6 ms·

Tesla Has the Highest Accident Rate of Any Auto Brand

51 points by 7e 3y ago

whatisthis9 3y ago
I think part of the reason is Tesla's have crazy fast acceleration and are also probably by far the largest market penetration of cars with that level of acceleration. People migrating from most conventional cars aren't used to driving sports cars. Also anecdotally given the acceleration, a few of my friends that drive teslas sometimes seem to ignore yellow lights.
- verdverm 3y ago
  From the same source, Ram drivers have the most incidents (all types), BMW the most DUIs by a wide margin https://www.lendingtree.com/insurance/brand-incidents-study/ https://www.lendingtree.com/insurance/brand-incidents-study/ Also worth noting the worst is approximately 2x the best ~(15->30)/1000
- stephenr 3y ago
  > Also anecdotally given the acceleration, a few of my friends that drive teslas sometimes seem to ignore yellow lights. They bought Tesla's, good decision making doesn't seem to be in their wheelhouse.
- ShamelessC 3y ago
  > Also anecdotally given the acceleration, a few of my friends that drive teslas sometimes seem to ignore yellow lights. Can you uh, ask them to stop doing that?
Bostonian 3y ago
And numerous U.S. states have announced future bans on the sale of new gasoline-powered cars. Those bans should be repealed.
- drekk 3y ago
  If anything we should be decarbonizing faster and avoiding the situation where everyone just replaces their ICE vehicles with electric. Just because it's convenient to move 1-4 humans around in a couple of tons of metal doesn't mean it's feasible to allow at scale. Even allowing existing gasoline vehicles is continuing to let car manufacturers and fossil fuel companies externalize their costs to taxpayers.
  - harimau777 3y ago
    Unfortunately, that would be difficult in much of the US. Things are just way too spread out for public transportation to be viable without unrealistically massive investment in high speed rail.
  - TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
    It will make the decarbonization slower, because people will be driving old cars for much longer.
RocketOne 3y ago
Judging by the number of silly youtubes of bozos driving their Teslas while pretending to sleep, there's definitely a slight extra danger factor for a car that advertises as 'full self driving' but doesn't.
dissident_coder 3y ago
Being an idiot driver seems to correlate pretty strongly with how much one uses autopilot. I’ve known people that drive drunk and think it’s ok because auto pilot is on. Absolutely horrifying.
- acchow 3y ago
  They don’t even have to necessarily use the autopilot often. I know people who are not confident in their own driving skills and therefore buying a Tesla is automatically a preferred option because of Autopilot. There isn’t even consideration to any other brands’ self driving capabilities.
  - RexM 3y ago
    > There isn’t even consideration to any other brands’ self driving capabilities. or to Tesla’s self driving capabilities it seems.
- pavon 3y ago
  Clicking through to the lending tree report, Tesla drivers have below average DUI rates: 1.02 per 1000 drivers ranking them 19/30, with BMW the worst at 3.13, and Mitsubishi the best at 0.89. I wonder how much of this is due to Tesla drivers drinking and driving less, and how much is due to Auto Pilot making them less likely to be caught unless they crash.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Even without autopilot a modern vehicle has lane following, adaptive cruise control, etc. so if you’re not drunk enough to fail to turn those one, you may just look like another driver.
Uzza 3y ago
There is a reason accidents are done on a per mile basis, so let's make a quick example to show why. There is two cars, car A and car B. Each driven by 1000 drivers each year. Car A: The drivers drive a total 10000 km each year, and 20 people get into one accident each, averaging one accident every 500 km. Car B: The drivers drive a total 1000000 km each year, and 40 people get into one accident each, averaging one accident every 25000 km. Which car is safer? According to this opinion piece it's car A. But anyone that has even surface knowledge about statistics would realize that it's car B. It would take only 500 km in car A for someone to have gotten into an accident on average, while for Car B it would be 25000 km. Drivers of car A are therefore on average 50 times more likely to get into an accident. Statistically, if car A was driven as far as car B, every single driver would have had two accidents each. Conclusion: It is impossible to reach the conclusion in the title given only accidents per total number of drivers. More data is needed.
- electriclove 3y ago
  One small paragraph on what the headline suggests the article will be about and the rest of the article is talking about Tesla’s latest recall
- nuker 3y ago
  But is it not reasonable to assume that all consumer car makes drive similar distances in average?
  - jimrandomh 3y ago
    No. High-mileage drivers have a reason to prefer electric vehicles, since they're cheaper to operate per-mile than gasoline vehicles.
    - nuker 3y ago
      But range is less… we need more data before making assumptions.
    - halfmatthalfcat 3y ago
wand3r 3y ago
There is a full court press against Elon. Not that it is all undeserved but I'm so sick of hearing about it. Every other day the media or the government has some fine or hit piece on him or his companies. Just read Brendan Carr's dissenting opinion on the FCC decision.
- jrflowers 3y ago
  This is a good point. It is disgusting that lending tree would put out a report about accident statistics with Tesla at the top. Considering these attacks on mr musk they should have done the analysis different so Tesla is lower on the list
- thejazzman 3y ago
