I just saw the headline on Google News: “Tesla Has the Highest Fatal Accident Rate of All Auto Brands, Study Finds.” Yikes. I’ve covered how safe Tesla vehicles are for many years. In fact, it was the #1 reason why I bought a Tesla Model 3 in 2019. So, on the one hand, it was surprising to see that headline. But not really.
We already saw last year that one of the reasons Hertz was selling off its Tesla vehicles and not buying more was because they were more likely to get into accidents, and then waiting for repairs/service/parts took longer than average as well. Those kinds of things add up a great deal when you’re managing a big fleet of vehicles.
Are Tesla vehicles actually designed to be unsafe? No, that’s not the issue. The issue is that while Tesla was designing its cars to be extra safe, it was also constantly focusing on making the cars super quick (insanely quick, ludicrously quick, plaid quick) and regularly hyping up how quick its cars were in order to stimulate consumer demand.
Believe it or not, when you’ve consumed all that hype around how quick a Tesla is, it’s easy to be influenced and want to smoke cars off the line at a red light, or just drive like a bat out of hell. The problem is: that leads to accidents, and fast accidents lead to deaths. Let’s get to the shocking stats:
“Tesla’s vehicles have the highest fatal accident rate among all car brands in America, according to a recent iSeeCars study that analyzed data from the U.S. Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS).”
Admitting you’re lying in the fine print doesn’t absolve you from lying in more obvious marketing materials. You don’t have to like it but very few people read the fine print.
It’s not fine print yo. When you go to use it, the “(supervised)” bit is always on the same line and there are gratuitous warnings. The only people who don’t know it has limitations are people reading about accidents in the news. People have been trying to circumvent the rules since plain old autopilot was out with water bottles taped to steering wheels, and when you break the rules you’re not entitled to sympathy.
Anyone saying accidents are because Tesla is making false statements has never owned one and are talking out of their ass. You have to navigate at least 3 menus to just ENABLE these features and all of them say “you gotta pay attention”.
When it comes to buying one? Sure, let’s say false advertising. When it comes to accidents, that is willfully not acknowledging warnings.