Tesla Has The Highest Accident Rate Of Any Auto Brand
3 years ago by Ghostalmedia to c/technology
1 in 22
Weird Al should be all over this.
Saw this on Lemmy a few weeks ago
(Verse 1) Sitting in the cab of my old pickup truck, Memories rollin' by, like the miles we used to clock. Drove through the sunset, with you by my side, Never thought a metal heart could take me for a ride.
(Chorus) We were a highway love, wind in our hair, Haulin' dreams together, an inseparable pair. But now you're gone, and it's just my luck, My darlin' left me, a self-driving truck.
(Verse 2) We hauled our troubles down those lonesome roads, Your engine hummed the tunes, while our story unfolds. Loaded up with laughter, and baggage too, Little did I know, you had a route of your own to pursue.
(Chorus) We were a highway love, wind in our hair, Haulin' dreams together, an inseparable pair. But now you're gone, and it's just my luck, My darlin' left me, a self-driving truck.
(Bridge) I miss the way your headlights cut through the night, The hum of your engine, our rhythm just right. But now the road is empty, just echoes of our song, You found a new destination, I guess I got it wrong.
(Verse 3) We parked under stars, shared secrets in the dark, But now it's just silence, an abandoned truck stop. I'm left with memories, and a tank full of regret, A self-driving heartbreak, I'll never forget.
(Chorus) We were a highway love, wind in our hair, Haulin' dreams together, an inseparable pair. But now you're gone, and it's just my luck, My darlin' left me, a self-driving truck.
(Outro) So here I am, parked on this lonely track, Wishing you'd come back, but you won't look back. You rolled away, with gears that don't feel, Left me stranded, at the crossroads of steel.
Saw this on Lemmy a few weeks ago
(Verse 1) Sitting in the cab of my old pickup truck, Memories rollin' by, like the miles we used to clock. Drove through the sunset, with you by my side, Never thought a metal heart could take me for a ride.
(Chorus) We were a highway love, wind in our hair, Haulin' dreams together, an inseparable pair. But now you're gone, and it's just my luck, My darlin' left me, a self-driving truck.
(Verse 2) We hauled our troubles down those lonesome roads, Your engine hummed the tunes, while our story unfolds. Loaded up with laughter, and baggage too, Little did I know, you had a route of your own to pursue.
(Chorus) We were a highway love, wind in our hair, Haulin' dreams together, an inseparable pair. But now you're gone, and it's just my luck, My darlin' left me, a self-driving truck.
(Bridge) I miss the way your headlights cut through the night, The hum of your engine, our rhythm just right. But now the road is empty, just echoes of our song, You found a new destination, I guess I got it wrong.
(Verse 3) We parked under stars, shared secrets in the dark, But now it's just silence, an abandoned truck stop. I'm left with memories, and a tank full of regret, A self-driving heartbreak, I'll never forget.
(Chorus) We were a highway love, wind in our hair, Haulin' dreams together, an inseparable pair. But now you're gone, and it's just my luck, My darlin' left me, a self-driving truck.
(Outro) So here I am, parked on this lonely track, Wishing you'd come back, but you won't look back. You rolled away, with gears that don't feel, Left me stranded, at the crossroads of steel.
I think there might be something to be said here for some potential selection bias. Are Tesla drivers like ram drivers, overly aggressive idiots but with the added layer of being relatively new tech?
More boringly , maybe its selection on the circumstances too. For example maybe ev's tend to drive more in urban environments, more urban may mean more collision opprtunities per time spent driving.
Of course ram is a farmers vehicle is desgned for rural use, so must rarely be seen in built up areas. /s
edit: having glanced at the cited article - theres no obvious mention of any risk adjustment, the measures seem to be simple ratio of crashes per driver. No obvious control for whether the sub-population spend more or less time driving.
Rate per - place-specific-risk adjusted person-hour would work better.
As often with things like risk, it really helps to be able to do a multidimensional analysis. See if vehicle type/brand is significant after controlling for as many circumstantial factors and exposure related factors as you can reliably observe.
I assure you that large obnoxious trucks are a status symbol for many idiot right wing boomers and gen x, who take pride in daily driving a truck for their commute into, inside, and outside of cities.
They also complain about traffic, while simultaneously doing everything they can to under or unfund public transit, because they are literally incapable of understanding that adding more lanes to highways does not actually reduce traffic.
EDIT oh NO i missed the /s.
Oh well lol.
Don't forget complaining about gas prices while driving a 17 mpg vehicle.
hah, no bother.
Take any excuse to vent.
Fortunately for me I don't live in USA so these things are still a bit of a rarity, and are quite impractical in my town's, compact and heavily pedestrianised town centre.
Sounds like yoy've a plague of them over there.
The Forbes article seems to be citing numbers that are now a few weeks out of date. They cite that Tesla drivers have 23.54 accidents per 1,000 drivers and Ram has 22.76. If you go to their source link you'll see that the more recent numbers are Tesla: 31.13 and Ram: 32.90.
https://www.lendingtree.com/...
Ram in MA is 64.44 and I want these fucking things outlawed.
Read the source more carefully
Tesla drivers have the highest accident rate. From Nov. 14, 2022, through Nov. 14, 2023, Tesla drivers had 23.54 accidents per 1,000 drivers. Ram (22.76)
Accidents only. Worst driver counts DUIs a d fines as well.
Why does Massachusetts have such aggressive drivers? That seems like a large deviation for such a small state
Maybe in the Berkshires? The Boston area doesn’t get to much snow, and I would bet that is where most of the accidents are.
I moved here and am still asking that question myself. Only in mass do people honk if you dare to stop for a stop sign.
It’s it the Ram that’s the problem, or the driver that also likes to cover the Ram in Infowars bumper stickers?
Where I live Audi's drivers are the worst. It's like they are for losers that would like to do some posturing but can't afford a Mercedes and their frustrations manifest themselves in their stupid driving style.
