This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
So we will see some insane stuff from Elox to take the spotlight from this or meh?
I wonder if they have the data broken down by propulsion technology rather than manufacturer. One thing about Teslas and other luxury electric cars is that they have insane amounts of horsepower and instant torque. If you buy a Model S to schlep the kids around and are expecting it to behave like a minivan you'll be really surprised what happens if you floor it.
I'm curious to know if this trend is the same for other high-powered electric cars like the Hummer or Rivian. Cars that go that fast used to be limited to supercars, not large and widespread SUVs and pickups.
(Note this is not saying electric is bad or we shouldn't use it. But maybe manufacturers could ease up on the mo powah baby.)
But I also agree with the article that it could be related to their claims of "full self driving" because people might trust it too much and just not pay attention, or have it fail to detect something.
ease up on the mo powah baby
But... but... more power better.
But the article seems to be about deadly accidents, and not just accidents.
You can hit an awful lot of things at a shocking rate of speed and walk away with modern car crash design, so I'd be inclined to think it's more than just the torque curve responsible for all the dead people.
I'm all for mo powah baby, but only for people who can handle it. Grandma driving to the store shouldn't be able to get their car to act like a Mustang leaving a car meet.
Plus electric cars are a ton heavier which means way more kinetic energy which can cause worse accidents, negating some of the crash safety improvements, especially in smaller cars.
Yeah the Rolling Stone article is written really weirdly. I don't think it's technically wrong anywhere but it reads really misleadingly when you compare it to the actual report.
Like it leads with "the group identified the Tesla Model S and Tesla Model Y as two of the most dangerous cars" - meaning they are in the list - at sixth and twenty first places respectively. The mix is really weird though. As you mention the top of the list is cars like the Chevy Corvette and Porsche 911, but also things like the Mitsubishi Mirage and a load of Kia models. So it seems like there's a lot to interpret there.
Certainly it's somewhat damning that despite the driver assistant technology, these models are not particularly safer. But I think other manufactures have a wide range of vehicles at different price points that also vary in safety, which brings their averages below Tesla's in the final rankings.
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.
Aha, occupant fatalities. I was hoping to find out if they were measuring people inside the cars mentioned or people in other cars or pedestrians or all of the above
As a note, it looks like the data they used is publicly available from the NHTSA. They mention that "models not in production as of the 2024 model year, and low-volume models were removed from further analysis." I wonder where the Hummer and Rivian show up there since they are not mentioned in the report whatsoever.
It's 100% FSD....
A human driver will almost always realize they're actively having an accident, and will be slamming breaks and attempting to swearve.
FSD not noticing something and driving straight into it won't react itll just act like what it's about to hit isn't there right up until the collusion.
A second of brakes before an interstate accident and human drivers instinct to protect their side of the car goes a long way to saving lives.
Model S... you’ll be really surprised what happens if you floor it
Honestly, I've almost never seen anyone in a Tesla floor it. Yeah, maybe once or twice when they first get it, but most dual motor Teslas I see drive pretty conservatively, probably because they want better mileage per charge or something.
Elon: “We’re number one!!!”
<jumps, exposing midriff>
Agustus Gloop lookin mf
I'm having a hard time understanding this article. They say the Teslas have the highest rating of deadly accidents, but then go on to say Tesla ranked #6 on the list of fatalities, then once again stated Tesla was the worst. So what happened to the other five vehicles that had a higher fatality rating?
Go to the actual report. There is one table for the top fatalities by vehicle model and another for the top average fatalities by manufacturer.
The way I understood it is the highest rate of deadly accidents refers to "5.6 fatal accidents per billion miles traveled" by the brand overall. The number 6 rating refers to the Model S specifically.
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.
Yep, his battery factory in Germany got into lots of PR trouble for poisoning ground water and having a three times higher rate of work related accidents then is normal.
To adjust for exposure, the number of cars involved in a fatal crash were normalized by the total number of vehicle miles driven, which was estimated from iSeeCars’ data of over 8 million vehicles on the road in 2022 from model years 2018-2022.
Gived the number are estimated, how can we trust them?
iSeeCars’ data of over 8 million vehicles on the road in 2022
It uses actual data to get a baseline of brand percentages then expands that to the total vehicles on the road total
Its not going to be a perfect estimate, but it's going to be close enough to avoid major errors unless something weird happened with the initial data (like not being diverse enough, but with 8 million cars that's unlikely)
