Tesla's Safety Record vs. Volvo | Hacker News Reader

Tesla's Safety Record vs. Volvo

flyingpenguin.com

51 pointsjusonchan8138 comments

You can't compare absolute numbers of deaths in a year vs. number of cars sold in that year. Safety is calculated as injuries per miles driven. For death rate, it is usually shown as deaths per 100k miles driven.

Vehicles sold here is also a mis-leading number. It is talking about Volvo's total safety across all models, but then only including sales numbers for it Electric Vehicles. Tesla sells many more EVs than Volvo.

It talks about battery fires in Tesla models, which are rare. But ignores how many fires happen in ICE vehicles, even though the are far more common.

Everything in this article is mis-leading and low quality analysis.

An ICE fire is usually a minor event. The gas tank is on the other end of the car. A battery pack fire is always a big event.

>Everything in this article is mis-leading and low quality analysis.

I don't have any knowledge of electric cars safety, but I've checked another article on the same site on topic I have a deep understanding of. The recipe the site used is simple: 1. make a strong statement; 2. push it and push it without any regard for truth or logic.

I guess that's just their modus operandi.

> Safety is calculated as injuries per miles driven.

Is there any reason whatsoever to believe that the average EV is driven more miles than the average ICE? If anything, using vehicle counts instead of miles favors Tesla.

> only including sales numbers for it Electric Vehicles.

Again, reducing the denominator for Volvo favors Tesla.

> mis-leading and low quality analysis

Agreed. It's far too forgiving of Death Trap Inc.

"When I post this chart I often hear Tesla believers complain it doesn’t conform to their bias because it obscures sales volumes. Does it? In fact, it is the opposite. First, volume shouldn’t cause more deaths to start with (remember more cars means more data, which means more safety). Second, Tesla doesn’t have higher volume."

I don't agree with the first part. Volume does matter doesn't it? However the first part is mute if Volvo sold more cars.

The chart is obviously misleading. More volume would mean fewer deaths PER miles driven, but this is showing absolute numbers of deaths for ONLY electric models. Volvo has many more models besides EVs. The chart would be fair if all models were included, and if it was relative to road usage, eg. deaths per 100k miles driven.

there are direct model to model comparisons with sales numbers in the article.

And other manufactures ev sales numbers do not seem to to be off by a factor of 100 too 200 compared to tesla

Tesla’s delivery numbers are wrong. No sources listed either.

fair, the numbers seem to be off according do the numbers i can find. Tesla produced more cars then that by a factor of 2x even in q1 2021

Single year sales numbers, but for some reason the author used total deaths instead of single year deaths.

The chart does not say it is using only electric models. How do you know that? It says per BRAND not per model.

Further down, the article includes deaths relative to sales volume for various EV models. I don't see how it is unfair to compare two EVs fatality rates.

Finally, while miles driven would be great I imagine it's hard to know the average miles driven per model, but there's little reason to think it differs by orders of magnitude.

It’s not moot because had Tesla had greater volume, one might be able to more easily justify the higher number of deaths. However the volume is still relatively smaller and therefore the higher number of deaths is still significant.

This person is clearly deluded. The correct metric is fatal accident per 100k miles driven and OF COURSE volume matters.

If volume matters then we are painting a worse situation for Tesla since they sold less than volvo

No we don't, if we compare normalised numbers (per mile driven) rather than unadjusted ones.

How do they know much miles have been driven by a car? What if a person does it own car maintenance? Not sure, if that's a much better approach

Last year (2021) Volvo sold 698693 cars, and that's including all of their models, not just electric.

Tesla sold 936222, which is obviously significantly more than Volvo.

I don't disagree. But it's a moot, not a mute, point.

It’s like a cow’s opinion, it doesn’t matter, it’s moo

This post is dangerously innumerate. I don't like Tesla, but I do like math: accidents are a rate, so of course mileage matters.

The table is also pernicious, as it shows cars sold in a year per model vs deaths in a year per model. Almost sounds legit, until you realize "no wait, sold per year doesn't matter, just how many were operating".

This just seems weird, clearly bias too...

