Is Tesla the Most Dangerous Brand on the Road?

­Well, that’s the implication of a bombastic Gizmodo piece, “Tesla’s are Involved in More Fatal Accidents Than Any Other Brand.”

EV crashes make for chilling headlines, and the inference is even worse – that new technology is failing (and killing) us with fiery crashes that burn longer and harder than conventional automotive fires.

Never mind the fact that EVs, in general, are involved in fewer crashes than their gas-powered cousins – about 0.85 crashes per million miles driven vs. 1.02 crashes per million miles. New is always scary, and as we’ll soon find out, accident figures are often lacking in context.

According to an iSeeCars study, while a specific Tesla vehicle – the Model Y – only sports the 7th-most occupant fatalities (with 10.6 cars per billion vehicle miles, 3.7x the national average), the brand, itself, has the highest overall accident rate (5.6 cars per billion vehicle miles).

Of course, this study fails to provide any context – especially since another, contradictory study claims that Tesla has the third-lowest fatal accident rate (from 2017-2022, and of 490 involved in accidents, only 141, or 28.78% suffered fatal injuries).

We’ve all seen the salacious headlines on blistering, seemingly-unquenchable battery fires – while it takes about 700 gallons of water to put out a gas-powered vehicle fire, it can take more than 10x that for EVs, or anywhere from 6,000-13,000 gallons…and that’s to say nothing of the scorching temperatures (up to 5,000°F for EV fires vs. no more than 1,500°F for gas-powered ones).

And that’s not even the extent of it, with the EV batteries posing an electrocution hazard – especially with damaged systems.

But new is scary, and anything that allows (or encourages) motorists to relinquish control to an unfeeling machine – i.e., driver-assistance systems – is even scarier…

…and the latter could, at least partially, explain the higher Tesla accident rates.

A 2022 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) study concluded that Tesla’s accounted for nearly ¾ of all accidents involving advanced driver-assist systems. And a separate Washington Post analysis claimed that, since 2019, Tesla’s Autopilot function was involved in 736 crashes and 17 fatalities.

Note that I said involved not responsible for, since in many of these incidents, the driver ceded complete control to something that isn’t a fully-autonomous system. They took their eyes off the road. Though in other cases, Tesla’s Autopilot did, in fact, fail, on its own.

So it’s hard to pinpoint the exact reason for Tesla’s ignominious accident rate – does the brand simply attract a careless crowd? Or is a design flaw responsible for all the carnage?

As our fleets become increasingly electrified – and autonomous – one would hope that Tesla can figure out a suitable answer.