Tesla Drivers Have the Highest Crash Rate of Any Brand: Study
thedrive.com
thedrive.com
We need less technical fixes for things like this and more legal consequences for drivers who are found to have used the system negligently. Want to act like a clown in your self-driving Tesla? Great, you're still responsible for what it does and now you can deal with a criminal conviction, same as someone driving drunk.
I think the saying goes "If you're going to kill someone, do it in a car"
If all you want is revenge, then by all means, punish them as hard as you wish. Make them listen to tesla autopilot advertising until their ears bleed. The harm is done by that time.
If you want to avoid harm, then you're well served to take the failure mode into account - it's not a conscious decision to take attention away from the autopilot. It's a fundamental psychological mechanism and we're all prone to fall victim. The only way to avoid the trap is to not use autopilot - or change how it works and adress the need for changes to the party that (mis)designed the feature and has power to change it.
Read this repeatedly until you've answered your question.
It would be an uphill battle for sure, and that's incredibly depressing.
Why would you make the manufacturer liable for this?
(From the top post). If other manufacturers show the same flaw, make the liable, too.
Planes operate in a space with good visibility, any obstacle will be visible with ample lead time.
Planes operate in controlled space, with dedicated and verified spacing between traffic participants, allocated by an external traffic control. Collisions are not rare because pilots jump in within split seconds to avoid them, but because traffic control routes planes away from each other if they converge.
The planes autopilot is in fact less capable than what the teslas autopilot pretends to be. Its limitations are fairly well understood by pilots.
A planes autopilot doesn’t dump the pilot into a “you’ll crash in a second” situation. Handover from autopilot is a different process than what Tesla expects. The planes systems are designed with human psychology and limitations in mind, because of the comparatively high regulatory bar.
Autopilot on cars is a MUCH harder problem than on an airplane. Plus you're taking about trained professionals and liable companies vs average Joe and negligent developer.
1) The whole airspace environment is heavily regulated (ATC, rules, etc), cooperative (think transponders or TCAS for example) and usually quite sparse (several miles between planes).
2) Pilots are regularly trained and evaluated for these kind of take over in case of emergency.
3) You have two pilots monitoring each other.
4) The development cycles for these automations are far longer, and the QA a lot stricter.
5) At least in the most critical phases (take-off, landing), the automation is not exactly end-to-end. It's more the case of grouping batch of steps together into bigger actions to reduce the load on the pilots. The pilots are still quite busy during these periods and very much in the loop.
This kind of change isn't impossible. Drunk driving was once in this same category -- I.e. considered an unfortunate accident rather than a crime. Then Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) ran a 30 year campaign to change the law, change enforcement, change prosecution, and finally (partially) the culture.
But I guarantee the NHTSA has neither the mandate nor the capacity to lead that change.
https://www.dailynews.com/2014/08/27/no-charges-for-lasd-dep...
https://www.scribd.com/document/237940150/Official-document-...
I’ve probably used my phone 5 times while driving in the last two years, and I can’t imagine why anyone would need to do it more than that. I do rely on CarPlay and Siri massively.
It will take another 10 years of concerted effort to actually change behaviour. It took MADD 20 years just to get the legal alcohol limit down from 0.15 to 0.08.
Pushing responsibility onto individual drivers for misusing automated systems is not the answer.
Making it painful enough to progress to the technology closer to infallibility is the way forward.
As always it comes down to the incentives and desired outcomes argument.
We aren’t trying to incentivize good behavior. We are trying to close the distance between technical promise and genuine achievement. You, in general principles, have to build the incentives around negative or positive consequences to manufacturers, not punish technology users for not using the half-ass implementation properly.
Top management is almost always most concerned with an innovation’s likely effect on the bottom line and they are accustomed to receiving market feedback, proposals and regulatory guidance that in turn help them prioritize resources to optimize for a return on investment and payback. We want to leverage that decision system to fix self-driving not engage in punitive end-user punishment because end users can’t do anything to change it.
TLDR; Right instinct, wrong clowns.
Either we have to accept these systems, or we need to ban them, but this goofy waffling where we just cripple them to be useless makes no sense to me.
How is that wrong?
I just can't figure out what lane centering is supposed to free me up to do instead.
In general, that analogy applies, though. Just like cruise control allows you to effortless maintain a speed, autosteer makes lane centering effortless.
