How safe is a Tesla?

Very safe as it turns out.

When most of us buy a car, our priorities tend to focus on looks, features, comfort, mileage and perhaps above all, price. We don’t typically think about safety assuming that all new cars are safe, right? They all have seatbelts of course. They all have airbags. So could the safety of differing car models really vary that much? Yes, as it turns out.

Years ago my wife Jeannie and I bought a Toyota Prius. Then we bought a second Prius. We bought them because we had owned Toyotas before, we liked the idea that they got great gas mileage and their emissions were so low as to be considered to be zero emission vehicles. Of course we assumed they were quite safe as well. After all, Jeannie had been t-boned in our 2008 Camry and it did a good (not great) job of protecting her. As electric vehicles began to appear, I was interested but the range was not great. Then Tesla began shipping models with sufficient range. I also liked the idea that a Tesla was basically a computer with wheels. That they could improve the car with over-the-air software updates was very appealing. After all, my MacBook Pro, iPad and iPhone all are improved in the same way. We decided that our next vehicles were going to be all-electric and most likely Teslas unless of course some other more compelling vehicle came along. If you’d asked me six months ago if we would be getting a new car any time soon I would have said no.

Then one evening a few months ago Jeannie told me that she had almost been in what would have been a very serious car accident on the way home from work. She was stopped at a red light when a large pickup truck coming from the opposite direction at high speed was drifting out of its lane. She quickly moved her Prius as far to the right as she could and then hit the horn. The large pickup truck swerved at the last second. If that truck had hit Jeannie head-on, Jeannie might not have survived the accident. Car crashes are actually the leading cause of death in the United States among people ages 1 to 54. Texas (where we live) has more fatal accidents per year than any other state almost certainly due to the fact that Texas is one of the most populous states in the US and has more miles of roads than any other state. I realized that if she were injured or killed in a car accident, the money we would have otherwise spent on a safer car, wouldn’t matter.

I decided that the thing I wanted in a car for Jeannie was one that would keep her safe. I knew she wanted a Tesla and I had heard that the Tesla Model Y was good in terms of safety. I just didn’t know at the time how safe it was. If you read my post about it, you know how carefully I planned to surprise her for Christmas and how that ultimately turned out. If you haven’t read it, I won’t spoil it for you. After picking up her new car, I started watching lots of YouTube videos and reading articles about the Tesla Model Y. I was somewhat surprised to find that Tesla makes exceptionally safe cars.

For example, the National Highway Safety Traffic Administration or NHSTA (which is part of the United States Department of Transportation) rates the 2023 Tesla Model Y as a top safety pick, giving it a 5 out of 5 in every crash test category. The Institute for Highway Safety is an organization supported by the insurance industry. They too do crash safety testing and gave the 2023 Tesla Model Y a top rating in all their crashworthiness tests. Part of what makes the Tesla very safe is its airbag deployment. I’ll bet right now you’re thinking that surely airbags are all basically the same, aren’t they? I thought that as well. It turns out they are not. Most cars have a weight sensor that tells them whether or not someone is sitting in a seat so they can fire the airbag or not. They use the amount of weight to take an educated guess as to the size of the passenger. While that sounds reasonable, it’s not optimal. Women for example are 17% more likely to die in a crash accident because most airbags do not protect them as well as they protect men. What does Tesla do differently? A Tesla’s seats have sensors in them that not only give them data about your weight but also your size and exactly how you are sitting in your seat. That allows them to decide how to deploy the airbags and to do so in a way that is safer for you based on that extra data. Tesla airbags appear to be much safer than your typical airbags.

The motor or motors in a Tesla are in line with the front and back axles. Because they don’t have a big engine up front, they instead have a front trunk (called a frunk) that acts as a crumple zone which helps to distribute energy in a frontend accident. Along with the motors, the batteries are in the bottom of the car making a Tesla (and many other EVs) bottom heavy which means they are less likely to rollover in an accident.

In January of 2023, a Model Y with two adults and two small children went off a 250 foot cliff near San Francisco. When first responders arrived and saw the car at the bottom of the cliff, they understandably assumed that everyone was almost certainly dead.

As it turns out, almost miraculously, the two children were unharmed and the adults had suffered minor injuries.

What about car fires though? Electric vehicles have lots of batteries and you’ve probably heard stories about them catching fire. Just tonight we watched a video about a Jaguar EV that caught fire while in the garage of its owner doing extensive damage to the house. Does driving a Tesla mean we are at greater risk of a fire? No. In fact, Teslas are 10X less likely than average to catch fire when compared to all other vehicles. That’s a surprising and amazing statistic.

All of these findings of course have only made me feel even better about my decision to buy Jeannie a Tesla Model Y. In fact, a few weeks after we took delivery of Jeannie’s White, 7 seat Tesla Model Y, we took delivery of mine. I bought a 2023 Tesla Model Y in Metallic Grey in the 5 seat configuration.

So why is it that Teslas are so safe? Surely it’s not by accident (no pun intended), right? It’s not. As it turns out, Tesla has made it clear that safety is the number one priority. It’s more important than performance or anything else for that matter. Why is that? Tesla has not provided an explanation but I speculate that it has to do with the Full Self Driving Mode of their Autopilot feature. While not perfect, I have watched several videos on YouTube made by people who took long road trips using it. In most cases the driver only had to take over briefly once or twice during the trip. That’s impressive. Of course we have all heard about a few Tesla autopilot crashes. The most famous was a Tesla in Florida that ran into a tracker trailer that crossing the road killing the driver and passenger. The trailer was white, it was a cloudy day and the software could not tell the difference between the sky and the trailer. In Tesla’s defense, the driver was not paying attention and they make it clear that when using Autopilot, you are required to pay attention. Tesla took the data from that accident, fixed the Autopilot and issued an over-the-air update to all Teslas. Today Tesla makes sure your hands are on the steering wheel every 30 seconds and turns off the Full Self-Driving Mode if you don’t take the wheel. Tesla’s motivation appears to be the desire to convince customers that the cars as so safe that they can trust the Full Self-Driving Mode feature. In a video I watched, the narrator pointed out that when elevators were updated with automatic controls allowing a passenger to push a button rather than rely on a person whose job it was to control the elevator, people were concerned about safety. We don’t think twice about elevator safety today. As a side note, when compared by deaths per mile, elevators are the safest form of mechanized travel. In addition to Tesla, several other companies (Apple, Google, Waymo and others) are working on their own self-driving technology. Decades from now it’s likely that all vehicles will be self-driving because a computer has far more information than a human driver and can make better decisions faster. If you don’t believe this, watch the video Google has on YouTube that show just how much their self-driving car computers can see.

Computers aren’t perfect but they don’t drive drunk, distracted or get sleep-deprived. When all vehicles are self-driving, traffic lights will no longer be necessary because the vehicles will be able to communicate to adjust their relative speeds allowing them to pass through intersections without reducing their speed much.

It doesn’t matter how inexpensive your car is, how nice it looks, how good the mileage is or how much you like its features if it does not sufficiently protect you in an accident. Most cars are significantly safer than cars were 20 years ago. Teslas just happen to be exceptionally safe and that makes the investment Jeannie and I have made buying two of them more than worth it. If you’re considering a Tesla, let me know and I’ll send you a referral code for a $500 discount.