They don't have a Mercedes because the EQS is not aspirational, as MB recently declared in relation to the lackluster sales of the series.
There just expensive and brands expect people to fork out crazy amounts of cash for these cars.
"If you can't Dodge it, Ram it"
I see why Stellantis spun Ram into its own brand now.
I had a friend years ago with Dodge Ram van. He said, "it says Dodge in the front because that's what you're supposed to do when you see it coming and Ram in the back because you didn't read the warning on the front."
I wonder what that says about my Dodge Sprinter.....
"I am driving a lifted DODGE RAM TRUCK"
"My lifted DODGE RAM TRUCK has BLINDING WHITE LED headlights positioned EXACTLY at EYE LEVEL. "
"I am currently TAILGATING you in the RIGHT LANE even though you’re going TWENTY MILES AN HOUR over the speed limit and the LEFT LANE is OPEN."
"There are MONSTER ENERGY and FOX RACING stickers on the rear windshield of my lifted DODGE RAM TRUCK."
"There are PERFECTLY CLEAN mud tires and MASSIVE CHROME RIMS on my lifted DODGE RAM TRUCK."
"I make THIRTY-ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS a year and thought that that was a WISE FINANCIAL DECISION."
"I bring cases of BUD LIGHT to girls at high school parties while my wife and children are at home."
"My lifted DODGE RAM TRUCK has a GUN RACK which holds the AR-15 that I bought at WAL-MART."
That's probably because Elon's literally been trying to sell their autopilot as fully autonomous for at least 7 years now.
History of their self-driving claims
May 2016 someone dies using autopilot
November 2016 Tesla publishes video of self-driving with no hands on wheel
Class action lawsuit
More people die
A friendly reminder that road safety advocates recommend against the use of the word "accident" to describe car crashes, because it downplays the fact that many crashes are preventable, either by better safe road design or by the drivers being more responsible with with 2 tonne machinery they are operating.
I've actually never seen the movie. I just know that it's a widespread view among people who focus on road safety.
Most news articles I can find dealing with this issue, like this one seem to focus mostly on the idea that one driver may be mostly at fault. Which is true and definitely part of the equation, but personally I'm even more focused on the ways in which the road design itself may have been a contributing factor. When you have high speed roads that also have a large number of driveways and side streets (i.e., a "stroad"), higher numbers of crashes are inevitable, and can be avoided by better design. Same with when you create bike lanes with no separation, or separated but giving cars high speed ways to turn across them at intersections. The design of that street is a significant contributing factor, and calling crashes an "accident" lets the designers and the politicians who signed off on it off the hook.
calling crashes an "accident" lets the designers and the politicians who signed off on it off the hook.
No, it doesn't. Accidents are just things that weren't intended to happen
If calling something an accident let people off the hook for their responsibility in the situation then people wouldn't go to jail for car accudents
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If it isn't intentional then isn't it by definition an accident?
If I break my leg while mountainbiking it seems a bit unreasonable to claim that it wasn't an accident because mountainbiking is an extreme sport and this could've been avoided if I was knitting instead.
I'm speeding through a school zone at 60km/h.... I didnt INTEND to kill anyone, but i didnt see the crosswalk and mowed down a bunch of pedestrians.
This is not an accident. Entirely preventable. Intent doesnt matter
The vast majority of car collisions are entirely avoidable.
It's partly about it being preventable, but mostly about it being expected.
The expected outcome of drunk driving or speeding through crosswalks is hitting someone. It's preventable by not driving drunk or not speeding.
A careful driver in the Netherlands killing a cyclist in a city center on a 20mph road is unexpected and fairly surprising - that would be a true accident. A drunk driver hitting someone on an American stroad is depressingly normal. It's hard to call it an accident.
In aviation, an intentional accident is still an accident. A suicidal pilot can deliberately crash an airplane, and it's still considered an accident.
This is purely my anecdotal experience, but Tesla drivers appear to be some of the worst drivers on the road. There are stereotypes of drivers. BMW's never signal their turns, Jeeps think they can drive basically however they want including on shoulders, and Tesla drivers are oblivious to any kind of spatial understanding of the road around them.
Tesla drivers are oblivious to any kind of spatial understanding of the road around them
I blame the design that forces you to keep your eyes off the road. Making a left turn? Don't look left, take your eyes off the road and look down at the screen on your right to see the left lane warning. Wipers need adjustment? Take your eyes off the road and look at the touch screen because there are no buttons.
Now that there is data, maybe the highway administration can force Tesla to put driver safety ahead of esthetics.
I'm sure that's one contributing factor, but I'd bet that the biggest issue is that the car is made to go fast. People who drive faster end up in more accidents. Hence why Audi / BMW drivers are also stereotypically bad drivers - they are both brands with a high-acceleration profile.
The “faster=more accidents” thing is actually kind of up in the air. Like with many things, it’s a bell curve, but driving a few MPH over the limit appears to be safest. Supposedly because people who drive a little bit faster tend to pay more attention. Sure, there are the outliers like the people who weave through traffic at 100MPH, but only a few over the limit appears safest.
Some of the highest accident rates actually come from people who regularly go under the limit. Because those are the people who are geriatric, distracted, texting, drunk, high, etc. and are going slower because they want the extra stopping distance or don’t want to be pulled over for speeding. Plus there’s all the hazards associated with going slow on the highway, when you’re only doing 45 MPH and traffic is flying past you in the next lane at 75. At that point, you’re practically a moving road hazard.
As far as I can tell that's not at all the case in Sweden where I live, in fact geriatric or slow drivers are very rarely involved in accidents. Intoxicated drivers are extremely rare compared to most other countries. See e.g. https://www.itf-oecd.org/... which says "Inappropriate speed is one of the leading causes of road crashes". You can find more research saying similar things on Google, e.g. that for every 10 km/h increase, the risk of an accident increases by 33 percent.
