Technology

More irresponsible than Nissan Altima or Dodge Ram owners isn't easy

If there's a systemic reason Tesla drivers have more accidents in a Tesla than drivers of other cars, that car is inherently less safe.
You can't simply put it down to "Tesla drivers suck", that's irresponsible and flawed logic.

If it's the acceleration, maybe we shouldn't have cars that accelerate the way a Tesla can. But I very much doubt that is the reason except anecdotally. I suspect more that safety features may in fact serve to distract, or people "learn" to rely on them, and than they turn out to not be 100% reliable.

We've all heard the weird tendency of Tesla breaking for no reason, that is hazard, also the turn signals are placed wrong, causing them to be impractical in some situations like roundabouts. Also the instrumentation in general of a Tesla is centered very much around the touch screen, another source of potential distraction. AFAIK even the speedometer isn't placed where it should be to observe it quickly without looking away from the road for too long.

A lot of inherent safety feature in traditional cars, have been shaved away in Tesla cars. Even getting out in an emergency can be a problem, as the handles may fail because they are electric, and the "real" handles are hidden.

There a dozens of examples where Tesla is designed for less safety than traditional cars, and if (when) the safety features fail, I bet they are a lot less safe than if those features weren't there to begin with.

Tesla cars are designed with a VERY strong focus on reducing production cost, Elon Musk is even boasting about it, and how he has an uncompromising goal to simplify production. But Tesla also lack the experience about why things are like they are in traditional cars.

The study said they normalize by mileage, which will account for both model popularity and driving distance. Driving safety is usually reported in incidents per mile or something to that effect, so that's all standard.

The data is by "Fatal Accident Rate (Cars per Billion Vehicle Miles)", Model Y having 10.6, Model S having 5.8. Ignoring Model 3, the average would be 8.2. Back in 2023 Tesla tweeted "Total miles driven by the Tesla fleet has exceeded 100 billion miles globally—equal to 532 round trips to the sun!"
So that math says 820 fatal accidents, Tesladeaths reports 614. I'd say the numbers seem close enough?

Hertz has had Tesla's most of the time I've picked up a rental

Eh, I've seen the opposite. Most of the Tesla drivers in my area seem to drive relatively slowly. Yes, Teslas can go fast, but that burns through range like crazy, so I think a lot of them want that better range.

BMW drivers here are the worst because act completely entitled. They'll cross multiple lanes on the highway w/o signaling, aggressively pass on the right just to slow down to the speed of traffic again, and they'll park across multiple parking stalls. Audis are similar, but the demographics seem to skew a bit older.

Here are the main demographics I tend to see in my area (Utah):

• wannabe cowboys - big lifted trucks
• rich "racers" - BMW, sports cars (mostly Corvettes here), etc
• entitled "family" types - huge SUVs (esp. Cadillac Escalade)
• "outdoorsy" people (and wannabe "outdoorsy" people) - Subaru
• wannabe "green" people - Tesla, Rivian, etc
• actual green people - Chevy Bolt, Toyota Prius

The first three drive super aggressively, the fourth can vary, the fifth drives pretty normal, and the last tend to drive pretty conservatively. At least that's my read from my area.

I think of tesla drivers like BMW drivers who aren't good with their money.

They're a cross between BMW drivers and incapable Prius drivers from the oast when they were the first hybrids.

Aka, you have the douches driving like entitled dicks because of the speed and prestige of the brand, and then you have the eco focused clueless drivers putting around.

I tend to keep a wary eye on all teslas because either way, they're unpredictable.

Oh yeah, the big infotainment system could definitely be a factor in bad driving.

Also thanks for pointing out the methodology on how they’re counting fatalities, that easily scratches one item off my list.

Those people drove like a-holes.

That is not true. I mean the bit where you put that into the past tense. They still do.

Pedestrians were not part of this study.

Thank you for linking to the actual report. It makes a lot more sense. Since they're basing it on occupant fatalities it makes sense that smaller cars are deadlier, since they'll suffer more damage in an accident. It's also interesting that the small SUVs are more deadly, which I attribute to the low mass and high CoG leading to more frequent rollovers.

I believe you, but do you have any data to support your claim?

Another way to interpret this is that other brands have vehicles that are far safer than thei unsafest model, while any Tesla model is unsafe.

Ah thank you, that DOES make more sense.