  He seems to intentionally invite this, so suggesting it is a targeted attack is a bit unfounded. I'm also sick of it. But is the appropriate response for everyone to ignore this behavior and just accept whatever he does next? Is that really good for anyone but him? Well, yes, it's good for everyone that observes it and repeats it. He learned this trick, not invent it.
- gregjor 3y ago
  Multiple times on most days Musk puts out a "hit piece" on the government, a company he doesn't like, a person he disagrees with, whatever comes into his head. He bought Twitter so he would have a platform to exercise his "free speech" and decide what that means for every other user. He's a bully with a pulpit, not a victim.
george-in-sd 3y ago
The author is not a reporter but the VP at the ARC Advisory Group. Here are their clients : https://www.arcweb.com/about/clients https://www.arcweb.com/about/clients. (Exxon, BP, Mobile, Shell, etc. )
- DoesntMatter22 3y ago
  Nothing to see here
- botanical 3y ago
  This article is just reporting on these findings: https://www.lendingtree.com/insurance/brand-incidents-study/ https://www.lendingtree.com/insurance/brand-incidents-study/ I don't know why you would seemingly discredit the messenger but eschew from the main point that Tesla drivers have the highest accident rate.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - geysersam 3y ago
    Why is the VP of a consulting company writing articles reporting on smallish studies made by car lenders? Don't you find that odd? The results should of course be taken for what they are, but the motives of the author are not insignificant.
  - george-in-sd 3y ago
    I think it's relevant information in this case. If you saw a blog post on exxon.com saying Teslas are dangerous it would never be considered newsworthy and never make to YC. ARC is paid by oil companies to write articles that make their position appear to be newsworthy. They are very upfront about article generation: http//www.arcweb.com/consulting-services/marketing-communications
natch 3y ago
I was involved in two fender benders. In both of them the other driver was at fault. In both of them the other drivers asked me to settle without insurance and said they would lie to the insurance company if I chose to go that route. One was a powerful looking executive type who worked at Apple. She said to my face that she would lie. She even said it on camera audio (I was openly taking a video of our cars and the damage) and on Apple property in the presence of her coworker with a security person / witness nearby. She’s lucky I’m not the vindictive type. I didn’t accept their offers to forego insurance, because I knew I had done nothing wrong and I had video footage from 8 cameras, because Tesla. And guess what. I would get counted, twice, in the statistics with the approach in the article, because I went through insurance when a lot of people would not have done so, had they been driving any other car. So... don’t believe this BS article. Also accidents should be counted per mile, not per person, and fault should be factored in imho. There are plenty of ways to slice data, but some are more misleading than others.
- Reubend 3y ago
  First of all, your point about accidents per mile seems fair. But your point about fault doesn't seem fair, because I can't think of any reason why Tesla drivers would be in more accidents despite being at fault less. A positive correlation between number of accidents and responsibility for those accidents seems obvious, while a negative correlation (or no correlation at all) seems extremely unlikely. Of course, there might be some minor variance related to geography or the type of vehicle, but it stands to reason that people who cause accidents often will be in more accidents than people who don't cause accidents often. Anecdotally, all of the EV drivers I know are driving fewer total miles than ICE drivers. If you can find a study with a good sample size that says EV drivers are driving more miles on average, I'd be very interested to see it. As it stands, I think that correcting the numbers for miles driven would make Tesla look worse here, not better.
  - natch 3y ago
    fwiw it came that the underlying insurance industry study here was based on the driving records of drivers (including drivers who have never been in a Tesla) who were shopping for insurance quotes for a new or upcoming Tesla purchase. Useful anecdotal info: Most of the people I know who a) want Teslas, b) have the money, and c) haven’t bought yet, are just waiting to put a few more years on their current car so as to be wise their spending. With that in mind, it’s clear what is going on. People who want a Tesla and who total their current car suddenly have the excuse they needed to pull the trigger. And surprise surprise, having just totaled a car (setting aside who is at fault), they have an accident on their record. And that’s how you get skewed numbers. Because MANY people starting fresh with a new car want a Tesla. And some subset of those are only in their buying mode due to an accident.
robomartin 3y ago
> This was not a causal study; the study did not analyze the reason for an incident. Therefore, this was not a study. It was counting something to be able to publish a number, write an article with a laughably indefensible conclusion in an attempt to generate viral results. Silly rabbits.
leetgirl83 3y ago
Correlating driver accident rate to vehicle brand is stupid on so many levels.
popilewiz 3y ago
[dead]
noxer 3y ago
Another day another "journalist" posts about Tesla in a misleading way. >But it comes amid news that Tesla recently recalled more than 2 million Tesla vehicles over a safety issue related to its Autopilot software — specifically, a feature called Autosteer, which is part of the driver-assistance system. The recall affects nearly all the cars Tesla has sold in the United States. The "recall" is an OTA update. The "safety issue with autopilot" is that people apparently do not need enough IQ to trick it that you pay attention. In other words, people are the issue, stupid people.