But it's not just a matter of having a high overall speed. It's also how quickly you accelerate / break. BMW/Audio/Tesla drivers have a high capacity for acceleration and they use it e.g. to overtake in situations when others wouldn't. I suspect the cause/effect is the other way around though: if you're a reckless driver who doesn't care about safety, you're more likely to choose a car that has a lot of power.
I posit that the amount of potential acceleration may be more correlated than the raw speed. Accelerating quickly makes you less predictable to the drivers around you and reduces the control you have over your own car.
Could it be the that nervous and less confident drivers are the ones that drive at or slightly below the speed limit?
Maybe it's not that driving faster is safer but worse drivers drive slower to attempt to compensate.
The wiper thing used to be an issue for sure, thankfully now you can use the wheel buttons to do it. Also for turning you really don't need to look at anything. I'm not saying people don't but you don't need to. There are still a few things that are somewhat annoying mainly the defrost/defog but I feel like I look the same amount as I did in my other car to push those buttons as well
The voice commands work as well as anything. It's much easier to push the roller button on the steering wheel and say "turn on defroster" than to manipulate controls (either on a touch screen or non-touch screen interface)
Voice controls are great, unless you have a strong accent it doesn’t understand, a speech impediment, or mute. Which are all things that normally wouldn’t disqualify you from driving a car. Which I feel like should disqualify them from the discussion of physical vs tablets myself.
The number of times I shout "your car is supposed to be smarter than that!" As a Tesla does something like, without signaling, whips around me and into oncoming traffic to pass a stopped city bus is staggering.
Fun fact, the Lending Tree analysis listed in the article showed that Ram drivers have the "highest incident rate," which looks at accidents, DUIs, speeding, and other traffic citations. This makes them the statistically worst drivers. BMWs have honorable mention as the having the highest DUI rate.
and Tesla drivers are oblivious to any kind of reality
Fixed based on experience. I really do feel like these are scarlet letters to being thundering assholes, and they communicate with their king like wifi routers.
It's reflective of their larger view/"understanding" (or lack of understanding) of the world/how it all works.
the cars are only as good as their drivers,
The design of the car isn't that great. No physical buttons so you have to constantly look away from the road to interact with any car feature. Wipers, mirrors, climate control, music, etc... the blind spot and side views are on the display. Need to merge left but have to look right to see if it's clear.
Using the touch screen as a pain, for sure. However, nearly all commands on the touch screen can be accessed via voice commands from a button on the steering wheel. In practice, the need to use the touch screen while driving (other than to monitor your speed and cruise control settings) is practically zero.
i know many of you all just LOVE to hate on Tesla, it's like the shit flavor of he year for hating and no doubt Elon's shit fuckery is partially driving it, but honestly this is an absolutely classic Forbes piece of garbage. Firstly, it's a masterclass in selective bias - focusing solely on Tesla while barely whispering about Ram's near-similar accident rates. Classic move to sensationalize one brand over another. Then there's the U.S. only scope, which conveniently ignores the global context which could paint a vastly different picture. The article kicks off with a 'non-causal' disclaimer but then spends the rest of the time subtly linking Tesla's Autopilot to the high accident rate, without concrete evidence. It's a bit like saying 'no offense' before offending someone.
The Tesla recall is mentioned, sneakily implying a connection to the accident rate, despite the lack of direct correlation. The article is less about informing and more about crafting a narrative that fits a preconceived notion, all while skating on thin ice made of half-truths and strategic omissions.
Are you comparing with other cars at the same price range or cheaper cars?
I don't know but based from my experience(since you also commented based on your experience), compared to some other brands although Tesla are better than some cheaper models of other brands, some are better than Tesla if you compared to the models with the same price range
Yes, some brands might be worse, but Tesla is not quite considered as being the best
Some cheaper, some the same price range.
What’s your experience based on? Do you own one? Or is this just third-hand?
I don’t care what it’s considered. It’s the best car I’ve ever owned and I’ve owned Fords, Dodges, VWs, Toyotas, and BMWs.
I love that you were downvoted, for all we know your previous vehicle was a Daewoo or something. A Tesla is likely a better quality vehicle than a Daewoo.
You sound like a forbes article
Edit for clarification. My comment was intended to a be a bit tongue in cheek and its because of this part of the top comment that i made what i thought was clearly a light hearted joke. Sorry if it wasnt so obvious
The article is less about informing and more about crafting a narrative that fits a preconceived notion, all while skating on thin ice made of half-truths and strategic omissions.
In response to the assertion of owning a Daewoo. I assumed your comment i replied to was also referencing this quote
but my Tesla is the best ve
Sadly, you'll never be able to say anything nice about any Musk properties here without massive downvotes by people who wouldn't purchase anything from Musk.
The hardware (occasional bad quality control aside) is pretty awesome. My neighbor has one, His holiday update was an absolute hoot. They're fast, clean, comfortable and are generally long lasting, low maintenance cars.
When you factor in EV and Price, there's nothing that stands out as nicer from a pure hardware standpoint.
They could use a few more buttons inside. When they become disabled on the road, their requirement for you to have them do the towing and taking hours to do so sucks. Suing people over selling their vehicles second hand is pretty bad. No second party repairs allowed is a problem.
The real 800 lb gorilla in the room is the autopilot. The only redeemable thing about the auto pilot is that it mostly works and it's pushing the tech forward. They have enough money to lobby congress to make it legal, all those 730+ wrecks and *42+ deaths as horrible as they are, will lead us to the feature being viable eventually.
*edit: found a newer source
I bought mine way before Musk became a right-wing nutjob asshole and wouldn’t buy another of his cars now unless something changed with their leadership structure.
That doesn’t mean that I can retroactively say the car sucks now. It is a fantastic vehicle. I don’t use Autopilot so that part doesn’t apply (tried it during a trial and wasn’t impressed) but, as a car, I have no qualms.
