Which is odd, because most electric vehicles (including some models of the Tesla) have better crash ratings due to having a crumple zone where the engine would be. Assuming that’s still true, there must be another factor that tips the balance towards deadly accidents. Some thoughts:
They are heavy cars. Maybe it’s safer for the passengers but more deadly for the other vehicle.
Maybe Tesla drivers are more irresponsible than other car owners.
Maybe the torque and acceleration is too high, causing people to lose control more often.
Maybe something that doesn’t get rated in the crash ratings causes deaths, eg. electric locks which are unable to open when power is lost, a likely scenario during collisions.
Maybe the FSD features are causing more collisions to happen.
If there’s a systemic reason Tesla drivers have more accidents in a Tesla than drivers of other cars, that car is inherently less safe.
You can’t simply put it down to “Tesla drivers suck”, that’s irresponsible and flawed logic.
If it’s the acceleration, maybe we shouldn’t have cars that accelerate the way a Tesla can. But I very much doubt that is the reason except anecdotally. I suspect more that safety features may in fact serve to distract, or people “learn” to rely on them, and than they turn out to not be 100% reliable.
We’ve all heard the weird tendency of Tesla breaking for no reason, that is hazard, also the turn signals are placed wrong, causing them to be impractical in some situations like roundabouts. Also the instrumentation in general of a Tesla is centered very much around the touch screen, another source of potential distraction. AFAIK even the speedometer isn’t placed where it should be to observe it quickly without looking away from the road for too long.
A lot of inherent safety feature in traditional cars, have been shaved away in Tesla cars. Even getting out in an emergency can be a problem, as the handles may fail because they are electric, and the “real” handles are hidden.
There a dozens of examples where Tesla is designed for less safety than traditional cars, and if (when) the safety features fail, I bet they are a lot less safe than if those features weren’t there to begin with.
Tesla cars are designed with a VERY strong focus on reducing production cost, Elon Musk is even boasting about it, and how he has an uncompromising goal to simplify production. But Tesla also lack the experience about why things are like they are in traditional cars.
I am convinced it’s the acceleration. Also because you have that ability, it influences you to take risks in traffic (eg. Pulling out of a stopped lane) that you might not take in an ICE car because you can’t hit a high scored fast enough. They opened Pandora’s box by making every family car a Porsche.
I haven’t noticed that at all for Tesla, and I did absolutely notice with BMW and AUDI for many years. Not so much driving fast, as driving like assholes. Yes an EV often starts quicker at a read light, but I’ve never seen anything wild here that I recall, and we have a lot of Tesla and other EV cars here now (Denmark).
But to be honest, it may be different here, because ICE cars are generally manual, which is way more fun to drive. With A Tesla you just press the speeder like an Automatic. It just responds faster. But a Tesla can also be driven for comfort, and it seems to me that’s what just about everybody does here.
When this was posted last week, I mentioned that it was odd that all the most deadliest models on the list were all low production cars, meaning there might be something wonky with their methodology.
There was a similar “study” done a year or so ago where they simply looked at car insurance applications and used people’s accident history and whatever vehicle they were trying to insure at the time to generate a list of which models had the “most accidents” in an incredibly flawed manor (Pontiac and Oldsmobile were among the safest even though neither company exists anymore).
The study said they normalize by mileage, which will account for both model popularity and driving distance. Driving safety is usually reported in incidents per mile or something to that effect, so that’s all standard.
Eh, I’ve seen the opposite. Most of the Tesla drivers in my area seem to drive relatively slowly. Yes, Teslas can go fast, but that burns through range like crazy, so I think a lot of them want that better range.
BMW drivers here are the worst because act completely entitled. They’ll cross multiple lanes on the highway w/o signaling, aggressively pass on the right just to slow down to the speed of traffic again, and they’ll park across multiple parking stalls. Audis are similar, but the demographics seem to skew a bit older.