51 points by 7e 3y ago

I think part of the reason is Tesla's have crazy fast acceleration and are also probably by far the largest market penetration of cars with that level of acceleration. People migrating from most conventional cars aren't used to driving sports cars. Also anecdotally given the acceleration, a few of my friends that drive teslas sometimes seem to ignore yellow lights.

verdverm 3y ago
From the same source, Ram drivers have the most incidents (all types), BMW the most DUIs by a wide margin https://www.lendingtree.com/insurance/brand-incidents-study/ https://www.lendingtree.com/insurance/brand-incidents-study/ Also worth noting the worst is approximately 2x the best ~(15->30)/1000
stephenr 3y ago
> Also anecdotally given the acceleration, a few of my friends that drive teslas sometimes seem to ignore yellow lights. They bought Tesla's, good decision making doesn't seem to be in their wheelhouse.
ShamelessC 3y ago
> Also anecdotally given the acceleration, a few of my friends that drive teslas sometimes seem to ignore yellow lights. Can you uh, ask them to stop doing that?

Bostonian 3y ago

And numerous U.S. states have announced future bans on the sale of new gasoline-powered cars. Those bans should be repealed.

drekk 3y ago
If anything we should be decarbonizing faster and avoiding the situation where everyone just replaces their ICE vehicles with electric. Just because it's convenient to move 1-4 humans around in a couple of tons of metal doesn't mean it's feasible to allow at scale. Even allowing existing gasoline vehicles is continuing to let car manufacturers and fossil fuel companies externalize their costs to taxpayers.
- harimau777 3y ago
  Unfortunately, that would be difficult in much of the US. Things are just way too spread out for public transportation to be viable without unrealistically massive investment in high speed rail.
- TheLoafOfBread 3y ago
  It will make the decarbonization slower, because people will be driving old cars for much longer.