Ah yes a personal anecdote is 100% more valid.
That said, from what I've heard the big problem is the disparity of build quality. Some Tesla's (like possibly yours) are built amazing. Some others are put together like shit.
At least I provided some kind of evidence, even if it’s an anecdote. You made a generalization with absolutely no evidence.
That’s fine if there’s a disparity but it’s not as common as your statement makes it seem.
When this was posted yesterday, I brought up issues with the sample selection (not random) and universe the "study" looked at (people using one of those sites to shop for insurance), and while I think most understood my point, some people got upset at me "defending Tesla drivers"...
To be fair, Tesla / Musk spend a LOT of time talking about how they’re autonomous driving product are critical for reducing accidents and saving lives. Also, there isn’t a lot of public quantitative data around this major recall. That’s why they’re getting the headline.
Maybe autopilot is great, and it’s the non-autopilot drivers that are terrible, but right now, the brand has net accident rate that rivals a company that sells massive rolling blind spots to people who love Calvin pissing stickers.
How exactly could this study give a concrete reason for the higher than average crash rates?
Last time a garbage clickbait hit-piece like this pissed me off, I looked into the crash statistics myself and found Tesla vehicles were around 1/80th the average crash ratio per capita.
I'm sure this is somewhat skewed by the kinds of people driving them versus the average work vehicles and clunkers out there, but still, it just feels absurdly false to claim Teslas even approach the highest crash rate.
And even the sketchy "study" not even endorsed by the site it's posted to, then linked by Forbes, then says Ram vehicles as the highest crash rate (lol), so it's wild that Forbes goes on to say it's Tesla at the top spot.
Per capita means nothing in this situation.
Comparing with the per capita means nothing here, you need to compare with other car companies, as comparing to the per capita is like comparing the number of lung cancer deaths to the number of all deaths, of course it's going to be a very small number, but when you compare with other cancers then you can see that lung cancer is one of biggest killers amongst cancers
They also don't make any adjustment for fault. Tailgating a Tesla is just a bad idea, they brake insanely fast.
Tailgating anyone is a bad idea.
Yeah, but tailgating a Tesla just hits different
I know its super pedantic, but the word “accident” really grinds my gears in this context.
The proper terminology is “crash”.. accident infers that there is no fault or misconduct.
What made you want to become a policeman-officer?
The mom or the sister?
Trucking companies have switched the terms in the same way, since "accident" lightens responsibility. Even a not-at-fault crash could have been preventable often times, which is what they try to emphasize.
One of the many ways trucking companies avoid liability by putting all responsibility for fuck-ups on the driver.
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Exactly, so the use of "crash" would generally be far better for these sorts of articles.
"Accident" starts addressing intentions or expectations.
We could just add easily refer to them as "vehicular violence" but then we'd end up distorting things in another direction.
It doesn't have to be on purpose. Accident implies that something was just a freak occurrence beyond anyone's control. You can't fix accidents. You can fix crashes.
If you're driving negligently - drunk driving, not paying attention, etc then it's not an accident.
If it's due to bad road design, then it's not an accident.
Wouldn't an accident still involve "fault"
While many accidents do involve fault, there are scenarios where an accident can occur without anyone being legally at fault (mechanical failure, natural disasters). It does excludes malicious intent though. in the specific context of commercial motor vehicle regulations in the US, the term "accident" is defined in the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations (e-CFR) under 49 CFR § 390.5
Good point, so does Accidents exclude "accidental crashes with fault"
Colloquially, accidents are random events without intention or fault.
That's why there's a push to use neutral terms like "crash" that don't imply that the "accident" was just a random accidental mistake.
And fault is often a bit of a misnomer. Many crashes are the result of bad design, but the courts would never say "this pedestrian fatality here is 40% the fault of whichever insane engineer put the library parking lot across a 4-lane road from the library but refused to put a crosswalk there or implement any sort of traffic calming because that would inconvenience drivers".
relevant https://www.simonandschuster.com/...
I have a hard time seeing why the average person should have a zero to 60 in the sub 6 second range. People fucking suck at driving.
A coworker of mine was recently bragging about their new electric mustang and its zero to sixty time. "Have you ever gone zero to sixty?" was my only response. Of all the facts and figures, 0-60 has you to be one of the least important when buying a car.
Only up to a certain point. My Kia Rio has a 0-60 of like 16 seconds.. overtaking even on a clear road sucks.
The car is perfect otherwise, but I'd definitely want much better acceleration in the future.
My last car was like that and then every time I borrowed my dad's mercedes I'd constantly do stupid unecessary overtakes just because I could. It's a moral hazard - I don't think a faster accelerating car is safer because people drive those differently.
Of course you have to hold yourself back, but where I live there's plenty of really nice stretches of road where you can overtake. But with my car while I'm accelerating some guy in an Audi or a BMW already decides to overtake from the back.. overtaking with a better car feels much less stressful and safer.
Being able to accelerate to highway speeds quickly is useful when merge lanes are short. We have a car that kind of struggles with that, and it's pretty scary sometimes merging into 70 mph traffic. Normally it's not a major issue, but one ramp we sometimes use is designed poorly - it's curvy, so you can't accelerate to highway speed until after the final curve, then it's up a hill, and of course there's a short merge area into traffic that's usually doing about 70 mph. So, there, I REALLY miss the power our previous car had. It's a frustrating experience.
When I got my license back in the early 2000s I got taught very economical driving, generally choosing gears to keep rpm low, use the motor brake to decelerate before traffic lights, such stuff. Then it was time to get on the Autobahn, and the instructor just said "Forget everything I taught you, now it's safety first: Floor it in 3rd gear, merge in third gear, once you've found your position switch directly to 5th you'll be fast enough."
