Hacker News Reader

Comment by TacticalCoder | Hacker News Reader

Fun one I read recently... In the U.S. an average of 11 our of 100 drivers having a car in their name have an at-fault accident on their record. Do you know what's the brand where, on average, the owners that have an at-fault accident is at the lowest for any brand, with only 8.62 out of 100 drivers having an at-fault accident?

It's... Drumroll... Porsche.

View on HN

This is honestly a good reason in my opinion why having everything be so car centric in the US is such a bad idea. If there are other transportation s than driving then you can gate keep driving more with more strict drivers license requirements and pull licenses from bad drivers more easily, but as it stands in the US you need to be able to drive to function as a member of society so if someone has a DUI pulling their license is almost as bad as giving that person house arrest for the rest of their life.

Obviously cars are still the best form of transportation in a wide variety of situations but it really wouldn’t kill to have a functional bus system that doesn’t take 10x the time to get somewhere as driving

> in the US you need to be able to drive to function as a member of society so if someone has a DUI pulling their license is almost as bad as giving that person house arrest for the rest of their life.

Another way of looking at this is, if driving is so important to participating in American society, then it is a privilege you should show the greatest respect for, and make sure you are driving safely and legally.

Driving recklessly and endangering not only your license to drive, but the lives of others, carries a high cost that you will have to pay when it goes wrong. That’s an individual choice. Of all the countries I’ve driven, the US drivers seem to have a particularly low regard for law and safety.

That’s one other potential viewpoint and maybe it should be adopted more, but that’s not how it works in practice. If penalties for driving drunk and/or recklessly were higher, people would probably feel that way more.

This makes sense because Porsches aren't daily drivers for disproportionately large percentage of their owners. This needs to be normalized by miles driven to be meaningful.

I found the source and the stat sorta accounts for that in a different way, because it reports any at-fault accident in the driver's history, regardless of whether or not it was with that particular car. Thus, even if the Porsche isn't a daily driver, the owner's past accidents would still count.

That said, I'm not sure how I feel about this methodology overall. It's based on insurance applications submitted by the drivers themselves, and I'm not sure what they do to check applicants' actual history. Perhaps Porsche drivers are more inclined to lie about their accident histories?

> To apply for car insurance, drivers input personal and vehicle information, including the make and model of the car they drive, their license plate number, and whether or not they have caused an accident in the past. To create the list below, the Insurify data science team compared the number of car owners with a prior at-fault accident against the total number of drivers for each make and model, determining the proportion of drivers with an at-fault accident on record.

Source: https://insurify.com/insights/auto-brands-most-car-accidents...

What are the chances that the Porsche drivers have better lawyers and generally don't get found "at fault" as often as people who drive Toyota Corollas or Ford Escorts?

Odds are they are lawyers.

Do Porsche owners have fewer accidents even while driving other vehicles? That would make a huge difference. But either way, Porsche drivers probably don't drive in rush hour traffic or on interstate highways, in any vehicle, period.

Also, another important question: What counts as an "at-fault accident"? If you back your car into a traffic cone, does that show up in these statistics?

Could you explain how this is 'fun'? I think it more or less just makes sense as a fact.

Given that not everybody drives a Porsche for practical or cost reasons and it’s only 2.38 points away from average, I would say that’s pretty high.

Like others have said, it would be best to see it normalized on a mileage basis to get a better view.

Run the per-mile numbers instead and see the difference.

Porsche drivers can afford better lawyers than the average American car owner. They are more likely to dodge responsibility for their crashes.

Likely because, as a whole, they are a lot older?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com