Comment by dotancohen
1 day ago
> Tesla doesn't have a great record anyways.
If I'm not mistaken, and please somebody correct me if I am mistaken, Teslas meet or exceed the absolute highest safety regulations in the US and in Europe.
1 day ago
> Tesla doesn't have a great record anyways.
If I'm not mistaken, and please somebody correct me if I am mistaken, Teslas meet or exceed the absolute highest safety regulations in the US and in Europe.
They have the highest rate of fatal accidents across all car brands, more than double the average.
https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a62919131/tesla-has-highes...
Your link is to an article that references an iSeeCars study from two years ago. They got their crash data from NHTSA FARS, but got their mileage data from sales of used cars on their platform. At the time I noticed some issues with their mileage data.[1] It's very likely that Teslas sold on their platform have very low mileage compared to average, because people either sell a car quickly after buying it, or they hang on to it for years. This also lines up with the fact that the other cars in their unsafe list were all released recently.
Working backwards from their stats & FARS data, I calculated that for their claims to be true, each Model Y would need to accumulate only 4,300 miles per year. This is far below Tesla's reports of 13,000-14,000 miles per year. Also iSeeCars claimed that an average of 2.8 vehicles were involved in fatal accidents for every billion miles traveled. But at the time the US had 13.3 deaths per billion miles traveled. So for their data to be correct, the average fatal accident would need to have five fatalities.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42209142
LendingTree's own research has Tesla in the lead for worst drivers and highest fatality rate, updated for 2026.
https://www.lendingtree.com/insurance/brand-incidents-study/
Your comment is—at best—misleading. See the last two paragraphs of the article:
> The study's authors make clear that the results do not indicate Tesla vehicles are inherently unsafe or have design flaws.... 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....
> “The models on this list likely reflect a combination of driver behavior and driving conditions, leading to increased crashes and fatalities”....
could be that Tesla making fans believe their level 2 driving automation is better than it actually is and marketing BS terms like Autopilot and FSD contributing to the fatal accident stat. even if the car itself is rated safe by IIHS, isn't that mostly about how well driver and passenger of the car fare when they are involved in different types of accidents? the safety rating wouldn't take into account whether the manufacturer has done its best to accurately communicate capability of its driving automation system to its customers. and i think pedestrian or passengers of other cars dying is counted under the fatal accident stat.
and if you've been in Teslas that are a few years old, you might have experienced phantom braking. random hard braking for no apparent reason. i try to avoid being behind Teslas on the road if i can help it.
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You forgot to point out which part of the comment was misleading
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Yes. Tesla don't make bad cars. Elon makes people believe things that aren't true. It's the later that causes the statistic.
Safety of a car is a different axis than safety of the driver. That combines them. Related, it's why performance cars have higher insurance rates: people who buy fast cars go fast.
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The fatality rate of an accident includes all parties involved. Most often when a Tesla hits someone, it kills the other guy, since it's basically an ultra-dense block of mass that can do 0 to 60 in 3.5 seconds, very quietly and without launch control[1]. Teslas are incredibly safe for the people inside the Tesla.
[1]Lots of other cars have technically faster times than Teslas, but most of them require launch control, good tires, and sound like the engine's about to explode. You can floor the Tesla at any time and the software will deliver however much power it can without slipping.
i think some self selecting populations are skewed.
i remember reading about the first cobra in the 60's, where a huge percentage of the owners didn't live to make the second payment.
This is silly. I bought my Model Y specifically because its safety is so high. You can see it in (1) the crash rate numbers when using FSD, (2) the crash-test ratings are fantastic, and (3) impossible situations where people survived such as plummeting off a cliff on route 1.
The cybertruck remains banned in most of Europe because it does not meet standards for pedestrian safety.
https://autoedgeview.com/ev-reviews/europe-cybertruck-ban-ex...
Sure, so is the RAM 5500 and many, many other vehicles that are legal in the US and not the rest of the world.
This just says vehicles in the US have lower safety requirements than other countries, which is need to nobody.
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Perhaps you should look at pedestrian fatality statistics in both the US and the EU. One is rapidly rising and one is falling year on year. I wonder which is which.
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Like the people who get trapped in case of accident when the electricity fail and is burned inside?
Every Tesla ever made has a door release that doesn't require any electricity.
The discovery of which is an exercise left for the participant in this exciting escape room on wheels.
https://vsp.virginia.gov/virginia-state-police-trooper-rescu...
And 14 others - that I'm aware of - to date.