Here are the main demographics I tend to see in my area (Utah):
“outdoorsy” people (and wannabe “outdoorsy” people) - Subaru
wannabe “green” people - Tesla, Rivian, etc
actual green people - Chevy Bolt, Toyota Prius
The first three drive super aggressively, the fourth can vary, the fifth drives pretty normal, and the last tend to drive pretty conservatively. At least that’s my read from my area.
That’s Exactly my experience with Tesla drivers too (Denmark), Tesla drivers generally drive “comfortably” as I see it, and I’ve never seen a Tesla show off at a red light.
In my experience Tesla drivers are responsible drivers as much as everybody else. So I am pretty sure this is NOT a driver issue.
They’re a cross between BMW drivers and incapable Prius drivers from the oast when they were the first hybrids.
Aka, you have the douches driving like entitled dicks because of the speed and prestige of the brand, and then you have the eco focused clueless drivers putting around.
I tend to keep a wary eye on all teslas because either way, they’re unpredictable.
My bet is on the extra torque being the primary problem. Rental companies have complained about increased incident rates, and they’re probably not renting out Teslas.
Hertz is dumping Teslas onto the used car market. The rental car agency made a huge mis-step by ordering too many electric cars, and now it’s rushing to offload 30,000 EVs. Tesla makes up roughly one-third of all of Hertz’s global EV fleet.
Since January, Hertz has been aggressively offloading teslas at the nationwide average price of roughly $25,000, according to CNBC. Earlier this year in a regulatory filing, Hertz said, “expenses related to collision and damage, primarily associated with EV, remained high.” in the first quarter, Hertz took a $195 million write-down for depreciation of its EVS.
My theory is that it is isn’t the badge on the car, it’s the fact that people’s grocery getter now was the performance of a high-end sports car from a decade ago. And, like a with a sports car, Teslas are designed to encourage users to have “fun” driving. Every test drive from a Tesla store ALWAYS includes a segment where the store rep encourages people gun it onto or on a large open road.
Before Telsa it was the German manufacturers who dominated the commuter-car-with-sports-car-performance market. And guess what? Those people drove like a-holes.
"A vehicle’s size, weight, and height certainly play a part in its ability to protect passengers in a crash,” said Brauer. “But the biggest contributor to occupant safety is avoiding a crash, and the biggest factor in crash avoidance is driver behavior. A focused, alert driver, traveling at a legal or prudent speed, without being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, is the most likely to arrive safely regardless of the vehicle they’re driving.”
I expect (hope) it’s a small factor, but I wonder where pedestrian fatalities fit in. Several of the worst models seem to be large SUVs or sports cars - alongside these Teslas and some rather cheaper compact cars.
Large SUVs must be worse for pedestrians because they’re essentially tanks that you can’t see out in front of for a good 20’ or so. A small child running to get their ball in the road will be completely invisible to a large SUV whereas a Tesla driver would be able to see the child a lot sooner and hopefully avoid them.
Last time I looked up publicly available crash statistics in the US and calculated the per-maker numbers, Tesla was like 1/80th the typical per capita crashes of the average auto maker. That was a few years back, but I doubt that’s changed without some sketchy statistic interpretations.
They looked at fatal crashes only, which is presumably a very small share of all crashes.
They also normalised to per mile driven using a sample of data they have - presumably some data on miles driven by car type.
Could be sketchy, could just be a much smaller sub-population.
Obligatory preface written after comment was written:
I am in no way a statistician or data analysis guru. I admit I could be looking at this shit entirely wrong and welcome anybody who corrects anything I I’m looking at incorrectly.
Actual comment:
The entire report itself is skewed as fuck before Rolling Stone cherry picked the fuck out of it for the article to slam Tesla. Listen I’m as sick of Elon as the next but these fucking shit on everything Elon hiveminds are so much more fucking obnoxious. Theyre always 10 to 1 comments by people who didnt read the article to comments by people who did.