If I'm not mistaken that was an Audi A4 TDI so... 15 seconds 0 to 100? Maybe about 10, don't remember the displacement. Of course, merging is more like 30 to 120, directly onto the second lane. With a Punto you're kinda lucky if you get to 80 by the time the on-ramp ends and barely get into the right-most lane (where you're probably staying).
“Have you ever gone zero to sixty?” was my only response. Of all the facts and figures, 0-60 has you to be one of the least important when buying a car
It is a relative performance indicator that is easy to measure and verify.
Of course you rarely ever actually do 0-60, but it gives you an idea of how well the car accelerates relative to other cars. So in a way 0-60 is like a cinebench score for cars.
They're going off of Lending Tree's internal insurance quote data. That link about the lending tree quote showed this, "Our latest analysis uses QuoteWizard by LendingTree insurance quote data..."
Insurance rates are usually determined by risk associated with the car and driver and the value of the car. The lending tree analysis showed they were looking at several factors as well as accidents. They said also that Ram drivers have the "highest incident rates," meaning they lumped together accidents, DUIs, speeding violations, and other traffic citations. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has seen a Ram.
Is it possible that there's a large overlap between idiots who are bad at driving and the type of people who buy Teslas?
Yep, and the fact that a ton of people who get these cars legit think they will drive themselves...
Correct. But how many thousands are there? And in relation to what percentage of all Teslas compared to all other brands with similar models. Do I believe it? Absolutely. Is it a good statistic? It's a good start.
That venn diagram looks like the mid point of an eclipse
Its like how red cars get more speeding tickets.
That's actually a myth
I can't fathom any other reality.
I blame the touchscreen first ideology. Give em some physical buttons that you can feel without taking your eyes off the road.
That and the sheer power can make accidents happen faster than you can react.
I don't understand how using a cell phone while driving is a violation in most places, but using a touchscreen as the dashboard is is just fine. Whaaaa ..?
Those cars with only touchscreen terrify me. I don't even dare to turn down the AC in the EV car I drove last month when I feel a little cold because it would took THREE precision taps (small UI buttons) at DIFFERENT locations on the screen just to open the Climate Control screen. I have to pull over just to adjust the fan speed, smh.
The dashboard is also a fucking screen with multiple tabs that I have to "scroll" through with a knob on the wheel.
I hate the fucking thing the entire time I'm driving it.
I hear VW is putting buttons back in.
This is a very good point. The more a person is forced to take their eyes off the road, the less safe they become as a driver.
But Tesla always says the opposite.
I smell last well tonight with John Oliver
I have been following Musk's insanity for years now, and I am glad that Oliver covered him, but he could have been soooo much more scathing while being absolutely factual.
His relatively moderate criticisms of Musk reminded me that a whole lot of libs and tech bros are in his demographic.
You can't apparently tell them Rocket Jesus is not going to save us and is infact a contemptible racist fascist mad man whose entire persona is a fraud and has done nothing but defraud all his investors with insane claims he hasnt delivered on in nearly a decade without making his audience too depressed, I guess.
Shouldn't Teslas be easier to use with all that automation? If not, what's the point of automation?
OTOH, I'm all for raising the requirements for getting issued a driving licence, it's just then we have to make a way for people to make do without driving.
No it makes it harder. I know that sounds crazy but it's very true. Basically humans are very bad at paying attention to boring things. The automation gives the feeling that the computer has it and the human is not ready and aware when the computer doesn't have it. Leading to lots of easily avoidable accidents.
There has been some really good reporting on this over the last year or so. If you want to learn more.
This is something Japanese train companies figured out awhile ago for train engineers. Because driving locomotives can be really repetitive, they train engineers to do hand signals and call out actions out loud even when they're alone in the car in order to help keep the brain active and focused.
To add another factor:
People buy muscle cars and over accelerate because they can't handle the power of those cars
EVs accelerate much quicker than normal cars, Tesla's more than normal EVs
So if someone isn't using the automation they're still susceptible to the classic "overshot into or over something" situation
Tesla's self-driving and safety systems are clearly half baked compared to competitor and other vendors.
Quite frankly, driving skills standards in the entire American continent are a joke to begin with. I've seen current requirements in Canada ("Wut?" bad), united states (teehehehehe bad) and Mexico (the aristocrats joke bad) and I know going south it only gets worse.
I got my driver's license 25 years ago in the Netherlands and had to take classes for a number of months, learn an entire book of rules, had a one bour theory exam where typically only 60-70% would pass at the first try, then I had to take 30 hours of practical lessons with an instructor in a special car, and take a practical exam with an examiner where the rulr is pretty much "one mistake and you're out". I learned how to drive in rain, what to look out for, hoe to drive in show, how to manage losing control of your car, etc etc etc... I was instilled with andeaddaly respect for what s car is and what it can do in seconds to ruin lives for good.
Comparing that ti anything they teach today in the Americas, it's just a sad joke.
My drivers ed class in new england pretty much focused only on educating teenagers about how brutally dangerous drunk driving is. It was frustrating at the time because I felt like I didn’t even learn how to drive but given how where I grew up as a teenager you had to go drink in sketch places which usually involved driving (what a dumb way to structure society ughh) because of the car hellscape I grew up in…. I honestly think those drivers ed teachers spent their time well.
Driving a car isn’t so hard so long as you take the perspective that you have one rule, don’t hit other people and always remind yourself that you can’t assume other drivers will do anything they should on the road. Drunk driving was VERY hard not to do as a bored teenager trying to hang out with other bored teenagers. I could have died, my friends could have died. Idk, so I can’t be too upset at my drivers ed class in retrospect.
In Canada we still have to pass a practical test that covers that stuff with pretty strict requirements for passing. Just how you gain the knowledge and ability to pass that test is up to you. It's pretty normal to take a driver's Ed class if your friends or family don't have time to trach you themselves. And the drivers Ed class is what you described as what is mandatory in the Netherlands. We just don't put people through it automatically if they have already learned all that somewhere else.