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I own a 2023 model 3. The rear door releases are behind the door panel, apparently used for production, and not accessible to rear passengers. The front doors are double paned but the rears aren't. So I can only open the front doors but not bash out the window and the reverse in the back. Fun little puzzle I have to deal with if I get in a bad accident with my child.
I could just punch a hole in the door and route it, as many have done, but it has no child lock integration which could be problematic.
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And no one ever found it in a crash. The door release is also only accessible from the inside which means people on the outside cannot open the door to help unconscious passengers.
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That may be so, but these are two very different things:
[has X]
[has X designed, built, and visible in the car such that it can be easily found and operated whilst panicking for your life, or rushing from outside while trying to save a trapped passenger's life]
There are people who would tell you that while Tesla may have the first, it does not have the latter, but they cannot because they are dead, and should not be.
Damn that's exactly what happened recently to someone here, it seems to be a recurring thing, a safer battery technology will probably fix that later
A billionaire died in one that went into the water: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68622898
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Maybe there should be a standard for that.
EU safety regs are pass/fail - there's no sources stating Tesla have exceeded anything there, they need to pass in order to be sold in Europe, so they've done whatever the minimum required is for that. To do so, they've needed to make numerous compromises & changes to their cars to make them fit for the EU market - notably no FSD. Hardly indicative of a car brand that exceeds anything.
As for US safety standards, that seems a lower bar...
That falls under the purview of my phrasing "meet or exceed the absolute highest safety regulations in the US and in Europe". They meet European regulations and exceed US regulations.
> falls under the purview of
Yup I wasn't making out that your statement was technically incorrect, just irrelevant.
Europe requires removal of FSD. US safety standards "seems a lower bar"
Quite ironic.
Isn’t FSD fully allowed in the Netherlands?
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There is a large situation happening about their doors.
The manual override is not obvious and people have burned to death in crashes because they could not get the door open after the power went down.
The manual override is so obvious that half my passengers use it instead of the button.
The “Cybertruck” (ffs …) is not legal in the EU due to safety regulations, so I would say that you are mistaken.
It's not legal because it's unsafe for pedestrians, not for people inside the car.
That still seems like the kind of safety we should care about
Interesting POV
So, it's unsafe.
Bloody euros caring about all the potential victims of an accident
So we agree, it's unsafe
And yet, here's one in Poland, which is in EU: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nfMEz8eJZc
I personally saw one in Krakow, Poland.
Cybertruck does not have EU homologation so Tesla can't sell it in EU. Because at the moment they don't want to.
You can buy it, import it and certify for legal use. It requires minor modifications but is perfectly legal.
No its not 'perfectly legal' in the context the original comment was made.
Its not allowed to be sold to the mass market in Europe. The import law is something different.
That feels like it's much more "by design" than "cannot meet regulations".
Immaterial to the original claim.
“We designed the Tesla Deathtrap 300 to explicitly break any regulations regarding danger to human life”
Says more about the EU than about the Cybertruck.
What, that the EU cares about the effects of products on people other than the purchaser?
That things which are good for an individual but bad for everyone else deserve scrutiny?
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Stupid Europeans (and Australians) for protecting pedestrians, what a bunch of woke pussies ?
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They make cars that are very safe from a testing protocol perspective, but cars that might also fall off their performance cliff quicker in some real world scenarios where the energy input is just a tad higher.
They engineer to robustly pass tests, seemingly without a lot of consideration of "beyond" the test. It's not uncommon for most OEMs to target the test metrics, but you can still make design choices along the way where you may recognize with EJ when there is a "design cliff" and you may avoid it.. if desired.
Test metrics are just plain silly. For example, if your car emits 100 ppm of some gas, it is illegal to drive it. If it emits 99 ppm, it's good to go!
They're bang-bang functions, which aren't very smart.
OK so we allow a car with 100ppm to go. Ok now my car is 101ppm that should be fine too right? How about 105ppm? Where is the actual limit?
In reality, when you're getting close to 99ppm you start getting "borderline" notices on your MoT that you should look into this before your car ends up in the failure zone.
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Well, while I agree, they have been incredibly useful in improving car safety. Cars used to be death traps. Now, most people will be able to walk away from most car accidents. Modern car safety, especially on the restraints and bags side, is incredible.
My first comment was just meant to highlight why* a certain car might pass all tests but have more injuries in real life. Another reason could be the nature of Tesla accidents, with people either driving silly or people sleeping in the car while it drives itself into a wall, e.g.
Euro NCAP rated the 2025 Tesla Model S Autopilot system only "Moderate" for assisted driving. So instead of repeating vague Tesla marketing claims, how about naming the specific regulations and providing actual evidence?