A nice confirmation from NHTSA - SAFETY !

Hey where was the data on Tesla safety? After all this blog has been big on specs for everything else. I claimed that electrics in general are safer and they are. In particular my latest brand of EV - Tesla.

Basically NHTSA has given the Tesla Model 3 it's best crash rating ever by probability of injury.  Electrek and Tesla have the figures below.

electrek.co tesla-model-3-lowest-probability-of-injury-nhtsa

Tesla - Model 3 lowest probability injury...

Now one thing about the best 50 cars NHSTA injury graph shown in the articles is the Y axis for percentage of injuries across the 50 best cars is blown up a bit ranging from best - Tesla Model 3 at ~5.8% up to  ~ 8.1 % The mean of the worst 40 in the graph appears to be around 8%. These are the top performers but only Tesla in the top 3 positions for safety is broken out by name.  Still a 25% reduction in injury over the pack of safest cars #11-50 is pretty impressive considering the first 3 of the ten are Tesla and then I would guess Volvo + some very high end cars for #4-10.

Now let's look at the figures from Tesla on crashes per mile.

Tesla q3-2018-vehicle-safety-report

Here's the meat:

Here’s a look at the data we’re able to report for Q3:

• Over the past quarter, we’ve registered one accident or crash-like event for every 3.34 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged.
• For those driving without Autopilot, we registered one accident or crash-like event for every 1.92 million miles driven. By comparison, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) most recent data shows that in the United States, there is an automobile crash every 492,000 miles. While NHTSA’s data includes accidents that have occurred, our records include accidents as well as near misses (what we are calling crash-like events).

Basically a Tesla has a 25% chance of crash without autopilot vs the overall rate of crash per mile of all US cars for Q3 2018.  We'll see if these figures hold up for Winter....
So 1 (Tesla US) in 4 (All US) crashes for the same mileage. Cool eh? That's WITHOUT autopilot.
With autopilot that goes down further 1 Tesla crash vs 7 general crashes for the same miles driven.
Then if you are in a crash, injury rate is under 6% vs 8% for the safest cars as shown.

My choice of car is an Electric Vehicle rated best for safety on the planet.  If my health was half as good.