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Comment by marricks | Hacker News Reader

> all work accidents must be reported

What do you want to bet injuries are high elsewhere and Germany just has better reporting.

> Tesla boss Elon Musk’s factory requested an ambulance or helicopter 247 times in the first year after opening alone

Later goes on to say this is three times as many per capita as Audi.

Tesla: quality is crap, our factory workers are paid poorly and injured, our corporate workers can spy on you while you drive, our boss is insane, but hey our lineup spells SEXY which is hilarious

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> What do you want to bet injuries are high elsewhere and Germany just has better reporting.

Their first plant was California. I know there's some weird need on the internet to conflate the US as a whole, but California is pretty solidly worker-favoring and safety conscious. They have pretty comprehensive reporting and awareness, probably to an equivalent level to Germany.

It's because of that that we know Tesla has always had a modus of terrible workplace environments.

Sure, and even with all of California's safety consciousness, Tesla's plant there saw double the industry average number of days lost to injury (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=8997844...).

Right, and California was still on them constantly. Which is probably one of the primary reasons they moved.

At least this way you save money on digits. Those "X days since last workplace injury" signs never even make it to double digit days.

> Later goes on to say this is three times as many per capita as Audi.

I'm curious how the ratio looks if you compute accidents per car produced.

Like does Audi have a lower per-capita rate because they are safer, or because their factory is padded with a bunch of incidental employees who aren't actually on the factory floor.

Because they are safer.

Do you have any evidence for this, or just vibes?

Because Tesla had 3x the accident rate. This are the numbers we have. Well, that, and decades worth of experience working in German industry. Especially automotive plants are incredibly safe.

Are y’all going to keep “just asking questions” that have an implicit stance of a musk-stan

Audi lists a volume of 332,981 vehicles for Ingolstadt in 2022.

https://www.audi-mediacenter.com/en/audi-in-ingolstadt-5543

Tesla posted a tweet regarding 5000 vehicles in one week in Gruenheide on March 25, 2023. That pace would be 260,000 vehicles over 52 weeks.

https://insideevs.com/news/659190/tesla-giga-berlin-producti...

I will say that the Audi Ingolstadt campus does have more than just line manufacturing.

You would need worker counts to translate the OP per-capita number into totals.

Going with Tesla fanboy opinions, Tesla will loose: Tesla factories are supposed to be so much more automated and productive, that employees per cars have to be much lower than Audi's. As a result the per capita accidents increase, unless of course Muskematics are different from normal calculus.

> Tesla boss Elon Musk’s factory

What a strange approach to go out of your way to ensure that Musk's name is mentioned.

Safety is the responsibility of leadership.

>“That’s our other rule,” Musk continues. “Safety third. There’s not even a Rule Number Two. But even though there’s nothing in second place, safety is not getting promoted to number two.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/elon-m...

Incredibly dishonest to take a quote about his advice to his children/family in this context.

It's completely fair in that context. If you drill into your children "safety is the number 1 rule at all times", they are going to be socially and developmentally stunted.

If it's dishonest then I challenge you to find a better Elon quote on safety. I first heard "safety third" secondhand from someone who used to work for him. That's not citable, but maybe that's good enough for you.

If it's not good enough then here are a few more recent examples.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/qai/2023/08/31/elon-mode-fsd-se...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/podcasts/the-daily/elon-m...

I'd say it's far more dishonest to invent a context in which the only alternative to instilling the idea that "safety is so unimportant it's behind priorities that don't even exist" is "safety is the number 1 rule at all times" to the extent of developmental stunting ...

Yes, it's truly unfair that Tesla is being associated with him!

Media has to plant a narrative, or why write the article?

Narrative? Nope. Too much thinking here. Elon Musk = 10k viewers / angry-emotional readers, Tesla = 1k viewers / positive readers. Elon Musk name-drop generate readers.

Except it's in the body, so they already clicked on the article and made their money. What's left is continuing the trope that Elon is insensitive and stupid.

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