At the end is the actual image from the site that issued the report. I didnt bother with a source link because it’s right in the article OP posted.
Issues with the article and report:
The figures are not for every car on the road it only covers cars made between 2018 and 2022. Not a big deal but still deceiving as fuck to theme the article as Tesla has one of the highest death rates. Cuz they left the time frame out of the RS article. Kinda how they left out the fact that only 1 tesla is in the top 6 and the other Tesla is second to last with a flood of much larger much more common vehicle names that fill in between 1 and 23.
Each rate is calculated off 1 billion miles driven per year. When you put any Tesla model up next to any Ford, Honda, GM, Toyota, etc the % of all teslas on the road are going to be ridiculously higher than the % of the other much larger industry makes and models on the road that it takes to reach 1 billion miles. Because idk if I explained that well here is a made up scenario to illustrate it. Let’s say there are 1000 teslas on the road compared to 1,000,000 Prius on the road. The tesla death rates are based out of 1000 Teslas driving 1,000,000 miles each. Whereas the Prius death rates are based off 1,000,000 Prius’ driving 1,000 miles each.
Remember point 2 as it plays into point 3. The method they used to calculate the rate outlined in point 2, I believe is normal when govt is figuring out vehicle death rates by category, location, driver age, etc. However the study they reference is specifically for death rates per vehicle make. Which makes the methods used for calculating deathrate by make and model completely fucked. They should’ve done the same number of cars per each make and model type as well as the same miles driven to get a comparable outcome of death rates per make amd model over 4 year span.
Which is odd, because most electric vehicles (including some models of the Tesla) have better crash ratings due to having a crumple zone where the engine would be. Assuming that’s still true, there must be another factor that tips the balance towards deadly accidents. Some thoughts:
That was going to be my suggestion.
More irresponsible than Nissan Altima or Dodge Ram owners isn’t easy
Used to be the 350Z
Most deadly to driver is not the same thing as most deadly. SUVs are usually extremely deadly to pedestrians and other road users.
As an SUV driver in Appalachia, I’ve mostly only injured pedestrians.
Anecdotal, I know. I’ve only killed 2 people. What’s the average?
Now I won’t sleep for fear of jinxing myself.
Being human is stupid.
Am I being wooshed, and if no, wtf? When did killing even one person become an “only” occurrence?
My wife mowed down this guy once in downtown ottawa. We still have the commemorative dent on the hood :)
…This is a stereotype I’ve never heard before.
Let me bring you up to speed fam.
If there’s a systemic reason Tesla drivers have more accidents in a Tesla than drivers of other cars, that car is inherently less safe.
You can’t simply put it down to “Tesla drivers suck”, that’s irresponsible and flawed logic.
If it’s the acceleration, maybe we shouldn’t have cars that accelerate the way a Tesla can. But I very much doubt that is the reason except anecdotally. I suspect more that safety features may in fact serve to distract, or people “learn” to rely on them, and than they turn out to not be 100% reliable.
We’ve all heard the weird tendency of Tesla breaking for no reason, that is hazard, also the turn signals are placed wrong, causing them to be impractical in some situations like roundabouts. Also the instrumentation in general of a Tesla is centered very much around the touch screen, another source of potential distraction. AFAIK even the speedometer isn’t placed where it should be to observe it quickly without looking away from the road for too long.
A lot of inherent safety feature in traditional cars, have been shaved away in Tesla cars. Even getting out in an emergency can be a problem, as the handles may fail because they are electric, and the “real” handles are hidden.
There a dozens of examples where Tesla is designed for less safety than traditional cars, and if (when) the safety features fail, I bet they are a lot less safe than if those features weren’t there to begin with.
Tesla cars are designed with a VERY strong focus on reducing production cost, Elon Musk is even boasting about it, and how he has an uncompromising goal to simplify production. But Tesla also lack the experience about why things are like they are in traditional cars.