It is basically like power steering that reduces steering effort to exactly zero. The benefit is greater than I thought it'd be, tbh.
I keep my hands on the steering wheel virtually at all times. I say virtually because I might let go for 2-3 seconds to untwist a bottle cap if everyone else in the car is asleep, not any different than the “knee steering” I did before. However, the car follows the curvature of the road without a problem.
The main benefit of ADAS, to me, is greatly reduced driver exhaustion. Yes, I am paying attention and actively driving the car, however I can focus on the important things.
The ACC ensures I don’t need to worry about fines for speeding due to a heavy foot. It also ensures that I’m “far enough” from the car in front to keep me (and them) safe. Lane assist means I can spend 20% more focus on understanding what shenanigans are going on 5 cars ahead instead of worrying about drifting in another lane.
Do I rely on it continuously? Nope. Do I trust it completely? It’s bad enough that I can’t. However, after driving 2000km, I’m still fresh enough to engage in a conversation in a foreign language with the in-laws, whereas in my prime, 15 years ago, the same trip would’ve put me to bed instantly.
It reduces the cognitive load of driving. It doesn’t make driving easier, however it reduces the mental burden of being a defensive driver.
It’s not unlike ABS. Could I achieve a lower stopping distance by carefully surfing the grip/skid brake pressure? With practice, on a track, absolutely. Do I get greater peace of mind knowing that at any time a computer is checking 500x per second whether my tyres are losing grip, regardless of my state of mind, whether I’m paying attention, am distracted, the road conditions, or which pair of shoes I’m wearing? Undoubtedly.
> In addition to the functionality and features of Autopilot, Enhanced Autopilot also includes:
> Navigate on Autopilot: Actively guides your car from a highway’s on-ramp to off-ramp, including suggesting lane changes, navigating interchanges, automatically engaging the turn signal and taking the correct exit.
> Auto Lane Change: Assists in moving to an adjacent lane on the highway when Autosteer is engaged.
> Autopark: Helps automatically parallel or perpendicular park your car, with a single touch.
> Summon: Moves your car in and out of a tight space using the mobile app or key.
> Smart Summon: Your car will navigate more complex environments and parking spaces, maneuvering around objects as necessary to come find you in a parking lot.
At best, I would accept that this is blatant false advertising on the fault of all car manufacturers who offer anything with a name akin to "autopilot".
The biggest reduction in drunk driving happened because of ride sharing.
The biggest reduction in piracy was because of availability of legal content.
The biggest reduction in car deaths is going to be creating an alternative to cars.
Human error is a valid defense because humans make a ton of errors, all the time.
I can bet that punishing people for human errors in this context will have a net negative consequence on society as a whole.
It doesn't suprise me one bit people get into way more accidents while in a Tesla.
I bet if you split further into Tesla's without any autopilot or FSD what so ever, the stat would return to normal. Or on rental Teslas, which are always speed locked to like 80mph / calm mode and no autopilot or FSD features (at least around me.)
Not sure if it's a "tech people not realizing you need to buy new tires" or maybe they aren't used to how fast tires wear down on heavier EVs.
Inevitably when it finally rained in the Bay Area, you'll see at least one Tesla smashed into the guide rail on the 101 up to SF.
[1] - https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modelx/en_us/GUID-94F63B1...
For example, the bottom of the list is not filled with brands with a lot of safety features, it is filled with brands that predominantly don't (/didn't) target riskier groups of drivers. People who buy boring vehicles drive differently than people who buy powerful and exciting vehicles. There is self-selection at play here.
I disagree with this statement. I think the greater issue is that suddenly, you’ve you’ve given every Tesla owner a car that can accelerate to the equivalent of a base Porsche 911 or better. Most people (I include myself) will not responsibly handle this much power.
No other make would be as heavily influenced by it as Tesla. EVs are less than 10% of sales for most other makes, so the impact would be nearly negligible.
It's not how fast the car is, or its safety features. It is the target consumer. Vehicles that appeal to subprime purchasers, boy racers, or other risk takers tend to have higher loss rates compared to similar vehicles.
If you look up high horsepower cars that are known as "old man" sports cars, they tend to have low loss numbers. It is the driver that matters more than any other single factor.
I think the human factor here is a couple of things:
1. many of these drivers are under the impression that their vehicles can drive semi-autonomously, and so they take more risks in not monitoring the system
2. these vehicles are new and high performance, and they appeal to those who want to show off, display status, and take risks in demonstrating the vehicle's capabilities.
