> The study's authors make clear that the results do not indicate Tesla vehicles are inherently unsafe or have design flaws. In fact, Tesla vehicles are loaded with safety technology; the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) named the 2024 Model Y as a Top Safety Pick+ award winner, for example. Many of the other cars that ranked highly on the list have also been given high ratings for safety by the likes of IIHS and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, as well.
> 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.”
Sure, makes sense, but then we have the invisible, possibly non existent emergency door release. Do they also go through the effort of pointing this out as a factor in the statistics? Or is that not counted as a design flaw? Whether they’re saying the truth or not, i think in these roles, it’s very easy to omit damaging information while not outright lying. It’s also easy to be taken to lunch by a Tesla person to talk about how to cushion the reports impact.
A good instinct, but the point is it's important to think about what the data means. The authors of the paper are just saying that the populations of people driving each type of car are different so looking at a percentage of fatalities is not particularly informative. If you took all those people who currently drive 20 year old fords at 10 under the speed limit and put them in teslas, maybe the tesla fatality rate per billion miles would start to look a bit better.
So it's because irresponsible tech bros & the like are driving high performance electric cars at speeds and accelerations that they're not used to after the Toyota that they owned previously?
I feel like this gonna become a real problem as (any brand of) electric cars fill out the world's fleet.
> The study's authors make clear that the results do not indicate Tesla vehicles are inherently unsafe or have design flaws. In fact, Tesla vehicles are loaded with safety technology; the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) named the 2024 Model Y as a Top Safety Pick+ award winner, for example. Many of the other cars that ranked highly on the list have also been given high ratings for safety by the likes of IIHS and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, as well.
> 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.”