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Comment by noboostforyou | Hacker News Reader

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...

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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.

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