I was gonna say that given that there’s about 40k traffic deaths per year in the US, 700 deaths from Tesla seems low. But I looked up deaths over distance and Tesla is in fact in the lead with 5.6 deaths per billion miles. Kia and Buick coming up behind them with 5.5 and 4.8 respectively.
There’s some disagreement about how Tesla’s safety compares to other brands though, with one study giving it the highest fatal accident rate and others giving Tesla a good safety score.
The disagreement doesn’t really seem like a contradiction from my reading. The studies that give Tesla good marks are doing it based upon crash test results, which Teslas tend do pretty well on. The studies that give Tesla bad marks are doing based upon actual statistics from the field, and the numbers don’t lie.
My assumption would be there’s a few factors for this. It could be partly due to the sort of people who drive Teslas are more likely to crash them (this is probably why Buick is also so high on the list - too many senior drivers). Though my hunch is Tesla’s self-driving implementation is a major part of it.
The number of fatal crashes and the safety score are not the same measures.
Insurance actuaries know the correct answer and Teslas are among the most expensive vehicles to insure, along with Dodge Ram pickups for obvious reasons.
Teslas turning off the autopilot feature less than a second before a crash, also helps keep that safety score high for the company. Its obviously driver error they couldn’t avoid an accident in < 1 second. https://futurism.com/tesla-nhtsa-autopilot-report
Should we really be counting the ones where someone else rear ends a tesla and dies? That’s like saying the stairs killed someone who tripped over their own feet and fell down them.
https://www.tesladeaths.com/
warning: there’s a lot :/
I was gonna say that given that there’s about 40k traffic deaths per year in the US, 700 deaths from Tesla seems low. But I looked up deaths over distance and Tesla is in fact in the lead with 5.6 deaths per billion miles. Kia and Buick coming up behind them with 5.5 and 4.8 respectively.
There’s some disagreement about how Tesla’s safety compares to other brands though, with one study giving it the highest fatal accident rate and others giving Tesla a good safety score.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/01/11/tesla-fatality-rates/
The disagreement doesn’t really seem like a contradiction from my reading. The studies that give Tesla good marks are doing it based upon crash test results, which Teslas tend do pretty well on. The studies that give Tesla bad marks are doing based upon actual statistics from the field, and the numbers don’t lie.
My assumption would be there’s a few factors for this. It could be partly due to the sort of people who drive Teslas are more likely to crash them (this is probably why Buick is also so high on the list - too many senior drivers). Though my hunch is Tesla’s self-driving implementation is a major part of it.
The number of fatal crashes and the safety score are not the same measures.
Insurance actuaries know the correct answer and Teslas are among the most expensive vehicles to insure, along with Dodge Ram pickups for obvious reasons.
Teslas turning off the autopilot feature less than a second before a crash, also helps keep that safety score high for the company. Its obviously driver error they couldn’t avoid an accident in < 1 second. https://futurism.com/tesla-nhtsa-autopilot-report
No, they still count that as self-driving caused
Should we really be counting the ones where someone else rear ends a tesla and dies? That’s like saying the stairs killed someone who tripped over their own feet and fell down them.
If the car is disproportionately unsafe to crash into, yes.
That’s a point. I feel like crashing into a cybertruck would be like just hitting a steel wall. No crumpling or anything.
Compared with hitting a big rock?