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Comment by izzydata | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting that people are willing to take the risk buying a vehicle from a company that is effectively a meme. I take my safety seriously and I'd prefer the company that builds the vehicle I am driving to also be serious.

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Teslas rank pretty highly on safety reports.

https://www.iihs.org/ratings/top-safety-picks

https://www.nhtsa.gov/ratings-search

There was also that guy that tried to murder-suicide his whole family by driving off a cliff and everyone survived. Crazy considering the picture of the crumpled car..

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/luck-tesla-family-plung...

Is there any evidence Teslas are not at least average, if not above average in safety?

Edit: see post below for insurance loss comparisons, which would be the most accurate data in my opinion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45582701

Safety reports can be misleading apparently - https://philkoopman.substack.com/p/debunking-tesla-safest-ca...

Tesla gets high test scores, but real world results seem to differ - https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevebanker/2025/02/11/tesla-ag...

Accidents <> safety. Accidents could be caused by inattentive and/or aggressive drivers due to Tesla vehicles’ auto pilot functionality and higher torque.

The question is if driving the same way in the same conditions in the same places, would one experience more injury in a given model of Tesla versus a competing car?

That’s not a free pass.

Tesla is competing on price, but it’s providing acceleration that normally available in cars with much better handling characteristics.

Sure, but there's also the fact that millions of Teslas have been sold over the last 10 years, and their liability insurance isn't any higher than other cars.

If the statistics were seeing more collision risk, more injury risk attributable to the vehicle itself rather than the driver, then surely the actuaries would be able to suss that out.

https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/auto-insurance/insurance...

For 2021-2023, Luxury Cars, Large, Tesla Model S has lower than average personal injury, medical payment, and bodily injury losses.

For 2021-2023, Luxury Cars, Midsize, Tesla Model 3 is lower than average on personal injury and bodily payment, but slightly higher on the non 4WD model for bodily injury.

For 2021-2023, Luxury SUV, Midsize, Tesla Model Y has lower than average personal injury, medical payment, and bodily injury losses.

For 2021-2023, Luxury SUV, Large, Tesla Model X has lower than average personal injury, medical payment, and bodily injury losses

They all have lower than average property damage losses too.

Last I looked into it Tesla’s did have a significant insurance premium. Not sure if that was cost of repairs or safety issues, but it was quite significant.

See link in my above post. The extra losses are due to collusion and comprehensive, indicating the car costs more to fix (or replace). All this data seems to indicate the car is at least average in safety for the occupants, and I don't see anything to indicate Teslas are in above average amount of collisions, as the property damage losses are lower than average.

Got it, they seem about average compared to all cars though several things I was comparing them to are well above that.

That said 21-23, Tesla Model 3 electric 4dr was 9% higher personal injury, 26% higher medical payment, -3% lower medical injury.

Unless I read that wrong.

Even if you don't consider the rate of an accident occurring as "safety" then what about the results of when accidents happen? Should that not be considered a "safety" metric? eg. One brand has a much lower rate of accidents, but when an accident happens the fatality rate is much higher.

I'm sure I could personally operate any vehicle in a safe enough manner to not be very concerned about it, but it seems people trust Tesla self driving capabilities far beyond their limits which results in Tesla having some of the highest fatalities of any car brand. But I don't think Tesla is entirely faultless here , but considering how they advertise their cars as being entirely self driving and calling it auto pilot they are at least partially to blame.

But besides self driving I don't agree with the softwareization of cars. Maybe if Tesla made cars in a more traditional way, but they were EVs I would consider them a real option. The single giant screen without any tactile buttons feels cheap and I'm sure is just about cost saving. The whole cybertruck teardown makes it look like the vehicle wasn't well thought out.

Basically everything about Tesla as a company from its actual cars to its CEO which is supposedly leading it does not inspire confidence. When there are so many other well established car companies that take it far more seriously I don't even take Tesla seriously enough as an option to care about their crash test results.

The higher fatalities seem to be attributable to the zippy acceleration rather than self driving. Unless you have data showing otherwise?

I can only say your take is yours to have, but the software is the biggest selling point to me, and the plastic widgets on other cars look tacky and spurious.

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