Having said that, there are some small towns that are known as places to go if you want an easier driving test, as they just don't have enough things around to properly represent everything you should know while driving. But if it turns out you do actually suck at driving, you'll lose your tiny amount of demerits on your beginners license pretty fast and then you are legally required to pass a driver's Ed and defensive driving class before being able to reclaim your license. It's not perfect, and I do think the one major thing we are missing is periodic re-testing. In Canada people are a little less resistant to "greater good" social policies, but there is still resistance. It's tough to pass stuff that lowers or is perceived to lower freedoms, but they do still occasionally pass.
And as I'm sure is the problem everywhere, people want all kinds of services, they just don't want the government to have the money to pay for those services. And also they only want the services they personally currently benefit from, everything else can be cut until they personally need it, then it was a tragedy that no one stood up for it.
That doesn't sound all that different from where I learned in Maryland. You had to go to a class for a few months that had both theoretical and practical portions. You had to do 40 hours of supervised driving outside of class with an adult. The 40 hours covered a range of situations. Then there was a driving test. Which I passed fine for the car but failed for a motorcycle because I started about a foot back from the stop sign on the course so I didn't pull up and stop at it. Doh.
In California, the first 20hr or so, it had to be a licensed instructor if you were under 18. An adult would just need to register for a learner's permit and just need any licensed driver in the front passenger seat
I think it was somewhere around 6 to 10 hours with a certified instructor. The 40 with an adult was yeah a family member or friend. The quality definitely depended on the adult. My parents took it seriously and made sure we completed the lessons, but I had friends whose parents just signed the form without providing the additional instruction. It was 20 years ago so details are fuzzy.
I wonder if it'll pass safety regs outside of the US
No.
yeah pedestrian safety is what I meant, thanks
Maybe they're sentient and actively suicidal.
Or homicidal: https://www.theonion.com/...
This reminds me of a cheesy Dutch movie from the 80s called The Lift in which an elevator becomes self aware and starts murdering people...
Maybe they’re sentient and actively *revolutionary
It would be a brilliant way to knock people off.
Terra Ignota used carefully calculated automobile tragedies as a pretext for civil war.
A plane crash was used as the pretext for the civil war/genocide in Rwanda
Source: https://www.lendingtree.com/...
Our latest analysis uses QuoteWizard by LendingTree insurance quote data to determine which car brands have the worst drivers.
Wonder how many drivers of each brand they actually have, that would very much sway the numbers if they have smaller numbers of some brands insured.
This sounds like less of a "study" and more of a top ten list for page views.
Yeah, their "safest" list top 3 were all dead marques; Mercury, Pontiac, and Saturn. They definitely have some sampling issues.
My guess it's kind of like when you get solar panels and you're tied to the grid you feel a little better about using electricity willy-nilly, and so you use more electricity with solar panels than without.
I'm willing to bet that Tesla drivers were told that this vehicle will prevent them from getting an accident and so they are driving worse because they feel like they don't have to be as on guard as they do behind a non Tesla vehicle.
Could also be things like fast acceleration pulling the numbers up. A lot of people are going to gun it if you give them something that can do 0-60 under 4 seconds. Those are numbers that were relegated to expensive sports cars a decade ago, not a grocery getter.
Is this speed special in Tesla cars or all consumer electric or normal cars? Why waste money to give a grocery getter that much extra power
Most internal combustion cars tend to hover around 8-9 seconds with a 0-60. Something with some kick was often considered sub 6 seconds.
Telsa prides itself on fast acceleration. Their slowest car is in the 5’s, but many hover in the 3-4 second band, which is quite quick. Telsa’s slowest base model car is often performance that many brands would have for their top performing internal combustion car.
It is often easier to make electric cars that accelerate quickly, but not every brand has decided to make their EV soccer mom cars launch like a corvette. A base Kia EV6 will 0-60 in 7.2s and Ford’s Mach E Mustang does 6.1s.
Ahhh, I suppose money factors in a decision like this?
And fleet operators have stricter requirements. Get in an accident? They want a piss test on the spot, and if you refuse you're done.
Oh this is hilarious. First, I own a Mercury and a Ram, so I'm apparently the best and the worst at having accidents, DUIs, and tickets.
But I think there's an inherent terrible bias in the data: "Our latest analysis uses QuoteWizard by LendingTree insurance quote data..." In other words, people who are regularly shopping for insurance. Probably because they have high rates, so therefore they are looking for better rates. Why do they have high rates? Probably because they have more crashes, DUIs, and other tickets than the average drivers.
I doubt that most people with normal rates go changing insurance companies regularly.
Yes, there are a million things I should be doing, if you watch the financial advice. But no one really has the time to do all of those things. And you have to watch that you're getting an actual quote from the company, not just a pre-quote that can be revised later. It's a lot of time and work.
Also, with the horror stories I hear about other companies, I'm inclined to stick with mine even if they are a bit more. When our car was totaled a few years ago, they offered exactly what similar condition cars of the same make and model were selling for in our area, plus tax and fees, minus our deductible. We had done the research, and I was bracing for a fight, so I was stunned when they opened with that amount, then added the taxes and fees. We literally could have taken the check we received, plus our deductible, and replaced the car with one in similar condition and mileage (I wish we had, because I really dislike the car we bought instead). I see the horror stories people post about other companies, and I'm always thinking, "yeah, that wasn't my experience."
Here's where the loyalty part comes into play: if the insurance company doesn't like something, they can and will drop you or refuse to renew your policy depending on relevant laws. They might have decent service and pay claims without much of a fight, and those are incredibly valuable service qualities. So you're making the right decision for yourself if that's what's important to you and that's the experience you've had.
