5 ms·
Cybertrucks Are Deadlier Than Infamous Ford Pintos
- Workaccount2 2y agoPlease don't allow partisan blog spam on the site. Liberal or conservative. Even if it's true, don't use a partisan blog as a source.
- maldusiecle 2y ago[flagged]
- ikanreed 2y agoThere are thousands of historic hackernews news items from MotherJones, which has a long history of serious news reporting, and this seems to be researched reporting as well. I cannot understand the basis of your argument.
- KPGv2 2y ago"I've never heard of it, and I don't like what they said" See also the similar argument "The media isn't reporting on this thing that they are in fact reporting on, but none of my friends on Facebook are sharing with me"
- mrcwinn 2y agoWhile I'm not sure exactly how we're supposed to filter out certain news sources, I would not for a moment say MotherJones has a sterling track record of "serious news reporting." In this case, in particular, their analysis is ridiculous. They claim that the Cybertruck, which was chronically delayed, was actually "rushed to market" to "beat competition," and use that to make a comparison to a flawed vehicle from the 70s. Flawed because it had a misplaced gas tank. Nowhere in this do they cite any evidence that the Cybertruck was indeed rushed, nor do they support any claim that the Cybertruck might have a misplaced... battery. Then they go on, incorrectly (which they've since corrected), to claim the vehicle hasn't been crash-tested. It has. But to counteract that reality, the author points out that Tesla hasn't released any of its own safety data. I'm not aware of any car company releasing private safety data — nor would I put any stock in such data. That's exactly why we have independent regulators. I know everyone has bills to pay, MotherJones included. I understand "Elon's Cybertrucks" is just too juicy a headline not to publish. But please at least try to make a coherant argument next time.
- ikanreed 2y agoI'm sorry, correcting a story with recent factual information doesn't strike me as undermining the fundamental credibility of a source. Given that they correctly source and attribute the claim that it wasn't tested to a recent article that was accurate at its time of publication. And given that Tesla did not respond to their request for comment on the data, nor did the national highway safety administraiton, who was supposed to correct them, how? This is not a problem of bias.
- oblio 2y agoA thing can be both very late and rushed to market.
- ahahahahah 2y agoYour reading comprehension is not good. From the article: > In a classic Mother Jones cover story from 1977, reporter Mark Dowie spent six months investigating the deadly Ford Pintos and found that the company rushed to create and distribute the cars to beat the competition I don't know how they can be clearer that that is talking about the development of the Ford Pinto, not the cybertruck.
- KPGv2 2y agoHere, you can educate yourself so you don't look so ignorant next time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Jones_(magazine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Jones_(magazine) For those too lazy to click on a link, calling Mother Jones "partisan blog spam" would be like calling The NYT, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, the Paris Review, The Guardian, the NYROB, etc. "partisan blog spam"
- IncreasePosts 2y ago"Throughout its circulation, Mother Jones magazine has been the subject of criticism regarding the editorial position of the staff"
- KPGv2 2y agoI'm not surprised. Right wingers will complain about anything not vociferously against the interests of the people.
- likeabatterycar 2y agoHN has been under a major astroturfing campaign lately IMO. The question is who is doing it.
- esalman 2y agoIf something is touted as indestructible, it probably means it will destroy everything else it encounters.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- josefritzishere 2y agoAnd the state department is going to buy 400M worth. We live in a strange timeline.
- wahnfrieden 2y ago[flagged]
- ivewonyoung 2y agoYea, not sure why the Biden admin was bribing Musk with that contract.
- ceejayoz 2y agoThe solicitation appears to have gone out under Biden. It's a little unclear to me when the contract was awarded. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/13/us-department-of-state-plans-to-spend-400m-on-tesla-armoured-vehicles-elon-musk https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/13/us-depart... > The government spokesperson said the previous administration under Joe Biden had put out a request for armoured electric vehicles, but only one unnamed company had responded.
- ivewonyoung 2y agoI believe the solicitation put out by the previous govt read "Armored Tesla Vehicles" and not EVs. I think it was changed to EVs recently? And the sole bidder was a company that would acquire the EVs and harden it I guess?
- wahnfrieden 2y agoHi! There are updates to this story which you can find now in mainstream coverage: - Biden’s approved budget was $483,000 - Trump’s administration inflated the budget item to $400,000,000 You treated the current administration’s lies as credible when they were completely fabricated in order to cover their ass
- 2y ago
- codingwagie 2y agoPeople dont know it, but tesla model Y was best selling car in 2023. This company is so far ahead, despite the hate
- ratg13 2y agoYes, worldwide, and almost half of all Teslas are sold in China. The idea that they can continue to stay atop of the Chinese market is not a bet I would be willing to take.
- joshl32532 2y agoThat has nothing to do with this article and CyberTruck? Also, Tesla sales went down in 2024 in the US. https://www.notateslaapp.com/news/2491/tesla-suffers-sharp-decline-in-us-sales-a-look-at-the-numbers https://www.notateslaapp.com/news/2491/tesla-suffers-sharp-d...
