Comment by josephcsible | Hacker News Reader

Comment by josephcsible | Hacker News Reader

So much wrong here.

1. The point of this list is to look scary to people who don't realize how dangerous driving in general is. Consider how long a hypothetical "Toyotadeaths.com" would be.

2. The definition of "Verified Tesla Autopilot Death" is misleading. It gives the impression that it means the crash was verified to be caused by Autopilot, but it really just means that Autopilot was on when the crash took place. For example, https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2022/03/27/ashland-fatal-i-580-... was caused by the human driver's drunkenness, but it's a "Verified Tesla Autopilot Death" anyway.

3. It's full of crashes that were unambiguously the other driver's fault, e.g., https://mynewsla.com/life/2020/10/10/biker-killed-in-three-v... was a Tesla that got rear-ended by another vehicle that was "driving at an unsafe speed".

4. It compares Teslas to "large or midsized luxury SUVs", even though the very popular Model 3 is a sedan.

lol good job reading the FAQ closely

I'm not sure which of my points you're referring to, so I'll go over each of them:

1 and 4: I assume you're referring to "What does all of this mean? What can we compare these Tesla accident numbers to?". Here, they claim the Model 3 is hard to find still, despite there having been more Model 3s sold than Honda Accords this year (source: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g39628015/best-selling-car...). And they say they're using price as their justification for the comparison, when there's no reason this should be relevant, rather than the vehicle's class. They also claim they're only aware of 8 deaths ever in non-Tesla EVs. It should be obvious that they're not putting any effort into counting these.

2. I assume you're referring to "How many Tesla Autopilot crashes have resulted in death?". Yes, they clarify what they mean here. But the point is that they intentionally picked a label for it that makes you think of a different meaning. Also, note that they say "within 30 seconds of the crash". 30 seconds is a really long time when you're driving, so it's unreasonable to count crashes as Autopilot crashes for that long after it disengages.

3. I assume you're referring to "Why do you include deaths where the Tesla was not at fault?". But this gets back to my first point. If a Honda or Toyota short-seller made this same sort of list for them, it'd look even scarier. The author of this site is relying on the fact that nobody's done that to unfairly scare people. Also, "despite Teslas being at fault in the majority of those cases" is an extraordinary claim made without evidence.

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