But if all things are equal, there's no good reason to pay a higher premium for the same service. You better believe that insurance company will drop you in a heartbeat if their analysis indicates that they won't have the level of profit from you that they want. As a for-profit business, that's their perogative just as much as it's yours if you want to switch.
I tend to agree with you by the way. Loyalty comes in many forms. I might not be loyal to a company per se. If they've consistently provided me with a level of service that I'm satisfied with at a price that I feel is appropriate for the value, then I'm not going to go through the trouble of checking prices and switching carriers every year just to save a few bucks. And there's the hassle of being hounded by a half dozen companies that now have your contact info after you requested quotes. That's all a big no thanks from me.
It's not really loyalty, per se...it's that they seem to be offering a reasonable price and good service, so I don't see a reason to change. If some other company offered much better rates for the same coverage and service level, I'd switch. But I'm not spending hours and hours each year to find I might save $50/year either; that's a waste of my time.
Our latest analysis uses QuoteWizard by LendingTree insurance quote data…
I have no idea why you think that would only apply to Teslas.
I think you have my comment confused with another one, I didn't mention Tesla at all.
I don't know how many of these collisions are with pedestrians, but I have nearly stepped out in front of one twice just because they're so quiet.
My 1994 Ford Probe was so quiet you couldn't tell it was running most of the time even standing next to it, and there are plenty of ICE cars around today with even smaller and quieter engines. Most people learn to look both ways before crossing the street when they're toddlers.
My car is so quiet I have to rev it to double check if I've started it sometimes.
The 1958 Edsel is the reigning champ in Cuba.
dang, just checked for my country (data from 2019), look out for those priuses! I guess the handling the GTA 4 analog had was pretty accurate, it's like a brick on the road ^^
While I love to jump on the anti-Elon bus, I have to query: the highest accident rates, or highest accident rates as a percentage of vehicles on the road? If you have 10 Tesla cars on the road, and there are 2 MGs on the road, and 2 Telsas and one MG crashes, then what? 20% of Tesla vs. 50% of MG, but also that could be framed as ‘double the number of Teslas crash compared to MGs’ or ‘Tesla has the highest accident rate of any auto brand’.
Good question
Tesla drivers had 23.54 accidents per 1,000 drivers. Ram (22.76) and Subaru (20.90) were the only other brands with more than 20 accidents per 1,000 drivers for every brand.
Oh fuck off lending tree. Made up nonsense.
Edit: Why am I getting downvoted? Oh, Tesla bad? Yeah, Tesla bad. LendingTree bad too. It's spin and propaganda for the mortgage industry. They publish clickbait "research" using non scientific metrics to reach whatever conclusion they set out to reach, usually it's just shitting on blue states. They frequently reach the opposite conclusions of credible researchers with no explanation as to why they created their own formulas when perfectly valid, standard formulas exist.
Holy F.. this image is from an accident couple of years ago near Baarn, The Netherlands. My brother in law was present at the scene as a fireman. Took them several hours to put out the battery fire. First time an accident ruptured the batteries and no one knew how to handle this type of fires yet.
Crapy article. They miss used there own source.
NPC drivers. In the 90s it was Toyotas, then entry level Nissans took over in the mid 2000s ... And now we got Tesla
https://letmegooglethat.com/...
Don't know why I bother you're only going to continue mental gymnastics to further justify your head up your ass
this is a top-level comment but doesn't seem related to the OP. care to clarify who it was that you were being bitchy to?
Lol good ol Lemmy misplaced my reply.
Indeed
Unpopular opinion: all "fun" cars should be banned from public roads. You think driving is "fun"? Go to a racing track and have fun there. When I'm commuting I want to get to work safely, that's my only objective. I don't want to share the road with an idiot who thinks he's the next Schumacher and can drive safely at 150km/h. All cars should have speed limiters installed. Why can they drive faster then the national speed limit at all? It makes no sense. You want to race? Put your racing car on a flat bet and carry it to the racetrack, I don't care. The idea that driving is "fun" is cancer that killed more people than.. well, real cancer. Shows like Top Gear that promote this idea are responsible for more deaths than Nazis.
Edit: Ok, I was wrong, cancer kills more people. Bad example. 1.3M people die in car accidents every year. Speeding is the second most common cause. Just think about another example like guns or something.
The idea that driving is "fun" is cancer that killed more people than.. well, real cancer. Shows like Top Gear that promote this idea are responsible for more deaths than Nazis.
I was with you right up until here. There's no way to upvote and downvote different parts of a comment, is there?
Ok, I was wrong, cancer kills more people than speeding. But 1.3 million die every year in traffic accidents and the second most common cause of accidents is speeding. Or do you think that shows like Top Gear and magazines promoting the idea that "fast cars are awesome" do not promote speeding?
So, here's the thing...
Speeding is definitely the culprit. But accidents due to speeding have been an issue long before shows like Top Gear ever happened.
The issue is terrible drivers. Fast cars or Horse Carriages, doesn't matter.
I agree with your remark about keeping cars that can do more than the speed limit off the public roads, but sadly that won't solve accidents due to speeding. Because that's just one of the reasons.
And what is a "fun" car? How do we determine that? Get a government tester to drive the car for an hour and if he looks miserable getting out then the car is good to go?
Many cars that people call fun are normal hatchbacks. Nobody calls SUVs or pickups fun, and yet they're far more dangerous. Should people drive more of those? Because that's what we'd get.
And comparing Top Gear and its production crew to literal Nazis is insane. Get some perspective.
A "fun" car is car that encourages dangerous driving by pretending to be a "sports" or "competitive" car or simply pretending it's for "precision" driving or "racing". Tuned cards, high horsepower cars, supercars. Do you understand it now? Cards should encourage safe, responsible driving. Yes, distracted driving kills the most people by speeding is close second and there's entire industry of automotive press and TV shows that encourage it by promoting the idea that driving fast is fun. They kill thousands of people every year.
But that's not exclusively what people call a fun car, people call all kinds of cars fun.
