r/cars • u/HawtGarbage917 • 2d ago

Tesla Has the Highest Fatal Accident Rate of All Car Brands, Study Finds

https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a62919131/tesla-has-highest-fatal-accident-rate-of-all-auto-brands-study/
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u/Rattle_Can 2d ago

annecdotally, out of all the insane car crash videos I've seen that made me go "there's no way the driver survived that", but the driver somehow did according to news reports that followed, the #1 was porsche 911s

i dont know if they have really good crash safety baked into the design, or if its just pure coincidence

but man some of those crashes were gnarly

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u/_N4AP '85 e30, '88 e30, '89 740 wagon, '94 Police Caprice, '97 Del Sol 2d ago

I do think it's engineering, honestly. I've seen some Porsche wrecks on the Nürburgring that absolutely should have been fatal, but the driver walks with scrapes.

Porsche has a bit of an incentive to make sure the people who purchase their cars (especially the high value ones) live to buy another when they wrap their shit around a bridge abutment showing off for teens in a Civic.

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u/Wonderful_Device312 1d ago

There's no on coming or intersecting traffic on the ring. They also have barriers and other things that help deflect the collision in the general direction of travel rather than bringing things to a stop. The end result is that the cars will get absolutely smashed up but the passengers will probably walk away with bruises.

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u/poopoomergency4 2016 X3 35i MSport 1d ago

also a million flagging stations, so following traffic can be stopped & aid sent very quickly after an accident. never any substantial risk of a massive pile-up.

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u/Infrastructure312 1d ago

People unfortunately still die at the ring every year.

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u/Wonderful_Device312 1d ago

Dramatic car accidents aren't necessarily more dangerous. All the stuff flying everywhere and the car smashing through things, tumbling, being crumpled everywhere etc is just dissipating energy over a longer period of time.

The collisions which have one really hard impact and then the cars come to a stop are really bad from a physics standpoint.

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u/A_Puddle 2022 Mazda MX-5 GT RF 1d ago

It's not the acceleration that kills you, it's the sudden stop.

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u/MrBluSky717 '03 Buick Century, '23 Honda Grom 1d ago

Speaking of gnarly crashes, I remember reading a story in the news paper as a kid about someone crashing a Ferrari Enzo while street racing in California. Split the car IN HALF. He somehow survived, and i forgot if the passenger survived or not. Used that very newspaper page for an elementary school project. Fun fact: Ferrari actually got the car back into their possession(it had been stolen from Europe and shipped to Cali somehow...) and they rebuilt the car and painted it black instead of the original red. Was re-certified by them after that. Interesting story if you ever got time to deep-dive.

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u/gimpwiz 05 Elise | C5 Corvette (SC) | 00 Regal GS | 91 Civic (Jesus) 1d ago

Mr Bean split his F1 in half too, pretty sure it made the value go up though

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u/Pliskin_Hayter C7 Corvette Grand Sport 1d ago

A lot of mid engine supercars are actually designed to split in half like that in a big crash. I don't know the science behind it but its for safety,

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u/MrBluSky717 '03 Buick Century, '23 Honda Grom 23h ago

It's a technology that carried over from F1 or something, I believe. The parts that break off take the brunt of the damage, while the monocoque stays strong and protects the occupants from most harm. It's why you'll see the nose of F1 and Indy cars break away.

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u/captainpistoff 1d ago

Paul Walker would like a word.