3. they are driven on more dense roads
When was the last time you saw someone in a late model Buick doing hard launches and showing off the lane-keep-assist?
It isn't obvious that the mortality rate in a crash involving an autopilot is similar to that without one. It could be considerably higher or lower, something you need to know to make good policy or a smart purchase. If there's enough data for a mortality per crash comparison it didn't make it into the article.
Given I'd like to assume the best and conclude no one is lying here; obviously what they're measuring is slightly different, but it feels like they're similar enough that we shouldn't be getting entirely opposite outcomes. Do Tesla drivers drive substantially more? Are Tesla drivers just more likely to report crashes to their insurance/police (versus, Tesla's data is probably from automated internal observability)? If Tesla's data is based on internal observability, is that observability underreporting incidents to the mothership?
That's a bad assumption. Tesla routinely lies about everything from full self-driving to price to quarter mile times. It's built into the company's DNA.
Are they all excluded from the figures?
Probably accidents per mile would be high, but I doubt accidents per vehicle would be notable.
When I drove an old Mazda I didn't bother reporting anything short of catastrophic damage (obv if I caused an accident for someone else I'd report)... I don't think that's true for someone driving a new Model Y.
misleading
> misleading
I will agree that the data presented could be much better than they currently are.
To call this misleading, however, wouldn't you have to have a reasonable prior that the miles driven for Teslas are so much higher than the other brands that the trend we see doesn't make sense?
I would be more persuaded if you said that Teslas are more likely to drive in urban environments where crash risks are higher - it is hard to imagine that two popular brands with ICEs, Ram and Subaru, would have fewer miles driven than Teslas
Even then, a cursory Google leads to this:
> In 2021, the rate of crash deaths per 100 million miles traveled was much higher in rural areas than in urban areas (1.72 in rural areas compared with 1.19 in urban areas).
https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/urban...
That would be relevant if we were talking about crash deaths.
https://www.mvmlaw.com/blog/do-car-accidents-happen-more-in-... has multiple links supporting this
Intuitively one might say that high velocity crashes could involve more fatalities, but an easy counter to that is that pedestrian deaths would represent more in urban areas.
(To clarify, referring to the comment above, not the study)
I'm also wondering when the regulation to limit tops speeds in electric cars will occur. It seems inevitable that with the computers onboard the ability to limit speeds based on location data, ie what road you're on, will be here sooner rather than later.
The linked LendingTree article actually says "Across 30 car brands analyzed, Ram has the worst drivers. Nationally, Ram drivers had 32.90 driving incidents (accidents, DUIs, speeding and citations) per 1,000 drivers from Nov. 14, 2022, through Nov. 14, 2023. Tesla (31.13) and Subaru (30.09) were the only other brands whose drivers had incident rates above 30.00.". Without further breakdown of accident/incident types and segmentation by gender & age, TheDrive's article is just wild speculation.
> According to LendingTree, between Nov. 14, 2022, and Nov. 14, 2023, there were 23.54 Tesla accidents per 1,000 drivers. Only two other brands had more than 20 accidents per 1,000 drivers, Ram (22.76) and Subaru (20.90). That accident rate also helped it earn the second-highest incident rate, 31.13, behind only Ram (32.90). The difference between accident rate and incident rate is that the latter also factors DUIs, speeding, and any other citations.
OTA updates feel different, particularly when the vehicle isn't physically _recalled_ to a manufacturer controlled service space.
I'm not that familiar with the recall, would NHTSA have demanded it if it were all Tesla cars being physically recalled? (potentially resulting in the end of Tesla?)
The safety oversight/defect in the first place was no less of a problem before it was fixed, just because it could be fixed remotely.
Here's the official guidance on the topic: https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/documents/14218-...
Here's the official recall report: https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2023/RCLRPT-23V838-8276.PDF
In these recalls, there's always a negotiation process. NHTSA prefers for vendors to issue voluntary recalls, which is what happened here. Whether or not they would have demanded physical modifications probably depends on how dangerous they consider the defect.
2 million cars isn't even close to the biggest recall so far (I think GM or Chrysler has that privilege, but it's a fuzzy memory). Tesla probably would have survived it even if they had to physically plug a cable into each car to run the update.
I'm not a US citizen, so I have no congressional representatives.
