Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, posted on X (previously Twitter) last year that "most people don't know that Teslas are the safest cars on the road." The carmaker, which claims that its cars "are engineered to be the safest in the world," and the billionaire both use the superlative.
However, according to a recent report from the auto research firm iSeeCars, despite the fact that Tesla vehicles consistently receive high safety ratings, including from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the brand has the highest rate of accidents in which at least one car occupant is killed.
However, according to a recent report from the auto research firm iSeeCars, despite the fact that Tesla vehicles consistently receive high safety ratings, including from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the brand has the highest rate of accidents in which at least one car occupant is killed.
Based on an analysis of fatal crashes involving 2018–2022 automobile models from 2017–2022, the team determined that the Tesla Model S and Tesla Model Y were among the most dangerous vehicles on the road in terms of occupant fatality rate. Although the top five cars on the list were Hyundai, Chevrolet, Mitsubishi, Porsche, and Honda models, the mid-size SUV Tesla Model S landed in sixth place with a fatal accident rate that was 3.7 times greater than the average car and 4.8 times higher than the average SUV. Compared to the average car, the Model S has twice the rate.
A request for Tesla's response to the report was not immediately answered.
A request for Tesla's response to the report was not immediately answered.
With 5.6 fatal accidents per billion miles driven by its cars, the automaker barely beat out Kia as the brand with the highest overall accident rate, which was 5.5 per billion miles. According to the iSeeCars report, this is "despite Tesla's advanced driver-assist technology," which includes functions like Full-Self Driving (FSD) and Autopilot that are designed to lessen human error. According to the business, FSD enables a Tesla to "drive itself almost anywhere with minimal driver intervention," whereas the former is a more basic system that includes automated lane-changing on freeways and cruise control. Both necessitate the ongoing oversight of a vigilant driver with the ability to override the software.
In the research, Karl Brauer, an executive analyst at iSeeCars, stated that the majority of the automobile models on their lists "received excellent safety ratings, performing well in crash tests," and that new cars in general are safer than they have ever been. Their high accident rates, he continued, "probably reflect a combination of driver behavior and driving conditions."
Although the study did not account for the usage of sophisticated systems like Tesla Autopilot and FSD, their drawbacks are widely known, and incidents involving Teslas in which one of these technologies was activated have led to a flurry of litigation and regulatory attention. Whether Tesla misled customers into thinking Autopilot and FSD were more reliable than they actually are is being looked into by the Department of Justice and the NHTSA. According to critics, drivers who believe their Tesla can run securely and completely on its own often become complacent or distracted, and often neglect to use manual control when needed.
This hasn't prevented Musk from making the same claims over and over again—and for more than ten years—that Tesla is getting close to having a version of FSD that can function securely without human supervision. He reaffirmed this pledge in October when he unveiled a concept for a two-seater autonomous "Robotaxi" (also known as a "Cybercab") without a steering wheel. Although he acknowledged that he has a tendency "to be a little optimistic with time frames," he predicted that the Tesla model would be in production before 2027 and provided few details about how Tesla would be able to compete with businesses that already have active fleets of autonomous taxis, such as Google subsidiary Waymo.
However, compared to other drivers, Tesla drivers are currently involved in more fatal collisions. Improved safety features "are being countered by distracted driving and higher rates of speed, leading to rising accident and death rates in recent years," Brauer said, referring to the whole automobile industry. An automobile, no matter how well-built, cannot make up for a careless driver.