- idop 2y agoHow can we not know it? It's every second sentence out of every Tesla fanboy's keyboard. Thankfully, people wised up to the scam and it's no longer the case.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- api 2y agoThere was a lot less hate in 2023. Only fairly online liberals were really paying much attention to Elon's politics. Interested to see 2025 numbers.
- KennyBlanken 2y agoIs that why their sales are plunging across the world? Why their stock has been dropping since mid December? In some countries sales started falling mid 2024 and have fallen ~50-60% in one quarter. Germany says new Tesla registrations have plunged. They're plunging in China, too - the biggest EV market in the world - which really fucks Tesla over. BYD is eating them alive.
- tzs 2y ago
- murderfs 2y agoThis analysis claims someone that detonated a bunch of fireworks and then shot himself in the head as a "fire fatality" and acknowledges it.
- ru552 2y agothat's where I stopped reading. that let me know this was not a rigorous study and had other motivations
- normalaccess 2y agoYep, Timely FUD...
- Fricken 2y agoWe don't make statistical exemptions for vehicle fatalities just because the driver failed in a way we don't like. Drunk driving fatalities count too. If a 3 year old hit the accelerator and goes straight into a brick wall, that counts. They all count.
- murderfs 2y agoFrom the Department of Transportation's statistics on aviation fatalities at https://www.bts.gov/archive/publications/by_the_numbers/transportation_safety/figure_01 https://www.bts.gov/archive/publications/by_the_numbers/tran...: "NOTES: 2001 figures exclude two events—the September 11th Attacks and the Flight 587 crash." (which is especially weird, because the flight 587 crash was pilot error)
- normalaccess 2y agoThe guy who killed himself outside of the Trump tower lit the fire himself. It was not a failure of the truck. In-fact the truck protected people by venting the explosion up and containing the blast. It's as wrong as counting gunshot victims as dying of COVID Lighting a truck on fire is fundamentally different than a truck starting on fire. The fact that they are willing to count that shows me they are disingenuous. Link for the COVID reference: https://www.freedomfoundation.com/washington/washington-health-officials-gunshot-victims-counted-as-covid-19-deaths/ https://www.freedomfoundation.com/washington/washington-heal...
- Veserv 2y agoThe analysis is quite lackluster because it only compares vehicle quantity where as fires are more a function of quantity and usage, so you should really be comparing vehicle-years or vehicle-miles. For the Tesla Cybertruck, we can overestimate the vehicle-years by counting the quantity at at the end of the year for the full year for a total of 34,438 vehicle-years. For the Ford Pinto, we can underestimate the vehicle-years by only counting the quantity at the start of the year for the full year only until the recall halfway through 1978 (e.g. we count 1971 production starting in 1972 until 1978.5 for a total of only 6.5 years). In that case, we count a total of 10,125,030 vehicle-years. Excluding the controversial fatality for the Cybertruck, so we only count 4 fire fatalities, that is 1 fire fatality per ~8609.5 vehicle-years versus the Ford Pinto at 1 per ~375,001 vehicle-years; making the Tesla Cybertruck ~43.5 times higher than the excess fire deaths of the Ford Pinto. Comparing against overall fire fatality rate [1]. In 2022, there were 650 confirmed deaths in vehicles where a fire occurred over ~232,000,000 household vehicles. That is a rate of about 1 fire fatality per ~350,000 vehicle-years; making the fire fatality rate of the Tesla Cybertruck ~41.4 times higher than the average vehicle. Note that the Ford Pinto is just excess fire deaths attributed to the gas tank defect rather than the total fire rate which is not well reported which is why it might be comparable to the overall fire fatality rate of today despite higher fire safety on most modern cars. All fires for the Ford Pinto is likely a higher number than the 27 fire deaths directly attributed to the specific defect. [1] https://content.nfpa.org/-/media/Project/Storefront/Catalog/Files/Research/NFPA-Research/US-Fire-Problem/osvehiclefires.pdf?rev=928a1755d83249dfb5a951905ee7e336 https://content.nfpa.org/-/media/Project/Storefront/Catalog/...
- KPGv2 2y agoAnd despite all that, apparently the DOD just awarded Tesla a $400M contract to produce armored Teslas. That will somehow charge up at the local war zone charging station? https://www.yahoo.com/news/musk-wins-400m-us-government-141352786.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/musk-wins-400m-us-government-1413...
- neogodless 2y agoIt doesn't matter if they get made, let alone if they are useful What's key is the transfer of money to Tesla.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 2y agoNo. >The December version of the document had included an “Armored Tesla” budget item that would span five years and start in 2025, however the document was revised to remove Tesla’s name. This followed reports of the company’s moniker on the procurement document from Drop Site News and the New York Times. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-13/plans-to-buy-armored-teslas-disappear-from-us-procurement-list https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-13/plans-to-... Last time I checked, Biden was president back in December.
- kube-system 2y agoWar zones don't have gas stations either. The US military brings its own energy with them. > Of all the cargo the military transports, more than half consists of fuel. About 80 percent of all material transported on the battlefield is fuel. https://archive.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/05/01/pentagon_study_says_oil_reliance_strains_military/ https://archive.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2...
