly impossible for her to open the door, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday.
The parents of Krysta Tsukahara allege that Tesla knew about the flaw for years and could have moved fast to fix the problem but did not, leaving the 19-year-old arts student trapped amid flames and smoke that eventually killed her.
RELATED: Parents of Piedmont teen who died in Cybertruck crash file lawsuit against driver's family
Tesla did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Tsukahara was in the back of the Cybertruck when the driver who was drunk and had taken drugs smashed into a tree in Piedmont, according to the suit. Three of the four people in the car, including the driver, died. They were all 19-year-old sophomores in college. A fourth was pulled from the car after a rescuer smashed a window and reached in.
Attorney Roger Dreyer had an independent team inspect the Cybertruck.
"We do know that she survived the crash and had she been able to get out she'd be alive," Dreyer said. "Through their investigation, they found that her door couldn't open. The complaint states "escape depends on electronic systems which Tesla knew sometimes fail in the very circumstances - collision and fire - when escape is most urgent."
According to the suit, the emergency manual lever was concealed.
"They have a vehicle where you can't open the doors if they lose power and they know that that's something that can happen because they design a system to have someone manually open the door," Dreyer said. "And to manually open the Cybertruck door, you have to pull off a panel, you have to reach down and grab a cord, and you got to pull on the cord to open the door even if you know that's how you do it."
The new legal threat to Tesla filed in Alameda County Superior Court comes just weeks after federal regulators opened an investigation into complaints by Tesla drivers of stuck-door problems. The probe and suit come at a delicate time for the company as it seeks to convince Americans that its cars will soon be safe enough to ride in without anyone in the driver's seat.
"The question really is how much intuitive usability testing did Tesla do to make sure that a person without any type of prior training would know where latch is. And that's where I think this is going to boil down to," tech analyst Mark Vena said.
RELATED: Speed, intoxication caused deadly Cybertruck crash that killed 3 Piedmont High grads: CHP
Tesla doors have been at the center of several crash cases because the battery powering the unlocking mechanism can be destroyed in a fire and the manual releases that override that system are difficult to find.
The lawsuit follows several others that have claimed various safety problems with Tesla cars. In August, a Florida jury decided that the family of another dead college student, this one killed by a runaway Tesla years ago, should be awarded more than $240 million in damages.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which opened its stuck-door investigation last month, is looking into complaints by drivers that after exiting their cars, they couldn't open back doors to get their children out and, in some cases, had to break the window to reach them.
ABC7 News contributed to this story.
