Tesla has the highest fatal accident rate of all auto brands, study finds

(Like, say, maximizing driver distraction by consolidating a bunch of essential controls and information displays into a touchscreen display that's really difficult to operate when it's sunny outside. Just to pick something at random, of course.)

Somewhat related, I was recently shopping for refrigerators, and fell down a data rabbit hole. If you just look at the overall style of fridge, French doors look like a terrible option from a reliability perspective. But then, digging in a bit more, it turns out that's kind of a spurious correlation. Actually it's the presence of bells and whistles like through-door ice dispensers that kill a refrigerator's reliability. And then perhaps on top of that the amount of extra Rube Goldberg machine you need to make a chest height ice dispenser work in a bottom-freezer French door refrigerator creates even more moving parts to break. But a those problems don't apply to a model that doesn't have that feature.

> So, why are Teslas — and many other ostensibly safe cars on the list — involved in so many fatal crashes? “The models on this list likely reflect a combination of driver behavior and driving conditions, leading to increased crashes and fatalities,” iSeeCars executive analyst Karl Brauer said in the report. “A focused, alert driver, traveling at a legal or prudent speed, without being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, is the most likely to arrive safely regardless of the vehicle they’re driving.”

Ok so Tesla's aren't less safe than any other vehicle in this lineup. It's just that Tesla drivers are more likely to be careless.

It's interesting to think in that context about this. Could Tesla drivers be taking bigger risks because they think the car's software will save them from the negative consequences of their risky decisions? (As an extreme example, one such driver opted to drive in the back seat instead of the driver's seat. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-highway-patr...)

They assume every car drives the average number of miles. Of course a CR-V is going to score high, since they likely drive more than an average number of miles.

A 911 on the other hand probably drives a small fraction of the average.

This study is fairly low quality. The IHHS list 13.3 fatalities per billion miles as the actual number.

It's possible to dig the airbag controller out of the wreckage and read out the last 30 seconds or so. Airbag controllers have a short but nonvolatile memory and usually survive crashes. That gets you speed, acceleration in several axes, plus steering, brake, and power inputs, and detailed info about what the airbag system did.[1] Those were originally created to tune the airbag algorithm, and, over the years, false airbag deployments have dropped almost to zero.

That's the basic info needed to analyze fatal crashes. Speed at collision? Speed 10 secs before collision? Accelerator and brake inputs? Maneuvering (side accel) before crash? That, plus the crash scene, tells most of what you need to know.

Law enforcement will sometimes read out those units, when it's not clear what happened. It's not done routinely.

[1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/fmvss/EDR_QAs_11...

> The models on this list likely reflect a combination of driver behavior and driving conditions, leading to increased crashes and fatalities,” iSeeCars executive analyst Karl Brauer said in the report.

> “A focused, alert driver, traveling at a legal or prudent speed, without being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, is the most likely to arrive safely regardless of the vehicle they’re driving.

The only driving aid I use (rely on) on is ACC (Automatic Cruise Control), to keep my speed and distance (maximum) to the car in front of me. I almost always stay in the rightmost lane doing the speed limit.

Without a doubt Tesla drivers consistently stood out as the most "strange". Drivers of all brands can be stressed and drive too fast, but Tesla drivers were janky, couldn't stay in their lanes, and very often didn't keep a safe distance to the car in front of them.

Worst part, they didn't seem aware of their surroundings. They would merge in the most insane situations/positions or dangerously try to pass other drivers.

I don't know if they relied on their hardware to guide them, this autopilot thing, or whatever else they have, but it puckered me up good.

> So, why are Teslas — and many other ostensibly safe cars on the list — involved in so many fatal crashes? “The models on this list likely reflect a combination of driver behavior and driving conditions, leading to increased crashes and fatalities,”

What is the nature of those miles driven by each brand? I've got to imagine that pure-EV companies like Tesla are predominantly driven in urban/city driving (shorter daily distances, more traffic, etc). In contrast to ICE cars which can rack up lots of miles on long trips.

1 billion Tesla miles I suspect looks different than 1 billion Ford miles.

–––

“Most of these vehicles received excellent safety ratings, performing well in crash tests at the IIHS and NHTSA, so it’s not a vehicle design issue” [1]

“The models on this list likely reflect a combination of driver behavior and driving conditions, leading to increased crashes and fatalities.” [1]

- Karl Brauer, iSeeCars Executive Analyst

[1] The 23 Most Dangerous Cars On The Road

https://www.iseecars.com/most-dangerous-cars-study#v=2024

Teslas can go fast real fast, so naively this is the result I would expect given how they have filtered the data. In other words, unless they controlled for this, this would be biased by natural selection playing out.

