RAM, Tesla and Subaru Have Worst Drivers, While BMWs Have Highest DUI Rates

The difference is a Camry can also steer, and stop.

I wouldn't be surprised if you're right about the AI bit, but I feel compelled to nitpick your assertions.

Ram is a series of models (1500, 2500, etc) and includes vans. It's not one specific pickup model, and not even exclusively pickups.

I am too lazy to refer directly to the data the article is summarizing but "Ram" in the article context probably covers more than just the 1500 which is what most people probably associate with "Dodge Ram."

To your point though, referring to all F-series models as Fs would be odd, but I can't tell if that's just because it's a single character. I think a s/Rams/Ram Series Models/ would probably have made more sense.

Lastly, comparing a pickup to a sedan is sort of silly, don't you think? Trucks are much more difficult to control at higher rates of speed and acceleration, due to a number of factors and so being the fastest truck of the bunch is probably significant.

A gearhead I am not, but a cursory search of pickups reveals Rams are indeed marginally faster/more powerful than their counterparts from other brands.

They also make the Promaster van. Between work trucks and cargo vans, I wonder whether these results (which are incidents per 1000 drivers, not incidents per mile) are skewed by commercial vehicles that see a lot more annual mileage than a typical passenger car (which Ram doesn’t even make).

RAM 1500 TRX 0-60 - 3.8 sec

https://www.0-60specs.com/ram/1500-0-60-times

As much as I dislike the company, I find these sort of discussions to be sort of tired, but what the hell, I'll bite.

IME Tesla drivers are mostly average, but for the ones that aren't, let's say 90% are completely incompetent(driving erratically or well under the speed limit) and the rest are dangerously aggressive.

Tesla driver here. I agree. I did some pretty sketchy overtaking before and it's been sketchy because I've overestimated the torque available. Had I had better model it would've been less sketchy.

That said I notice other drivers, esp pickup truckers, fuck around with me for no reason.

I live in an area that has a lot of mews lanes (previously access lanes for, in this case, large Victorian terraced houses, now local roads for smaller houses and commercial units built in the back gardens of the terraces) - I live on such a lane. These are narrow and often have no or inadequate footpaths, and the general understanding is that pedestrians have right of way and that cars should be cautious. Virtually the only people who don’t abide by this seem to be Tesla drivers; I’m not sure how it’s happened, but they seem to have cultivated a market of stupid arseholes. It’s not even an electric car thing; the VWs and Hyundais and even BMWs (long the stereotypical arsehole car) usually behave themselves.

> being from brands that no longer exist

This may surprise you, but some people are poor and drive very old cars, some of whose brands no longer exist. They can only afford to incrementally fix them.

The _average_ age of a light vehicles in the US is nearly 13 years. That means half the cars on the road are pre-2010. These "dead brands" mostly died around 2009.

The brands are proxies for the buyers, so it's biased only if you think the manufacturing of the car is the culprit.

Pontiac, Mercury & Saturn are more likely to be driven by older drivers or at least people who keep their cars in service for a long time (which doesn't work out so well if you are getting into accidents).

DUI is very much a white guy crime (check the stats), and very much tied to a sense of entitlement... sounds like a lot of BMW drivers, no?

The bias is they are measuring accidents per driver, not accidents per driven mile.

Classic case of Lying with Statistics.

Just because the cars are no longer made doesn't mean that the data is bad.

This could imply that people who drive old cars tend to drive them more carefully.

Yeah, that'd be my guess. People who have been driving the same vehicle for 20 years are probably not in it for the thrills. In contrast, Teslas are fashionable and probably disproportionately owned by younger drivers who like to "take it for a spin".

Another bias might be in product line-ups. Pickup trucks are often used in construction, hauling, snow plowing, and so on. All of these activities are accident-prone. So why is Ram #1 and Ford is way down the list? Probably because Ram only makes trucks, while Ford sells a lot of smaller vehicles too.

Survivorship bias; if the car brand hasn’t existed for almost 15 years, you’d _expect_ surviving examples to mostly be owned by responsible drivers.

I'm pretty sure that 50% of the cars driving between my city's downtown and the upper-middle class suburbs on a Friday and Saturday night are above the limit. Hell, I did it for years. Not saying it's a good idea, just that this sort of behavior is ingrained in upper-middle class culture. So, yeah, I think DUI rates are highly influenced by police bias towards certain makes/models/colors.

A metric based on per miles or time spent driving would shed additional light on the subject. We really need all of them taken together to paint a better picture

It's possible that age is a hidden variable, certainly, but it's also possible that Saturn, Pontiac, and Mercury are exceptionally low due to selection bias -- as you note, they've all been defunct for a decade at least; this means that every car from those brands still being driven has been in use for at least a decade (presumably longer on average). Since collisions and other accidents (statistically) reduce a car's lifespan, the cars from those brands that are still drivable likely have safer-than-average drivers.

But it's got Dodge on the front.

They got rid of the "Dodge" branding because they are too big to dodge now

In front of me = getting in my way

Behind me = tailgating and breathing down my neck

Bigger than me = gas hog with a masculinity issue

Smaller than me = must have a death wish to drive that tiny thing

Nothing brings out egocentric attitudes more than getting behind the wheel.

I mean, if you're driving the speed limit (or the speed the road conditions allow) you may not be wrong. Yea, and I know where the saying came from.

Also, it looks like “accidents” include speeding which people tend to do with Teslas

I was wondering when Altimas would be mentioned in here. Yes, they came be piloted by some pretty bad drivers.

Yeah except for the STi which is damned fast.

Mine is programmed to drive X number of feet behind the vehicle in front of me, which is usually a semi truck driving close to the limit.

Price of the car is a reasonable hypothesis for why Teslas are all driven by dicks. It has been found that dickishness is correlated with vehicle price. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22141...