I thoroughyl expect the Deparment of Government Efficiency to recommend U.S. Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) be shut down to save previous taxpayer dollars.

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 sunny outside. Just to pick something at random, of course.)

Somewhat related, I was recently shopping for refrigerators, and fell down a data rabbit hole. If you just look at the overall style of fridge, French doors look like a terrible option from a reliability perspective. But then, digging in a bit more, it turns out that's kind of a spurious correlation. Actually it's the presence of bells and whistles like through-door ice dispensers that kill a refrigerator's reliability. And then perhaps on top of that the amount of extra Rube Goldberg machine you need to make a chest height ice dispenser work in a bottom-freezer French door refrigerator creates even more moving parts to break. But a those problems don't apply to a model that doesn't have that feature.

In a big picture, this makes sense. You can load the cars with safety features, but it doesn't change the fact that these cars are very heavy, very fast, and loaded with features that reward distracted driving. In the US at least, the top killer of drivers are trees on the side of the road.

> 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 IIHS and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, as well.

> 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,” 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.”

Ok so Tesla's aren't less safe than any other vehicle in this lineup. It's just that Tesla drivers are more likely to be careless.

I remember some car collision data that showed that men were more likely to get into any collision and women were more likely to get into a fatal collision. A comment I read about the study suggested the conclusion that men take more risks while women take bigger risks.

It's interesting to think in that context about this. Could Tesla drivers be taking bigger risks because they think the car's software will save them from the negative consequences of their risky decisions? (As an extreme example, one such driver opted to drive in the back seat instead of the driver's seat. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-highway-patr...)

How does iSeeCars (who did the study) know how many miles were driven by each brand's cars? It says they have a database of cars, but do we know whether it's an unbiased sample?

I suspect the biggest factor is speed. After getting used to EV for over a year, every ICE vehicle feels painfully sluggish and slow. If that's the case I'm curious to see how the numbers compare to other EVs.

The linked study is better: https://www.iseecars.com/most-dangerous-cars-study#v=2024

I'd like to add my perspective here. I drove 50 miles to and from work every day for 5 years, around Stockholm, Sweden. 80 % highway traffic.

The only driving aid I use (rely on) on is ACC (Automatic Cruise Control), to keep my speed and distance (maximum) to the car in front of me. I almost always stay in the rightmost lane doing the speed limit.

Without a doubt Tesla drivers consistently stood out as the most "strange". Drivers of all brands can be stressed and drive too fast, but Tesla drivers were janky, couldn't stay in their lanes, and very often didn't keep a safe distance to the car in front of them.

Worst part, they didn't seem aware of their surroundings. They would merge in the most insane situations/positions or dangerously try to pass other drivers.

I don't know if they relied on their hardware to guide them, this autopilot thing, or whatever else they have, but it puckered me up good.

From the website:"the number of cars involved in a fatal crash were normalized by the total number of vehicle miles driven"

They assume every car drives the average number of miles. Of course a CR-V is going to score high, since they likely drive more than an average number of miles.

A 911 on the other hand probably drives a small fraction of the average.

This study is fairly low quality. The IHHS list 13.3 fatalities per billion miles as the actual number.

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 info about what the airbag system did.[1] Those were originally created to tune the airbag algorithm, and, over the years, false airbag deployments have dropped almost to zero.

That's the basic info needed to analyze fatal crashes. Speed at collision? Speed 10 secs before collision? Accelerator and brake inputs? Maneuvering (side accel) before crash? That, plus the crash scene, tells most of what you need to know.

Law enforcement will sometimes read out those units, when it's not clear what happened. It's not done routinely.

[1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/fmvss/EDR_QAs_11...

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.

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.

> 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 imagine that pure-EV companies like Tesla are predominantly driven in urban/city driving (shorter daily distances, more traffic, etc). In contrast to ICE cars which can rack up lots of miles on long trips.

1 billion Tesla miles I suspect looks different than 1 billion Ford miles.