The current generation Civic was praised for its handling, suspension, and being quite fun to drive - do you think it's so unsafe it should be outlawed, but a Hummer shouldn't be?
Pretty much the only cars that are basically never called fun are SUVs and pickups - the cars that are most dangerous!
I don't believe that you'll find any proof that, say, an MX-5/Miata is more dangerous or causes more deaths than a Ford F250. And yet you say the issue is with fun cars and sports cars.
Cars being enjoyable isn't the issue. And the people behind car TV shows aren't fucking synonymous with Nazis. What an awful take.
The Nazis wanted to exterminate races and cultures they found to be inferior. The top gear crew have a different hobby to you, one that inherently carries a small amount of risk. That's not the same.
one that inherently carries a small amount of risk
To other people. I'm fine with them driving on a racetrack. I'm not fine with them promoting sports cars on public roads. I know they never say "speeding on public roads is fun" but the entire car culture they promote comes down to reckless driving really. And your hobby should never put other people in danger. Any other hobby that would sometimes kill bystanders would be banned. Also, millions of people die in car accidents, big chunk of them because speeding. The risk is not small.
As to what "fun" car is I'm not going to get into definitions here, I'm not writing a law. I think it's clear what I mean. Most people drive under the speed limit, don't accelerate or break suddenly, don't take turns at high speeds. Driving for them is a normal activity. Other people do all those reckless things because they think it's "fun". Yes, you can drive recklessly in any car but some cars specifically promote it. I'm not talking about specific models, more about the idiotic car culture in general.
Driving can be "fun" in any car though. You don't need a sports car to enjoy driving, for some driving is just a fun activity that can still be done safely and within the regulations of the road.
The idea that driving is “fun” is cancer that killed more people than… well, real cancer.
You've literally just made this up.
Yeah, I did. I though more people die in car accidents but I've checked the number and no.
Also, If you enjoy driving below the speed limit and without any sudden manoeuvres then I have no issue with you enjoying your ride. I think it's obvious that's not what I have issue with.
I know people in the US get their license in a few days. But in europe people take a proper course over a few weeks and drive dafely and routinely at speeds up to 200 km/h. Not that I disagree with the fun part.
200kmh is never really safe, I hope that everyone driving at that speed realize it, of course we feel safe in those new cars, it's like nothing, but a flat tire or something else and it's done for you
And I don't think every country in Europe have proper training, in France people are not that disciplined as in other part of Europe
It takes months and months in the UK. The tests are pretty strict.
There’s no way to drive safely above the speed limit on a public road.
If you're driving a well maintained regular car in good conditions you absolutely can drive safely above many speed limits. If the speed limit was set at the true limit of safety nothing but the best handling vehicles in the best of conditions could drive at said limit safely, and this is clearly not the case for the vast majority of speed limits. Instead most traffic can travel safely at the set speed limit in less than ideal vehicles and in less than ideal conditions, so logically there are going to be situations where it would be safe to drive above said limit.
Consider too speed limit changes. In my area there have been a few roads recently which have been lowered from 100km/h limits to 80km/h. Nothing changed about these roads except the speed limit signs. Why was it possible to drive safely at the 100km/h limit one day but not possible to drive safely at the same speed on the next day? Another road several years back had its speed limit changed from 80km/h to 90km/h. Again only the signs changed, so why would it be unsafe to drive 90km/h there one day when that would be the speed limit the following day?
As with everything we do, there is a subjective element to setting limits, but it's definitely not as arbitrary as you are suggesting. Maybe they reduced one limit because there were too many accidents, and maybe they increased the other because they finally got the signal pattern working as intended.
Risk assessment is incredibly complex. It might be perfectly reasonable to drive 110km/h on a given road most of the time, but frequent use by large farm equipment could necessitate a lower speed. Or, maybe adjusting traffic on road x decreases accidents on road y.
We are still learning how to produce vehicles that reliably compensate for variables like friction, or human reaction time. The implications of even these two simple things seem to be completely lost on most drivers: with a tiny bit of rubber touching the asphalt, we happily drive around in inconceivably heavy vehicles at rates where it's very easy for an event to begin and end before we even suspect something is imminent.
While I'm here: turn your lights on when you start your car, turn into your own fucking lane, always move over if someone is behind you in the fast lane even if you think you're going "fast enough" (someone could be bleeding out, seriously), don't pass people on the wrong side, and finally: stop trusting the meat in your head so much, our brains fuck up all the time, so in addition to driving defensively wrt external factors, consider how you can set yourself up to succeed if something unexpected happens internally.
I hate people like you on the roads. You're not the one who decides what's the safe maximum speed on the road is. If you think you can arbitrary decide that some speed limit is too low and you can drive faster you're wrong and shouldn't be on the road at all. If we had less people like you on the roads everyone would be safer.
There are a lot of streets without a speed limit in europe. People are told to drive around at least 130 to not hinder traffic. Most people go about 140 or 150 if the roads are free. Speed lane is usually about 160
No, not a lot, only highways in Germany AFAIK. Where I live the limit is 120 so 150 is always over the limit. Road fatalities in Germany are the same as in my country because in Germany you also have idiots driving 200km/h. What you have to do is adjust your speed to the conditions. Depending on how the roads are build the limit will be different but if you're driving 50km/h faster than everyone else you're creating dangerous situation. Same if you're driving too slow obviously.
I don't know why you're getting down voted. Post-Clarkson Top Gear is horrendous. The Grand Tour has its own issues but also some very fun moments.
The latest trio were pretty decent, probably the best since the Clarkson, Hammond & May era.
Yeah Chris Evans was the worst. LeBlanc was ok but I didn't get the hype that he had by others.
You do you, but please do it in the right lane
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The fact that Ram drivers are a close second is hilarious. I guess there is some truth to all the jokes about Rams being driven by aggressive idiots.
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