A new lawsuit claims that father and young son were killed inside a Tesla Model 3 due to the vehicle’s Full Self-Driving mode and electric-powered door handles.
According to claims filed by the families of the deceased, the father, Margarret Smith, and his 14-year-old son, Karter Breon, were driving from Florida to Georgia on Highway 35 when the Model 3, which was in Full Self-Driving mode, “abruptly departed from the road, struck a tree, and burst into flames.” According to the Tesla Event Data Recorder (EDR), the accelerator pedal went from 0.0 at 63 miles per hour to 100 without any apparent reason. Once the vehicle had burst into flames, the battery system malfunctioned and the handles became inoperable.
Rescuers could not get the father and son out of the burning car.
Lawsuit calls Full Self-Driving mode “improperly designed” and not ready for real-world scenarios
The unfortunate event occurred in December 2024 and has led to a wrongful death lawsuit against Tesla filed by the boy’s mother on April 2nd, 2026. Due to the malfunctioning FSD and door handles, the lawsuit states, the father and son subsequently died in the thermal runaway after impact. “Thermal runaway” is the term for the chain reaction of battery short circuits that leads to uncontrollable combustion. While electric vehicles don’t catch fire more often than gas-powered vehicles, the fires are often much more intense, making it harder for firefighters to control the blaze.
Attorney Quinton Seay is representing the family, according to a report from The Independent. He called Tesla an “uncrashworthy vehicle” because CEO Elon Musk’s misleading claims masked the shortcomings of its features.
The first feature in question: the door handles. A person who witnessed the crash tried to help the father and son, but couldn’t get the doors to open. The complaint stated: “Consequently, both occupants burned to death in the thermal runaway and fire that occurred after impact.”
Tesla’s hidden, electric-powered door handles have already been banned in China over safety concerns, including real-world incidents in which people were trapped inside burning vehicles. This is because there is no mechanical backup system. The United States Congress has been contemplating a similar ban. The court filing stated: “Tesla’s design renders the vehicle not reasonably escapable and not reasonably rescuable following foreseeable collisions involving loss of low-voltage power, fire, or emergency system shutdown.”
The second feature is Full-Self Driving mode, which California has forced Tesla to rename from “Autopilot” due to its misleading name. FSD requires drivers to be fully alert and “supervising” the vehicle. Despite this, Musk has been making very exaggerated claims that could put people’s lives in danger. This specific complaint from the mother states that the feature is “improperly designed.”
The lawsuit goes on to say that Musk has continued to claim that FSD is “probably better” than a human driver, but it doesn’t consistently work as advertised. It stated that “thousands of Tesla drivers” are relying on Full Self-Driving mode “as though it were capable of safe, fully autonomous self-driving,” despite it being reportedly incapable of safely handling routine scenarios. It added that FSD gets “confused” in a wide range of scenarios, which is currently under investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
In fact, there have been “numerous reports” that Tesla vehicles have crashed into other vehicles or stationary objects after accelerating “without driver input,” according to the complaint. It read: “To the extent that the Autopilot and/or self-driving features of the Tesla Model 3, including, but not necessarily limited to, the lane departure avoidance feature, the auto-steer feature, and the automatic emergency braking feature were engaged, they were either defectively designed or malfunctioned and caused the crash that killed [Herring’s] son.”
At the time of the crash, the father was pursuing a doctorate after graduating from Florida A&M University. The son was a hopeful basketball player who was “always smiling, laughing,” and caring about his academics. But even if they weren’t model citizens, Tesla’s false claims still took two more lives, as the ongoing investigation states. And the company is still on social media, encouraging people to use Full Self-Driving mode in their Cybertruck, even if they’re going blind. The mother is now seeking special damages for burial expenses and mental anguish.