RocketOne 3y ago

Judging by the number of silly youtubes of bozos driving their Teslas while pretending to sleep, there's definitely a slight extra danger factor for a car that advertises as 'full self driving' but doesn't.

dissident_coder 3y ago

Being an idiot driver seems to correlate pretty strongly with how much one uses autopilot. I’ve known people that drive drunk and think it’s ok because auto pilot is on. Absolutely horrifying.

acchow 3y ago
They don’t even have to necessarily use the autopilot often. I know people who are not confident in their own driving skills and therefore buying a Tesla is automatically a preferred option because of Autopilot. There isn’t even consideration to any other brands’ self driving capabilities.
- RexM 3y ago
  > There isn’t even consideration to any other brands’ self driving capabilities. or to Tesla’s self driving capabilities it seems.
pavon 3y ago
Clicking through to the lending tree report, Tesla drivers have below average DUI rates: 1.02 per 1000 drivers ranking them 19/30, with BMW the worst at 3.13, and Mitsubishi the best at 0.89. I wonder how much of this is due to Tesla drivers drinking and driving less, and how much is due to Auto Pilot making them less likely to be caught unless they crash.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Even without autopilot a modern vehicle has lane following, adaptive cruise control, etc. so if you’re not drunk enough to fail to turn those one, you may just look like another driver.

Uzza 3y ago

There is a reason accidents are done on a per mile basis, so let's make a quick example to show why. There is two cars, car A and car B. Each driven by 1000 drivers each year. Car A: The drivers drive a total 10000 km each year, and 20 people get into one accident each, averaging one accident every 500 km. Car B: The drivers drive a total 1000000 km each year, and 40 people get into one accident each, averaging one accident every 25000 km. Which car is safer? According to this opinion piece it's car A. But anyone that has even surface knowledge about statistics would realize that it's car B. It would take only 500 km in car A for someone to have gotten into an accident on average, while for Car B it would be 25000 km. Drivers of car A are therefore on average 50 times more likely to get into an accident. Statistically, if car A was driven as far as car B, every single driver would have had two accidents each. Conclusion: It is impossible to reach the conclusion in the title given only accidents per total number of drivers. More data is needed.

electriclove 3y ago
One small paragraph on what the headline suggests the article will be about and the rest of the article is talking about Tesla’s latest recall
nuker 3y ago
But is it not reasonable to assume that all consumer car makes drive similar distances in average?
- jimrandomh 3y ago
  No. High-mileage drivers have a reason to prefer electric vehicles, since they're cheaper to operate per-mile than gasoline vehicles.
  - nuker 3y ago
    But range is less… we need more data before making assumptions.
  - halfmatthalfcat 3y ago

wand3r 3y ago

There is a full court press against Elon. Not that it is all undeserved but I'm so sick of hearing about it. Every other day the media or the government has some fine or hit piece on him or his companies. Just read Brendan Carr's dissenting opinion on the FCC decision.

jrflowers 3y ago
This is a good point. It is disgusting that lending tree would put out a report about accident statistics with Tesla at the top. Considering these attacks on mr musk they should have done the analysis different so Tesla is lower on the list
thejazzman 3y ago
He seems to intentionally invite this, so suggesting it is a targeted attack is a bit unfounded. I'm also sick of it. But is the appropriate response for everyone to ignore this behavior and just accept whatever he does next? Is that really good for anyone but him? Well, yes, it's good for everyone that observes it and repeats it. He learned this trick, not invent it.
gregjor 3y ago
Multiple times on most days Musk puts out a "hit piece" on the government, a company he doesn't like, a person he disagrees with, whatever comes into his head. He bought Twitter so he would have a platform to exercise his "free speech" and decide what that means for every other user. He's a bully with a pulpit, not a victim.

george-in-sd 3y ago

The author is not a reporter but the VP at the ARC Advisory Group. Here are their clients : https://www.arcweb.com/about/clients https://www.arcweb.com/about/clients. (Exxon, BP, Mobile, Shell, etc. )