Having said that, as someone who had a couple of close calls with the autopilot. I would love to know what percent of those crashes was with autopilot enabled.

* The FARS data is “normalized” by unpublished internal iSeeCars estimates of miles driven; the underlying “study” is a marketing blog post for their company.

* FARS data distinguishes between driver and occupant fatalities - the “study” looks only at occupant fatalities, which is not what most people would reasonably expect given the headline.

* One might reasonably suspect Tesla’s long history of touting 5-star safety ratings and advanced safety tech could lead to passengers being lulled into a false sense of security, and being less likely to use seatbelts.

Driver fatalities and seatbelt use are right there in the FARS data - one wonders why these weren’t considered and incorporated in the “study”.

Anyhow, a note to the HN user: don’t upvote FUD-sowing headlines based on blog posts about unscientific “studies” that are really just submarine PR; they carry none of the credibility of the underlying studies, and are a disservice to the scientists and public servants who rigorously and faithfully collect and analyze this data.

HN used to be better than this…

I assume there are not too many Porsche 911 on the roads, so a couple of bad drivers could make an impact on this score

While many says it's the ultimate meme stock, I also can't help thinking it's the ultimate manipulation stock - it seems some people desperately want it to go down while others desperately want it to go up.

Teslas are faster than many sports cars, but in the case of the Model Y and Model X lack the preferred low profile of a true sports car. In the case of the Model S, the acceleration is so great that it is frankly surprising it doesn’t rank higher. I wonder how many new Model S owners have gotten themselves killed within a few days of owning the car?

I myself purchased a Model 3 last year and drove it quite foolishly for the first few months I had it. The acceleration was so amazing to me coming from a Honda Accord that it was hard to resist the temptation to weave and corner like a mad man. Model S would have been even worse. The Model S also has a long body like a full size sedan, not ideal for sports performance either, compared to the Model 3’s short length, more comparable to a Corrola or Toyota BRZ.

So I suspect that speculations about “Tesla drivers being morons” and “distracted by the screen” (almost all new cars have shiny screens!) are nonsense.

Another frequent remark is that Teslas’ high weight is a disadvantage. This is not as straightforward as they assume, because weight actually has benefits for traction. Light cars are much more likely to lose grip and slide around. On the other hand, a heavy car with worn out tires or brakes is much more difficult to stop than a light car with worn out tires or brakes. So weight is probably a wash.

But I do agree with some commenters that the autonomous features, and particular misuse of those features, are probably a contributor to these statistics as well. If you’re new to them you assume they are safer than they really are. With more experience you realize you still need to be watching the road the whole time.

I’m assuming the driver behavior also includes relying on the half baked auto pilot/FSD features.

So people who drive Tesla are arse, got it.

if other people are more likely to hit a tesla or are tesla drivers usually at fault?

* having the ratio of fatalities organised by sized and power of cars. My understanding is that Teslas have a bit more horsepower than other cars, so maybe an apple-to-apple comparison needs to compare them to a slighly smaller share of the overal pool

* having the ratio of fatalities involving the so called "autopilot" feature. I'm not necessarily going to blame Tesla for making fast cars that reckless people use to get into accidents when running too fast.

However, if it's your average joe getting an accident because of a software glitch in the driving assistance system, because they assumed something called "autopilot" was able, to, you know, pilot on its own...

A significant aspect is that Telsa, as a harbinger of "progress", by this measure is making cars less safe. That's a surprising development as it's contrary to the promises and prognostications for the devices.

It's expected that the distribution of harm from cars would change with increasing automation, but the promise of the automation is to make the devices safer overall. So is this a key metric by which we find that the progress is actually a hazard, or is the changing distribution part of an overall trend of improvement with some hazardous edge cases?

All we have with this article is yet another headline with no useful information.

> “A focused, alert driver, traveling at a legal or prudent speed, without being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, is the most likely to arrive safely regardless of the vehicle they’re driving.”

What does "focused and alert" mean for a robot? Does arriving safely allow a wake of carnage?

The Trump administration figures as a harbinger for such questions in that he is a well-known champion of disinformation in favor of his self interest, as are all of his cabinet picks and advisors. But this is in keeping with the modern history of the GOP.

... implication being that Tesla drivers are more likely to be driving like pricks and/or under the influence?

I wonder what the rates are like for specific models from other brands that are associated with morons. G-wagons, M3s etc etc

Now if there are more Teslas on the road vs other vehicles (note they excluded car model years earlier than 2017, another fatal (heh) flaw in the study), it makes sense they would have more fatalities.

So this should be normalized "per capita" to vehicle counts if we want to extract any brand-related causality, in the same way as the data is already normalized to miles driven.

I enjoy hating on Tesla as much as the next person, but come on.