Tesla Releases Q2 Safety Report, Adds Vehicle Fire Stats

Tesla released this week its Q2 2019 vehicle safety report, which for the first time included stats for vehicle fires. 

“Tesla vehicle fires are exceptionally rare events, and in some cases, there have been zero Tesla vehicle fires in a quarter,” the report said. However, an increase from one fire per quarter to two per quarter represents an increase of 100%, so in order to avoid misinterpretation of the numbers and provide a meaningful comparison to industry data, Tesla says it will publish an update to vehicle fire data annually.

From 2012 – 2018, there has been approximately one Tesla vehicle fire for every 170 million miles traveled, Tesla reported. By comparison, data from the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and U.S. Department of Transportation shows that in the U.S. there is a vehicle fire for every 19 million miles traveled.

In order to provide an apt comparison to NFPA data, Tesla’s data set includes instances of vehicle fires caused by structure fires, arson, and other things unrelated to the vehicle, which account for about 15% of Tesla vehicle fires over this time period.

The safety report also showed that Teslas operating on Autopilot are less likely to get into accidents compared to vehicles not using a self-driving system. 

In Q2, Tesla registered one accident for every 3.27 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot but with active safety features, Tesla registered one accident for every 2.19 million miles driven. For those driving without Autopilot and without active safety features, it registered one accident for every 1.41 million miles driven. For comparison, NHTSA’s data currently stands at one accident for every 498,000 miles driven.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

I wonder when we will find out whether it is safer to use Autopilot, or not, for a given drive?

 

[Daniel in SD]

I wonder when we will find out whether it is safer to use Autopilot, or not, for a given drive?

Determining that would require hiring a good statistician.
I find it highly unlikely that the accident rate of Teslas is 5 times better than the average car. Even if Tesla drivers are the best drivers on earth we still get run into. These stats seem ridiculous.
Also, comparing fire statistics of cars with an average fleet age of about one to two years to ICE vehicles with an average age of 12 years is pretty misleading as well.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Determining that would require hiring a good statistician.
I find it highly unlikely that the accident rate of Teslas is 5 times better than the average car. Even if Tesla drivers are the best drivers on earth we still get run into. These stats seem ridiculous.
Also, comparing fire statistics of cars with an average fleet age of about one to two years to ICE vehicles with an average age of 12 years is pretty misleading as well.

I would be so upset if I worked at Tesla compiling these “statistics.” It seems like such a waste of time to gather all that detailed data and then publish it in a way that eliminates all utility.

As has been said, there are three kinds of lies: lies, d**m lies, and statistics.

Oh well. One day we will find out something useful about Autopilot safety.

 

[F_vo]

Determining that would require hiring a good statistician.
I find it highly unlikely that the accident rate of Teslas is 5 times better than the average car. Even if Tesla drivers are the best drivers on earth we still get run into. These stats seem ridiculous.
Also, comparing fire statistics of cars with an average fleet age of about one to two years to ICE vehicles with an average age of 12 years is pretty misleading as well.

I think using Autopilot is the way to go.
Autosteer I am not so keen on this. It never works as should.


François

 

[patrick80132]

Elon says his vehicles reduced accidents to the point of being much safer than non AP cars. I wonder if that is true if everyone left their car in AP all the time while driving within the parameters of the AP feature if truly there would be less accidents. People can't go to sleep or read a book so I question that fact. Yes, vigilant driving combined with AP is likely safer, but as a stand alone product without driver attention, I'm not so sure.

 

[Hankmancini]

Our middle son's Jeep burst into flames spontaneously while parked in the driveway. Our office manager's T-bird did the same parked at work one day. My perspective is that it is not unusual for gasoline powered cars to catch fire!

My Model 3 sensed me possibly rear- ending the car in front of me in heavy traffic on the 101 and both warned me and began breaking. I probably would have avoided an accident on my own, but was greatful for the automatic response!

 

[Daniel in SD]

but as a stand alone product without driver attention, I'm not so sure.

. Have you used AP? I am 100% sure that I could not go millions of miles without an accident if I wasn't paying attention.

 

[PeterTrs]

. Have you used AP? I am 100% sure that I could not go millions of miles without an accident if I wasn't paying attention.

You are supposed to pay attention while in AP, though that seems to be a rule honoured as much in the breach as in the observance. Neither AP nor AP with Autosteer are FSD, and the current version of FSD is not completely autonomous. However all of them have safety features beyond simple cruise control.

I haven’t seen accident figures for ICE vehicles with cruise control, but I have seen a number of near-miss rear-enders on the highway where the driver was inattentive and almost drove into the car ahead. I would assume that at least some of those involved cruise control. Tesla’s AP is adaptive and slows down or brakes before that happens. There are ICE vehicles out there which can also react to hazardous conditions.

Whether it’s cruise control or AP, where the system is able to adapt to events on the road it is safer than a driver alone. Autosteer (or Lane Following) technologies have a similar effect on safety. Are these technologies better than a rested and attentive driver? Perhaps not - but most drivers at some point drive tired, and most drivers have occasional lapses in attention. These technologies reduce - but do not eliminate - the risk of accident in these cases.

You may dispute the methodology behind the statistics, but in any case we are safer with AP and its additional more advanced technologies than without them.

 

[Daniel in SD]

You may dispute the methodology behind the statistics, but in any case we are safer with AP and its additional more advanced technologies than without them.

I don't think the data proves that Autosteer enabled is safer than Autosteer disabled since they are doing nothing to correct for the conditions under which Autosteer is used.
I do believe that the safety features like forward collision warning, automatic emergency braking and emergency lane departure assist reduce accidents.

