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

roadandtrack.com

271–280 of 460 posts

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

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and loaded with features "Ludicrous mode." > the top killer of drivers are trees on the side of the road. It's actually alcohol and drugs. Which is the reason those drivers find themselves in the trees.

If you have driven around rural roads in the US, you realize it does not take alcohol to leave the road. A moment of distraction is all it takes to get into a ditch. https://highways.dot.gov/safety/RwD

>A moment of distraction

Indeed, people really under(over?)estimate how small a loss of attention has to be to become catastrophic.

I once wanted to know the name of a track that was playing while driving on the highway. I looked right to the stereo display and read it, that probably took a tenth of a second, but it happened right at the moment when something came into my lane and I had to veer off not to hit it, I did not hit it but also almost drove the car out of the road.

When you're distracted, even if you're looking straight ahead, coming back to reality, assessing the situation, reacting, ... takes at least a couple seconds and that's a lot of time in these scenarios.

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

#272

I'd love to see some sort of multiple regression or ANOVA on this, instead of singling out a single variable. Is car brand really the best independent predictor? Or is it specific design decisions you tend to see in certain brands? (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 su…

My fridge has been repaired twice, the first time within its first year. Both times, each repair guy said the same thing: Avoid LG and Samsung. Avoid counter depth. I have no idea if that's accurate, so I'm curious if your data dive backs up either of those notes?

What is "counter depth"?

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

#273
post #56

How much data does Tesla have on the details of crashes? Probably depends on whether enough electronics survived to phone home. 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 i…

"Fun" fact... Tesla doesn't count fatalities in their accident stats!

Nor does it count accidents where there was no airbag deployment because as you point out, modern airbag systems use a wide variety of parameters, not just "if speed > x and collision = true; deploy".

So you can hit someone obliquely at 30mph, and due to factors, airbags don't deploy, and Tesla says "great, not an accident".

Or you can be in such a serious collision or similar where the airbags CAN'T deploy, and Tesla? "Not an accident".

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

#274
post #94
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These next 4 years will be a hoot and holler...

He had been "joking" about a third term already: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/13/us/politics/congress-reso... So let's see if a Trump with total immunity will really leave gracefully this time.

I'm looking forward to the military coup! it seems that America is turning into a new Turkey. you can either have freedom or democracy, but not both.

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

#275
post #259

> 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…

My first thought was if mass got factored into it, but it looks like mass has already crept up pretty high for other cars. A Toyota Prius is about 3200 lbs and a Model 3 is about 4000 lbs or 3800 lbs for their lightest variant. My mental models were outdated and still imagined sedans as about one ton and change. While bigger not as significant a factor as I initially thought.

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

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one that is not excited about the next four years being constant banter of this nature? I loathe it. Nothing personal against your comment but the new administration hasn't even gone into office and I cannot get away from this.

>> but the new administration hasn't even gone into office and I cannot get away from this. Well, it cuts both ways. New administration should not be talking till they are in office.

That makes no sense

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

#277
I spend a lot of time driving around Irvine, CA and it feels like the Tesla (especially Model Y) capital of the world. And I am not at all surprised to see these sorts of fatality statistics about these vehicles because their drivers are, far and away, the most distracted and oblivious drivers I have ever encountered on the road in 28 years of driving.

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

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Tesla Model Y is a two ton SUV with the performance of a Porsche 911. The base RWD model is fast and the Performance model is stupidly fast. I don't think anyone would be particularly surprised to learn that Porsche drivers get into a lot of fatal accidents.

Don't the aerodynamics severely limit the cornering performance of the Model Y? How can it have the same performance? Or is there only one metric of performance that is being measured?

I would suspect that it is the weight of the vehicle that is the primary driver there. There is some additional negative effects of the vehicle being taller (increasing roll), but that is probably mostly mitigated by the battery pack pulling down the (vertical) center of mass. But certainly the aerodynamics creating less down-force would play some role.

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

#279

> Tesla vehicles have a fatal crash rate of 5.6 per billion miles driven, according to the study; > 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 ima…

The ranking is still strange to me though. The model S is lower than the model Y even though it is smaller and faster, both of which should make it less safe, and the model 3 didn't even make the list.

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

#280
Buried at the very end of the article:

> 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.

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