This use of the word is just wrong, I don't care about the legal use precedence.
The word "recall" means "to call back, to return". And Tesla is not returning any vehicles.
They're being forced to make a software update. You can make it sound worse if you like.
But it's not a recall in any sense of returning anything anywhere.
Recall means “call back”.
What we want to say is “update” or “downgrade” or “restrict” or “Fuck Tesla!” depending on the intent.
You could say that you can recall a feature if you disable it in a software update. Even though the software doesn’t actually get returned, but just gets deleted, it’s a metaphorical recall. You are not recalling the car itself, because it doesn’t go anywhere.
I’m not sure defendingg this word use is any more weird than to die on the opposing hill of insisting updating a car’s software is a recall of the car.
If one must be a Tesla employee to argue about the word “recall”, you must be a Tesla employee, too.
I think logic is breaking down the deeper these comments nest.
The important part is "they were required to change something", not where the maintenance physically occurs.
Good news, we don’t. It means that a manufacturer is required to check each vehicle they sold and make it safe or remove it from the road. The key part to understand is that they are required to check each vehicle, not just assume everyone will see the news and contact them.
Since Tesla can fix this with a software update trackable over the air, they’re saving a lot of money but it’s still a safety defect which needs to be corrected.
That's a recall. That's a government body having to "push" (in your own words no less) to improve safety.
Let's be honest, Tesla generally has to be dragged kicking and screaming to anything for safety (from matters as benign as Elon throwing a tantrum about the aesthetics of airbag warning on sunvisors to the fact that when AP was released, it only did steering wheel checks every fifteen minutes, and it's been several iterations of pressure to make them as frequent as they are now).
It's good to have the advancement of mechanisms for OTA updates.
It's still a recall, no matter how much Tesla fans scream "better than the dinosaurs".
Elon didn't throw a tantrum.
He didn't throw himself at the floor screaming like a child.
I don't recall he ever did that.
And by that I mean: I never forced a car maker to issue a software update.
(That's obviously what "recall" means, like reckless tweeting is "throwing a tantrum".)
> It's still a recall, no matter how much Tesla fans scream
It's possible that both of these are true at once:
1. "Recall" has a legal definition in the car industry
2. "Recall" means returning something to the manufacturer
For the sake of argument, THIS IS SCREAMING!!!
Objecting to a skewed media narrative isn't.
> He didn't throw himself at the floor screaming like a child.
> I don't recall he ever did that.
He specifically exclaimed "Fuck it, I don't care, we'll pay the fines" rather than having that adornment in the vehicle. Just because your literalism says that it's not, because there were no mashed fists against the floor, doesn't make it less so, particularly when the definition of tantrum is around outbursts of anger, often immaturely.
> But if autopilot wasn't taken off the shelves and it just behaves differently, then you're stretching the meaning of "recall" to a philosophical extreme.
Also, then I guess two of my Audi recalls weren't actually recalls either. One involved updating the software for the 'passenger occupancy detection system'. A USB stick was plugged into the car. It didn't happen OTA, but nothing was touched or removed or installed on the vehicle. But I'm sure that would somehow be a recall still.
Mechanism. Intent. Two separate things.
> He specifically exclaimed "Fuck it, I don't care, we'll pay the fines" rather than having that adornment in the vehicle. Just because your literalism says that it's not, because there were no mashed fists against the floor, doesn't make it less so, particularly when the definition of tantrum is around outbursts of anger, often immaturely.
You could say it's an immature choice when you look at the consequences.
But it's not an outburst of anger. No clenched fists, no sweating, no crying, no hissing.
He didn't even raise his voice. Was he angry? Sure, he used the word "fuck".
Throwing a tantrum is an exaggeration. You can call me a literalist.
---
> A USB stick was plugged into the car. It didn't happen OTA, but nothing was touched or removed or installed on the vehicle. But I'm sure that would somehow be a recall still.
You have a good point. The difference between plugging a USB key and sending an OTA update is mostly technical.
The point of making a distinction: When you recall a car (by physically relocating it, to make it clear), you make it unavailable to the owner until it is returned, at great inconvenience to the owner.
If a service update rendered the car unavailable to a similar extent, I'd see the similarity better. I still think the word "recall" would be wrong, not because I'm trying to undermine the extent and severity of the matter. I'm sure we can come up with better, similarly critical words, e.g. "Tesla bricking all their cars for 48 hours".