 

[M+K.Reeser]

Determining that would require hiring a good statistician.
I find it highly unlikely that the accident rate of Teslas is 5 times better than the average car. Even if Tesla drivers are the best drivers on earth we still get run into. These stats seem ridiculous.
Also, comparing fire statistics of cars with an average fleet age of about one to two years to ICE vehicles with an average age of 12 years is pretty misleading as well.

I would not doubt it my friend. Numbers don't lie like people do. These are 3rd party sources not Tesla's.

 

[Daniel in SD]

I would not doubt it my friend. Numbers don't lie like people do. These are 3rd party sources not Tesla's.

This is Tesla's data. As far as I know they have not released it for independent statistical analysis. I don't question the numbers, I question the methodology and conclusions.

 

[PeterTrs]

I don't think the data proves that Autosteer enabled is safer than Autosteer disabled since they are doing nothing to correct for the conditions under which Autosteer is used.
I do believe that the safety features like forward collision warning, automatic emergency braking and emergency lane departure assist reduce accidents.

At the very least, Autosteer promotes safety in those cases where it is engaged and the driver has a momentary lapse of attention. I expect correction for conditions of use will have little impact on the general result, namely that the automated features promote safer driving. Failures in the automation should be much less frequent than failures in driver attention or ability to drive. While I would welcome a flawless system I don’t believe it’s achievable (entropy rules!), but continuing improvements can bring us closer. Let’s allow ‘good’ while we seek ‘perfect.’

 

[dogphlap]

Just what constitutes an accident ? For a Tesla (using the report's numbers) a motorist averaging 15,000 miles a year would have one accident every 100 years or so while other motorists doing the same in a car that was not a Tesla would go 33 years between accidents. Like all drivers I don't consider myself unsafe but I'm sure my accident rate is higher than those.

 

[dennis]

I'm very happy to see Tesla include the statistics on vehicle fires. It is one of the areas where the mainstream media has been misleading consumers that I raised in my question at the Annual Meeting last month.

 

[daver3]

I would be so upset if I worked at Tesla compiling these “statistics.” It seems like such a waste of time to gather all that detailed data and then publish it in a way that eliminates all utility.

As has been said, there are three kinds of lies: lies, d**m lies, and statistics.

Oh well. One day we will find out something useful about Autopilot safety.

My guess is that autopilot shows fewer accidents because it is used in safer situations like straight away divided highway driving, that's true in my case anyway.

 

[Wol747]

Exactly.

FSD cars are going to have a very big hurdle to overcome unless and until they can be just used. By that I mean one can get into it and dial in a destination which the car will get to regardless of road works, poor mapping, the part of the world you are in, maintenance of the vehicle and so forth. Basically, in other words, until your car comes without manual controls.

Providing the legislators are not taken in by the hubris and hype from the industry (and that's not a given) I cannot see FSD within the next couple of decades if at all.

 

[ZesPK]

Determining that would require hiring a good statistician.
I find it highly unlikely that the accident rate of Teslas is 5 times better than the average car. Even if Tesla drivers are the best drivers on earth we still get run into. These stats seem ridiculous.
Also, comparing fire statistics of cars with an average fleet age of about one to two years to ICE vehicles with an average age of 12 years is pretty misleading as well.

Your answer to your first question lies in your second one. Maybe Tesla drivers aren't better drivers, but Teslas are safer cars and more modern cars, their brakes and tyres amongst others are usually well kept.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Your answer to your first question lies in your second one. Maybe Tesla drivers aren't better drivers, but Teslas are safer cars and more modern cars, their brakes and tyres amongst others are usually well kept.

Yes, so it is hard to understand the thinking behind publishing the data.

The most interesting part of the data is the apparent miles/accident “improvement” over the last two quarters, which one might think is due to active safety improvements. But I started thinking about it, and it looks like most of this is seasonal - hard to say exactly how much until we have a couple years of data. We can try to figure out the seasonal component though.

Note that there is much less apparent seasonal variation on the NHTSA data, most likely because there are so many other causes of accidents other than weather for older cars driven on arbitrary roads, and also due to the way the data is plotted.

Plotting the data with the number of accidents in the denominator rather than the numerator makes things a bit more difficult to see, especially for this seasonal factor.

Flipping things around, the baseline NHTSA data says it’s about 20 accidents per 10 million miles in summer. In winter it goes up to 22 accidents per 10 million miles. The Tesla data for active safety shows about 5 accidents per 10 million miles in the summer, and about 6.25 accidents per 10 million miles in the summer.

So, the increase in winter accident rate seems pretty much in line with normal cars. Relatively little difference in accident rate caused by weather between Teslas and all other vehicles - some, but not proportional to the overall safety difference. Not really surprising.

Anyway, doesn’t look like there is any huge apparent safety improvement signal yet from the rollout of ELDA/LDA. We’ll need to at least see next quarter’s data, so we can compare to last year’s, and a year or two more of data before we can say. It may be there (you can compare Q3 ‘18 to Q2 ‘19, and there may be a little improvement). But we will see.

Obviously there is improvement in general to using active safety features - but whether those active safety features are improving over time is the question.

Anyway, going forward, as long as Tesla continues to not provide useful data, at least we can compare Tesla data to itself (assuming they use consistent methodology), to see whether things are improving.

 

[Wol747]

I haven't been following all this - and I'm not a statistician - but it looks a bit wool-pulling-over statistics.
An important number that always seems to be missed is the number of interventions that may have prevented an accident. No-one can prove how many actually did and how many were unnecessary and I suspect the only way it's ever going to be seen is when (if) FSD is legalised and there are no controls in front of the driver.