- LeoPanthera 2y agoWhile I would never voluntarily get into a Cybertruck, the infamy of the Pinto is mostly based on myth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Retrospective_safety_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Retrospective_safet... A Rutgers Law Review article by former UCLA law professor Gary T. Schwartz, examined the fatality rates of the Pinto and several other small cars of the time. He noted that fires, and rear-end fires, in particular, are a very small portion of overall auto fatalities. At the time only 1% of automobile crashes would result in fire and only 4% of fatal accidents involved fire, and only 15% of fatal fire crashes are the result of rear-end collisions. When considering the overall safety of the Pinto, subcompact cars as a class had a generally higher fatality risk. Pintos represented 1.9% of all cars on the road in the 1975–76 period. During that time, the car represented 1.9% of all "fatal accidents accompanied by some fire". This implies the Pinto was average for all cars and slightly above average for its class. When all types of fatalities are considered, the Pinto was approximately even with the AMC Gremlin, Chevrolet Vega, and Datsun 510. It was significantly better than the Datsun 1200/210, Toyota Corolla, and VW Beetle. The safety record of the car in terms of fire was average or slightly below average for compacts, and all cars respectively. This was considered respectable for a subcompact car. Only when considering the narrow subset of a rear impact, fire fatalities for the car were somewhat worse than the average for subcompact cars. While acknowledging this is an important legal point, Schwartz rejected the portrayal of the car as a firetrap.
- mech9879876 2y agoin the 5 fatalities, we have: -The crazy man who loaded his cybertruck up with fireworks and killed himself in front of the Trump hotel in las vegas -A cybertruck that ran into a tree, killing 3 people and catching on fire -A cybertruck that ran into a culvert, killing 1 person and catching on fire
- moralestapia 2y agoCool ... and?
- an_guy 2y agoAll of them are accidents caused by user and one of them is a suicide attempt. How is tesla or any car manufacturer responsible for any of this?
- moralestapia 2y ago>All of them are accidents caused by user Wait, is that not the absolutely and by far most common cause of deaths in cars? Sorry, I'm trying to follow up on your "logic".
- ziddoap 2y agoI was confused on if they meant deadly to drive, or deadly to other people/vehicles that they hit. It appears that the article is about deadly to drive (I suspect that they are also very dangerous to those they hit, but that's just a gut feeling). As much as I detest Cybertrucks, this study seems pretty flawed. >the approximately 34,000 Cybertrucks on the roads had five fire fatalities Is how they calculated it. Except they don't know how many are sold. And one of those five fatalities was actually a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Three of the remaining four fatalities occurred in a single incident. No information about how much these were driven, either. Not sure I like the definitive sounding headline of this article, or the report ("the Cybertruck is More Explosive than the Ford Pinto") given the unknown variables, caveats, etc.
- normalaccess 2y agoLooks like a hit job article to bandwagon on Anti-Musk sentiment.
- likeabatterycar 2y agoHit pieces are red meat to this place. They all high five each other, then quietly get into their Teslas for the drive home when no one is looking.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- avidiax 2y agoIf we accept 5 as the number of fatalities, there needs to be 588,000 Cybertrucks in circulation to have an equivalent fatality rate as the Pinto. If we give some freebies (discount the suicide, magically remove the passengers from a giant passenger truck), and say it's only 2 incidents of "1" fatality, then there needs to be 235,000 Cybertrucks sold to be only as bad as the Pinto. Both of those estimates are an order of magnitude away from the estimate of 34,000 Cybertrucks sold. I think it's a fair conclusion that even if there were no additional Cybertruck fire deaths going forward, the Cybertruck will not have a better safety record than the Ford Pinto for several years.
- vpribish 2y agomotherjones is not a credible source of analysis and they are reposting from a blog that has "hot takes" in its mission statement. this is not worth posting on this site, it's clickbait garbage
- sixQuarks 2y agoMother jones used to be an awesome magazine before they went full woke and developed Elon derangement syndrome
- nurettin 2y agoI saw someone calling out Tesla for not producing something called Tesla Roadster since 2017 even though they collected pre-order money for it. Doesn't really sound like a derangement. Any company would get called out for that.
- happyopossum 2y agoThis analysis is flawed in many ways: 1) Sample size - there have been a grand total of 3 cybertruck fires that resulted in a fatality 2) Flawed data - they admit that they're including a suicide bomber in that count of 3 incidents 3) Sample size again - they admit they don't actually know how many cyber trucks have been sold Given any of the above, let alone all of them, anyone would realize that there's not enough data to make any conclusions here.
- kube-system 2y agoAttributing the causes of observed vehicle incidents is a tough task. The Pinto clearly had a design flaw, but risk encompasses more causes than simply design. Vehicle models often target or appeal to certain subset of buyers and those buyers don't have evenly distributed driver risk. The market that these vehicles appeals to almost certainly skews towards riskier than average, which will also be a contributing component of the observed risk.
- legitster 2y agoIronically, the only reason the Ford Pinto is infamous is because of a Mother Jones hit piece in the 70s that vastly overstated the number of deaths from the Pinto.
- josefritzishere 2y agoSounds like a total deathtrap.