Looking at that chart, not even touching on the other issues, it says the source is tesladeaths.com. Going there, just using the first 10 entires makes the entire data look bad. This database would literally count someone in a Tesla, purposely running over someone as a "Tesla death" which sure I guess but it's obviously disingenuous.

entry #2 and #3 are both DUIs where the driver hits someone else... There's even an entry where a Tesla gets into a fender bender and a BMW hits a "responder" and that gets labeled a Tesla death ???

I'd be shocked if the author even looked at the entries lol.

Overall, this is just ridiculous tbh.

Regardless of the truth behind it, this is bogus statistics at its best:

“Look at the following table showing this year of high sales volumes for electric cars next to total deaths by model”

You can’t compare single year sales to total deaths by model. You’ve got cars on that chart that have only been for sale for a single year, and one that has been available for a decade.

10 years of sales and 10 years of miles driven would be expected to have more deaths than 1 year of sales… and that’s before you account for a decade’s worth of potential improvements.

The only way to show a true correlation would be a year by year breakdown of miles driven vs deaths.

There’s actual data on the IIHS site where you can compare like with like.

https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-...

https://www.iihs.org/ratings/insurance-losses-by-make-and-mo...

I don't see Volvo or Tesla anywhere on that list

If you go to the second link, select 2018-2020, Midsize, Luxury Card you'll see both Tesla and Volvo at the bottom.

Tesla does quite well there. Though Volvo does slightly better to significantly better on pretty much all metrics.

This article presents several logical fallacies in their analysis which all seem to favor Volvo.

Honestly... this is just comically sloppy lol.

Gets even better, scrolled down a bit and saw this entry:

https://www.winknews.com/2020/01/31/state-troopers-respondin...

This database is counting _this_ as a Tesla death.

The source being used in that very database says the Nissan lost control, hit the median and the driver died due to injuries. The Tesla hit the debris of the wreckage but neither driver nor passenger was harmed.

Just wow.

I'm completely willing to believe Tesla's safety record is poor, and in fact, I fully expect it to be the case, because Musk sure as fuck doesn't care about the safety of peons, but this article doesn't seem to have any valid data backing the assertion.

The Tesla deaths per year bar chart peaks at 2019 and then decays for 2020 and 2021. It is presented by the author, however, as exponential growth.

That’s the moment this article jumped the shark, for me. No one knows what the trend is, but the author clearly only wants to consider one interpretation.

I’ve flagged it, but maybe someone can vouch for this article as being written by a serious and reputable blogger?

    It stands out because this brand is superior to Tesla in every way, including innovation (because safety is valued), yet somehow Tesla has pranced around falsely claiming to be better at safety than Volvo.

The singular redeemable thing about this article is how quickly it advertises its bias. I guess it has some value for people looking to confirm their own beliefs?

> Look at the following table showing this year of high sales volumes for electric cars next to total deaths by model

But the deaths come from previous years too. There are about 500k Tesla Model 3s on the road vs 12k Ford Mustang Mach Es.

There's about 100k Chevrolet Bolts on US roads though, but the death rate for Model 3s is not 5x, it's 87x.

Lol using this dudes data, covid deaths for first day is like 0.

How much does it cost to buy posts like this?

Much like spam and robocalls, there must be an economic incentive or they wouldn't keep doing it.

It shouldn't be amplified on HN, though.

  And while Volvo states a clear commitment to reaching zero deaths 
  and shows very obvious actions to achieving that laudable goal, 
  Tesla seems only to come up with lies and excuses for why it has 
  keeps failing — killing more and more people.

The post convincingly makes that case. Now I have an urge to buy a Volvo.

As a more than casual observer of Volvo drivers, it's important to factor in their increased recklessness which possibly follows from a sense of safety ("bloody volvo driver" meme). On the other hand, one often sees people sleeping in the driver's seats of Teslas.

I would guess Volvo drivers are safer because they are either cautious people, awake at the wheel, or driving recklessly which may increase awareness and reaction time compared to a sleeping Tesla driver.

Simply, Volvo drivers tend to have more human agency.

Yea... I imagine sports cars are going to have deaths due to pure reckless drivers in addition to deaths that just happen because they aren't as safe.

I would wager the average Mustang or Corvette driver doesn't drive the same as your average Honda Odyssey driver, lol

Reply on news.ycombinator.com