Tesla’s Vice President of Vehicle Engineering has pushed back against recent claims about the company’s safety record, defending the automaker’s reputation for producing some of the safest vehicles on American roads.
iSeeCars published a study claiming Tesla vehicles had the highest rate of fatal accidents among all car brands.
The report specifically highlighted the Model Y and Model S as being among what it considered the most dangerous vehicles, citing a fatal accident rate of 5.6 per billion miles compared to the industry average of 2.8.
Lars Moravy, Tesla’s VP of Vehicle Engineering, took to X to challenge these findings. “Fatal accidents are tragic – we aim to avoid them, safety 1st,” he wrote, suggesting the study’s methodology was flawed, particularly regarding its per-mile calculations.
Moravy pointed out that Tesla’s Model Y and Model 3 have accumulated significant real-world mileage – over 7 billion and 19 billion miles respectively in the U.S.
The iSeeCars study based its findings on data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Fatality Analysis Reporting System, examining vehicles from model years 2018-2022.
However, the study’s own executive analyst, Karl Brauer, acknowledged that the vehicles in question, including Teslas, had received excellent safety ratings from both the IIHS and NHTSA.
Brauer suggested that the higher fatality rates likely stemmed from driver behavior and road conditions rather than vehicle design.
Tesla’s safety credentials are well-documented. In 2021, the Model Y earned the NHTSA’s five-star safety rating, joining Tesla’s entire vehicle lineup with this distinction.
The NHTSA’s own research has indicated that Tesla vehicles are among the least likely to be involved in accidents.
Furthermore, the Model Y has consistently earned the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s Top Safety Pick Plus designation since 2021, maintaining this status even after the organization strengthened its testing criteria.
Tesla maintains transparency about its safety record through quarterly vehicle safety reports and maintains a dedicated webpage detailing its vehicles’ safety features and achievements.