I am convinced it’s the acceleration. Also because you have that ability, it influences you to take risks in traffic (eg. Pulling out of a stopped lane) that you might not take in an ICE car because you can’t hit a high scored fast enough. They opened Pandora’s box by making every family car a Porsche.
I haven’t noticed that at all for Tesla, and I did absolutely notice with BMW and AUDI for many years. Not so much driving fast, as driving like assholes. Yes an EV often starts quicker at a read light, but I’ve never seen anything wild here that I recall, and we have a lot of Tesla and other EV cars here now (Denmark).
But to be honest, it may be different here, because ICE cars are generally manual, which is way more fun to drive. With A Tesla you just press the speeder like an Automatic. It just responds faster. But a Tesla can also be driven for comfort, and it seems to me that’s what just about everybody does here.
Luxury car owners are rich so they behave like the privileged assholes they tend to be.
This killed a billionaire a few months ago… maybe not such a bad feature
When this was posted last week, I mentioned that it was odd that all the most deadliest models on the list were all low production cars, meaning there might be something wonky with their methodology.
There was a similar “study” done a year or so ago where they simply looked at car insurance applications and used people’s accident history and whatever vehicle they were trying to insure at the time to generate a list of which models had the “most accidents” in an incredibly flawed manor (Pontiac and Oldsmobile were among the safest even though neither company exists anymore).
The study said they normalize by mileage, which will account for both model popularity and driving distance. Driving safety is usually reported in incidents per mile or something to that effect, so that’s all standard.
Or, hear me out, maybe they are just shit because so many corners have been cut in manufacturing that tesla cars should be perfect spheres by now.
This is my first thought. Anecdotally Tesla drivers joins the ranks of Audi and BMW of insane drivers around me.
Eh, I’ve seen the opposite. Most of the Tesla drivers in my area seem to drive relatively slowly. Yes, Teslas can go fast, but that burns through range like crazy, so I think a lot of them want that better range.
BMW drivers here are the worst because act completely entitled. They’ll cross multiple lanes on the highway w/o signaling, aggressively pass on the right just to slow down to the speed of traffic again, and they’ll park across multiple parking stalls. Audis are similar, but the demographics seem to skew a bit older.
Here are the main demographics I tend to see in my area (Utah):
The first three drive super aggressively, the fourth can vary, the fifth drives pretty normal, and the last tend to drive pretty conservatively. At least that’s my read from my area.
That’s Exactly my experience with Tesla drivers too (Denmark), Tesla drivers generally drive “comfortably” as I see it, and I’ve never seen a Tesla show off at a red light.
In my experience Tesla drivers are responsible drivers as much as everybody else. So I am pretty sure this is NOT a driver issue.
They’re a cross between BMW drivers and incapable Prius drivers from the oast when they were the first hybrids.
Aka, you have the douches driving like entitled dicks because of the speed and prestige of the brand, and then you have the eco focused clueless drivers putting around.
I tend to keep a wary eye on all teslas because either way, they’re unpredictable.
My bet is on the extra torque being the primary problem. Rental companies have complained about increased incident rates, and they’re probably not renting out Teslas.
Hertz has had Tesla’s most of the time I’ve picked up a rental
And they did U turn on that. June 2024:
Re bullet 2. Irresponsibility.
My theory is that it is isn’t the badge on the car, it’s the fact that people’s grocery getter now was the performance of a high-end sports car from a decade ago. And, like a with a sports car, Teslas are designed to encourage users to have “fun” driving. Every test drive from a Tesla store ALWAYS includes a segment where the store rep encourages people gun it onto or on a large open road.
Before Telsa it was the German manufacturers who dominated the commuter-car-with-sports-car-performance market. And guess what? Those people drove like a-holes.
That is not true. I mean the bit where you put that into the past tense. They still do.