> The study was conducted on model year 2018–2022 vehicles, and focused on crashes between 2017 and 2022 that resulted in occupant fatalities.

Teslas can go fast real fast, so naively this is the result I would expect given how they have filtered the data. In other words, unless they controlled for this, this would be biased by natural selection playing out.

Having said that, as someone who had a couple of close calls with the autopilot. I would love to know what percent of those crashes was with autopilot enabled.

I wonder how much of this is because (IME anyway) Tesla drivers are not very good. With all that tech it's easy to get distracted (there's literally a giant tablet looking thing for a console). It's also easy to think all the bells and whistles will do things for you so drivers are paying less attention because the car will beep and holler at them if things are going awry (except by that point it's too late).

Most commenters here focus on how fast and heavy Teslas are, while for me the overwhelmingly most likely explanation is Tesla's long-promised and still half-baked autopilot - either by directly getting drivers into sticky situations or just training them not to pay due attention to the road. Except for this one factor, Teslas ought to be better than average due to premium segment, modern construction techniques and a full array of active safety gear.

I wonder what percentage are autopilot driving into things?

What is the Horsepower equivalent of the Tesla power trains? Is this just because they are the new luxury sportscar and many of these drivers haven't been trough major car repairs, ever? The zero to sixty of even a basic Tesla is very quick and even with strong breaking other physical limits with turning and maneuvering can arise if some one is zooming around weaving in traffic. These stats need to be studied by age and other demographics like age, income and alcohol consumption.

Misleading/clickbait “journalism”:

* The FARS data is “normalized” by unpublished internal iSeeCars estimates of miles driven; the underlying “study” is a marketing blog post for their company.

* FARS data distinguishes between driver and occupant fatalities - the “study” looks only at occupant fatalities, which is not what most people would reasonably expect given the headline.

* One might reasonably suspect Tesla’s long history of touting 5-star safety ratings and advanced safety tech could lead to passengers being lulled into a false sense of security, and being less likely to use seatbelts.

Driver fatalities and seatbelt use are right there in the FARS data - one wonders why these weren’t considered and incorporated in the “study”.

Anyhow, a note to the HN user: don’t upvote FUD-sowing headlines based on blog posts about unscientific “studies” that are really just submarine PR; they carry none of the credibility of the underlying studies, and are a disservice to the scientists and public servants who rigorously and faithfully collect and analyze this data.

HN used to be better than this…

The list of deadliest cars is a mixture of compact cars and sports cars. Compact cars are less safe because they get obliterated in collisions with bigger vehicles. Sports cars are unsafe because drivers tend to drive them at high speeds and attempt dangerous cornering maneuvers, eg driving the Pacific Coastal Highway at high speeds.

Teslas are faster than many sports cars, but in the case of the Model Y and Model X lack the preferred low profile of a true sports car. In the case of the Model S, the acceleration is so great that it is frankly surprising it doesn’t rank higher. I wonder how many new Model S owners have gotten themselves killed within a few days of owning the car?

I myself purchased a Model 3 last year and drove it quite foolishly for the first few months I had it. The acceleration was so amazing to me coming from a Honda Accord that it was hard to resist the temptation to weave and corner like a mad man. Model S would have been even worse. The Model S also has a long body like a full size sedan, not ideal for sports performance either, compared to the Model 3’s short length, more comparable to a Corrola or Toyota BRZ.

So I suspect that speculations about “Tesla drivers being morons” and “distracted by the screen” (almost all new cars have shiny screens!) are nonsense.

Another frequent remark is that Teslas’ high weight is a disadvantage. This is not as straightforward as they assume, because weight actually has benefits for traction. Light cars are much more likely to lose grip and slide around. On the other hand, a heavy car with worn out tires or brakes is much more difficult to stop than a light car with worn out tires or brakes. So weight is probably a wash.

But I do agree with some commenters that the autonomous features, and particular misuse of those features, are probably a contributor to these statistics as well. If you’re new to them you assume they are safer than they really are. With more experience you realize you still need to be watching the road the whole time.

