Getting your
Trinity Audioplayer ready...Nearly two years after three young people died of smoke inhalation inside a burning Tesla Cybertruck in Piedmont as a friend struggled to open its doors, federal regulators are considering new safety requirements intended to prevent occupants from becoming trapped when electronic latches lose power.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced last week that it had granted a November petition asking the agency to consider a new federal standard requiring a “robust and obvious” door egress system in all motor vehicles. The decision begins a rulemaking process but does not guarantee that the agency will ultimately adopt a new standard.
“It is imperative that NHTSA moves swiftly through the rulemaking process to develop and implement new federal door egress safety standards that will protect future vehicle occupants,” said Andrew McDevitt, the attorney for the Nelson family whose son Jack died in the Piedmont crash. “But these will arrive far too late to save the lives of Jack Nelson, Krysta Tsukahara, Jeffrey and Michelle Bauer, and so many others killed and seriously injured by Tesla’s completely inexcusable door design.”
The Bauers were among five people killed in a November 2024 Tesla Model S crash in Wisconsin. McDevitt also represents their family.
Tesla did not respond to questions from this news organization regarding the federal agency’s review.
On Nov. 26, 2024, four recent Piedmont High School graduates — Soren Dixon, 19; Tsukahara, 19; Jordan Miller, 20; and Nelson, 20 — returned home for Thanksgiving break. Shortly after 3 a.m. the next day, the group got into the Dixon family’s Tesla Cybertruck, according to police reports.
Dixon was driving along Hampton Road near King Avenue when the Cybertruck veered off the road, struck a tree and caught fire. The vehicle’s event data recorder showed speeds exceeding 75 mph, and a California Highway Patrol investigation concluded that excessive speed and driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs caused the crash.
Matt Riordan, a friend of Nelson and the others, had been following the Cybertruck and reached the wreck moments after the crash. Unable to open its doors, he used a tree branch to break the front passenger-side window and pulled Miller through it.
Riordan then turned to Nelson and Tsukahara in the back seat. He tried unsuccessfully to break a rear window and began pulling Tsukahara toward the opening in the front.
“I grabbed her arm to try and pull her towards me, but she retreated because of the fire,” Riordan told CHP investigators.
According to Tesla’s owner’s manual, front-seat occupants can open a Cybertruck door without power by pulling a manual release in front of the window switches and pushing the door open. Rear-seat occupants must remove a rubber mat from the bottom of the door pocket, pull a mechanical-release cable forward and push the door open.
Autopsy reports found that Nelson, Tsukahara and Dixon suffered severe burns and died from smoke inhalation rather than injuries caused by the initial impact.
“Our son sustained minor injuries in the crash but did not survive as he was trapped inside a burning Cybertruck because its doors were defectively designed, preventing them from being opened from the inside or the outside,” the Nelson family wrote in a statement to this news organization.
The allegation that Tesla’s door design caused Nelson’s death is central to the family’s lawsuit and has not been decided in court.
Complaints about Tesla’s flush electronic door handles extend well beyond the Piedmont crash. Since 2018, NHTSA has received more than 140 complaints about Tesla doors becoming stuck, failing to open or otherwise malfunctioning.
NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation also opened an investigation in September 2025 into approximately 174,000 model-year 2021 Tesla Model Y vehicles after receiving nine complaints that exterior doors became inoperable when the vehicles lost low-voltage power.
The complaints generally involved parents getting out of their vehicles and then being unable to reopen a door to reach a child in the back seat. In four cases, an owner broke a window to regain entry.
Although those complaints concerned access from outside rather than occupants trying to escape, NHTSA warned that someone inside, particularly a child, might be unable to operate the manual release and could not be retrieved quickly during an emergency.
In a separate action, NHTSA denied a November petition from Kevin Clouse seeking a defect investigation into emergency releases in model-year 2022 Tesla Model 3 vehicles. Clouse told the agency that his Model 3 lost power and caught fire after a head-on crash, leaving him unable to operate its electronic doors or find the manual release. He escaped by climbing into the back seat and exiting through a rear passenger window.
Clouse alleged that the concealed and unlabeled releases violated existing federal safety standards and created an entrapment hazard.
NHTSA found that current federal standards do not regulate the placement or labeling of manual releases and concluded that further investigation was unlikely to establish a safety defect. The agency said the broader issue was better addressed through the separate rulemaking process.
In March, Miller, the lone survivor of the Piedmont crash, also sued Tesla over its electronic door-opening and emergency-egress systems. His lawsuit alleges that Tesla “consciously disregarded the safety of occupants” and “prioritized aesthetics over function.”
Miller suffered burns to his airways and lungs, third-degree burns and four fractured vertebrae, according to the lawsuit filed in Alameda County Superior Court. He was placed in an induced coma for five days and underwent several surgeries.
His lawsuit names Tesla, the estate of Soren Dixon, the driver of the Piedmont Cybertruck incident, and Charles Patterson, Dixon’s grandfather and owner of the vehicle.
The Nelson family said the NHTSA review and the SAFE Exit Act, federal legislation addressing safety risks associated with electronic door latches, could eventually help prevent similar deaths.
Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., introduced the legislation in January. It would require new vehicles to have accessible manual releases for each door, establish labeling requirements and ensure first responders can enter vehicles after a loss of power.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee approved the bill in May, sending it to the full House for possible consideration.
“We urge NHTSA to swiftly complete this process as more lives have been lost since those of our children, and more are at stake every day that these doors go unfixed,” the Nelson family said.