"A vehicle’s size, weight, and height certainly play a part in its ability to protect passengers in a crash,” said Brauer. “But the biggest contributor to occupant safety is avoiding a crash, and the biggest factor in crash avoidance is driver behavior. A focused, alert driver, traveling at a legal or prudent speed, without being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, is the most likely to arrive safely regardless of the vehicle they’re driving.”
I expect (hope) it’s a small factor, but I wonder where pedestrian fatalities fit in. Several of the worst models seem to be large SUVs or sports cars - alongside these Teslas and some rather cheaper compact cars.
Pedestrians were not part of this study.
oh yeah, “… at least one occupant fatality”.
The source dataset seems to have pedestrian/non-occupant fatalities, pretty shitty of tthem to go out of their way to exclude them.
Large SUVs must be worse for pedestrians because they’re essentially tanks that you can’t see out in front of for a good 20’ or so. A small child running to get their ball in the road will be completely invisible to a large SUV whereas a Tesla driver would be able to see the child a lot sooner and hopefully avoid them.
This is my hunch too. Perhaps the UI is more distracting with Tesla’s implementation of screens/menus/feedback for car functions too.
Just pointing out the study emphasize occupant fatalities which I take as to exclude external fatalities such as other vehicles.
Oh yeah, the big infotainment system could definitely be a factor in bad driving.
Also thanks for pointing out the methodology on how they’re counting fatalities, that easily scratches one item off my list.
Last time I looked up publicly available crash statistics in the US and calculated the per-maker numbers, Tesla was like 1/80th the typical per capita crashes of the average auto maker. That was a few years back, but I doubt that’s changed without some sketchy statistic interpretations.
they used crash statistics for new cars with models from 2018 to 2022, where tesla is the most dangerous brand
They looked at fatal crashes only, which is presumably a very small share of all crashes. They also normalised to per mile driven using a sample of data they have - presumably some data on miles driven by car type.
Could be sketchy, could just be a much smaller sub-population.
Obligatory preface written after comment was written:
I am in no way a statistician or data analysis guru. I admit I could be looking at this shit entirely wrong and welcome anybody who corrects anything I I’m looking at incorrectly.
Actual comment:
The entire report itself is skewed as fuck before Rolling Stone cherry picked the fuck out of it for the article to slam Tesla. Listen I’m as sick of Elon as the next but these fucking shit on everything Elon hiveminds are so much more fucking obnoxious. Theyre always 10 to 1 comments by people who didnt read the article to comments by people who did.
At the end is the actual image from the site that issued the report. I didnt bother with a source link because it’s right in the article OP posted.
Issues with the article and report:
The figures are not for every car on the road it only covers cars made between 2018 and 2022. Not a big deal but still deceiving as fuck to theme the article as Tesla has one of the highest death rates. Cuz they left the time frame out of the RS article. Kinda how they left out the fact that only 1 tesla is in the top 6 and the other Tesla is second to last with a flood of much larger much more common vehicle names that fill in between 1 and 23.
Each rate is calculated off 1 billion miles driven per year. When you put any Tesla model up next to any Ford, Honda, GM, Toyota, etc the % of all teslas on the road are going to be ridiculously higher than the % of the other much larger industry makes and models on the road that it takes to reach 1 billion miles. Because idk if I explained that well here is a made up scenario to illustrate it. Let’s say there are 1000 teslas on the road compared to 1,000,000 Prius on the road. The tesla death rates are based out of 1000 Teslas driving 1,000,000 miles each. Whereas the Prius death rates are based off 1,000,000 Prius’ driving 1,000 miles each.
Remember point 2 as it plays into point 3. The method they used to calculate the rate outlined in point 2, I believe is normal when govt is figuring out vehicle death rates by category, location, driver age, etc. However the study they reference is specifically for death rates per vehicle make. Which makes the methods used for calculating deathrate by make and model completely fucked. They should’ve done the same number of cars per each make and model type as well as the same miles driven to get a comparable outcome of death rates per make amd model over 4 year span.