Many people underestimate how fast an e car can accelerate... Would like to know how many accelerated to their death, cause it's their first e car...

> “The models on this list likely reflect a combination of driver behavior and driving conditions, leading to increased crashes and fatalities,”

I’m assuming the driver behavior also includes relying on the half baked auto pilot/FSD features.

> 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

So people who drive Tesla are arse, got it.

I wish this would break down driver and passenger deaths in the tesla vs outside the tesla.

if other people are more likely to hit a tesla or are tesla drivers usually at fault?

I’m really confused. A major reason I bought one was because I heard they were so safe.

> 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,” iSeeCars executive analyst Karl Brauer said in the report.

Have the demographics of typical Tesla driver changed in last 5-10 years? I think it was at first wealthy environmentalists, but it shifted to be a new Yuppie mobile, and most recently probably skews to a young male crowd?

I would be interested in:

* having the ratio of fatalities organised by sized and power of cars. My understanding is that Teslas have a bit more horsepower than other cars, so maybe an apple-to-apple comparison needs to compare them to a slighly smaller share of the overal pool

* having the ratio of fatalities involving the so called "autopilot" feature. I'm not necessarily going to blame Tesla for making fast cars that reckless people use to get into accidents when running too fast.

However, if it's your average joe getting an accident because of a software glitch in the driving assistance system, because they assumed something called "autopilot" was able, to, you know, pilot on its own...

I paid $10K for FSD when I was drinking the Kool Aid but haven't used it in over a year due to it being a steaming pile of garbage. But hey, it's a great party gag and the stock price is still soaring so keep the pedal to the metal and take us all to RICH town Elon! What could possibly go wron...

In any lineup by height someone is tallest and someone is shortest, so what's significant about Tesla in this spread? If not them then another.

A significant aspect is that Telsa, as a harbinger of "progress", by this measure is making cars less safe. That's a surprising development as it's contrary to the promises and prognostications for the devices.

It's expected that the distribution of harm from cars would change with increasing automation, but the promise of the automation is to make the devices safer overall. So is this a key metric by which we find that the progress is actually a hazard, or is the changing distribution part of an overall trend of improvement with some hazardous edge cases?

All we have with this article is yet another headline with no useful information.

> “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.”

What does "focused and alert" mean for a robot? Does arriving safely allow a wake of carnage?

The Trump administration figures as a harbinger for such questions in that he is a well-known champion of disinformation in favor of his self interest, as are all of his cabinet picks and advisors. But this is in keeping with the modern history of the GOP.

I wonder how this breaks down by region. I imagine a heavy car is probably bad in the snow.

If you read the article it implies driver fault not car fault. Tesla receiving the highest ever crash safety ratings echos that.

How can any reasonable person know if any story about Tesla (good or bad) is actually factual and useful, or is just a story told from a particular angle to manipulate the stock price for gain?

While many says it's the ultimate meme stock, I also can't help thinking it's the ultimate manipulation stock - it seems some people desperately want it to go down while others desperately want it to go up.

Seems flawed. Tesla Model Y was the best selling model worldwide for 2023. (I think #3 if limited to US.) The study only covers 2017-2022, but we can infer that for the entire Brand, Teslas sold quite well over at least that latter part of that period.

Now if there are more Teslas on the road vs other vehicles (note they excluded car model years earlier than 2017, another fatal (heh) flaw in the study), it makes sense they would have more fatalities.

So this should be normalized "per capita" to vehicle counts if we want to extract any brand-related causality, in the same way as the data is already normalized to miles driven.

I enjoy hating on Tesla as much as the next person, but come on.

Something something Lex Fridman something.

> 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.”

... implication being that Tesla drivers are more likely to be driving like pricks and/or under the influence?

I wonder what the rates are like for specific models from other brands that are associated with morons. G-wagons, M3s etc etc

Let's put that guy in charge of government efficiency, what's the worst that could happen