Tesla Statistics: More accidents with autopilot reported
The Californian electric car maker had for the first time submitted its own accident statistics in October because of allegedly poor coverage of accidents involving Tesla vehicles. According to should be the accident rate of Tesla cars without active autopilot only a quarter of conventional cars. If the autopilot steers, the rate drops to one-seventh. However, in the now published second quarterly report, there is an increased number of car accidents with the Tesla autopilot.
Tesla Safety Report: Accident frequency has risen to the end of the year
According to the safety report, Tesla registered an accident every 2.91 million miles (4.68 million kilometers) in the past quarter of 2018 when driving with the autopilot on. For trips without an autopilot, it was one accident per 1.58 million miles driven. In the third quarter, Tesla had reported one more accident every 3.34 million miles (with autopilot) or every 1.92 million miles. By comparison, on average, there are 436,000 miles in the US (Q3: 492,000).
Tesla vehicles still have far fewer accidents per driven distance than cars on US roads on average, with and without autopilot. Also, the fact that there were more accidents in the months of October to December – as well as in the US average -, there could be a simple explanation: the weather conditions. In autumn and winter, the road conditions are worse because of rain, ice and snow, the accident frequency increases, as pointed out by Electrek.
A true comparison is therefore only possible if Tesla publishes further quarterly reports and the data of comparable three-month periods are available. In May of last year, Tesla boss Elon Musk had opened yet another bill after a fatal accident with a Tesla: 2017 there had been a fatal car accident in the United States on average every 86 million miles. For Tesla, this is the case every 320 million miles. But pushing this rate to zero is not possible, according to Musk via Twitter.