DoesntMatter22 3y ago
Nothing to see here
botanical 3y ago
This article is just reporting on these findings: https://www.lendingtree.com/insurance/brand-incidents-study/ https://www.lendingtree.com/insurance/brand-incidents-study/ I don't know why you would seemingly discredit the messenger but eschew from the main point that Tesla drivers have the highest accident rate.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- geysersam 3y ago
  Why is the VP of a consulting company writing articles reporting on smallish studies made by car lenders? Don't you find that odd? The results should of course be taken for what they are, but the motives of the author are not insignificant.
- george-in-sd 3y ago
  I think it's relevant information in this case. If you saw a blog post on exxon.com saying Teslas are dangerous it would never be considered newsworthy and never make to YC. ARC is paid by oil companies to write articles that make their position appear to be newsworthy. They are very upfront about article generation: http//www.arcweb.com/consulting-services/marketing-communications

natch 3y ago

I was involved in two fender benders. In both of them the other driver was at fault. In both of them the other drivers asked me to settle without insurance and said they would lie to the insurance company if I chose to go that route. One was a powerful looking executive type who worked at Apple. She said to my face that she would lie. She even said it on camera audio (I was openly taking a video of our cars and the damage) and on Apple property in the presence of her coworker with a security person / witness nearby. She’s lucky I’m not the vindictive type. I didn’t accept their offers to forego insurance, because I knew I had done nothing wrong and I had video footage from 8 cameras, because Tesla. And guess what. I would get counted, twice, in the statistics with the approach in the article, because I went through insurance when a lot of people would not have done so, had they been driving any other car. So... don’t believe this BS article. Also accidents should be counted per mile, not per person, and fault should be factored in imho. There are plenty of ways to slice data, but some are more misleading than others.

Reubend 3y ago
First of all, your point about accidents per mile seems fair. But your point about fault doesn't seem fair, because I can't think of any reason why Tesla drivers would be in more accidents despite being at fault less. A positive correlation between number of accidents and responsibility for those accidents seems obvious, while a negative correlation (or no correlation at all) seems extremely unlikely. Of course, there might be some minor variance related to geography or the type of vehicle, but it stands to reason that people who cause accidents often will be in more accidents than people who don't cause accidents often. Anecdotally, all of the EV drivers I know are driving fewer total miles than ICE drivers. If you can find a study with a good sample size that says EV drivers are driving more miles on average, I'd be very interested to see it. As it stands, I think that correcting the numbers for miles driven would make Tesla look worse here, not better.
- natch 3y ago
  fwiw it came that the underlying insurance industry study here was based on the driving records of drivers (including drivers who have never been in a Tesla) who were shopping for insurance quotes for a new or upcoming Tesla purchase. Useful anecdotal info: Most of the people I know who a) want Teslas, b) have the money, and c) haven’t bought yet, are just waiting to put a few more years on their current car so as to be wise their spending. With that in mind, it’s clear what is going on. People who want a Tesla and who total their current car suddenly have the excuse they needed to pull the trigger. And surprise surprise, having just totaled a car (setting aside who is at fault), they have an accident on their record. And that’s how you get skewed numbers. Because MANY people starting fresh with a new car want a Tesla. And some subset of those are only in their buying mode due to an accident.

robomartin 3y ago

> This was not a causal study; the study did not analyze the reason for an incident. Therefore, this was not a study. It was counting something to be able to publish a number, write an article with a laughably indefensible conclusion in an attempt to generate viral results. Silly rabbits.

leetgirl83 3y ago

Correlating driver accident rate to vehicle brand is stupid on so many levels.

popilewiz 3y ago

[dead]

noxer 3y ago

Another day another "journalist" posts about Tesla in a misleading way. >But it comes amid news that Tesla recently recalled more than 2 million Tesla vehicles over a safety issue related to its Autopilot software — specifically, a feature called Autosteer, which is part of the driver-assistance system. The recall affects nearly all the cars Tesla has sold in the United States. The "recall" is an OTA update. The "safety issue with autopilot" is that people apparently do not need enough IQ to trick it that you pay attention. In other words, people are the issue, stupid people.