| Those figures are not as good as you seem to suggest. First of all. Tesla counts the number of miles for every Tesla being involved in an accident. The other figure you quote is for all miles driven by motor vehicles before getting involved in an accident. Given that accidents tend to involve two or more vehicles the number of miles traveled before an accident involving a Tesla without autopilot or safety measures would be closer to 820.000 miles. In that figure of 479.000 miles commercial traffic is also included. Commercial traffic makes up around 60% of all accidents. We cannot translate this to miles per accident comparable to Tesla, because commercial traffic tends to drive more miles than passenger vehicles do, but there are far less of them, etc. Another big category that needs to be excluded from the general figure is motor cycles, that generous source of donor organs, to make it comparable. Passenger vehicles in general are more safe than the overal figure and thus closer to Tesla's figure. Second point is that Teslas are hardly part of the second hand or n-hand market yet. It is even a question if Tesla will tracks that data in those markets. In those markets you will see more young people as drivers (something to do with income). They are responsible for a majority of the traffic accidents involving passenger vehicles (something to do with tendencies to discount the future and to overestimate their own capabilities). Third point is that the really good figure comes from auto pilot, but that only works in places and under conditions that are already far less accident prone like highways under normal weather conditions. The good news from the figures is that enabling the safety measures make Tesla drivers better drivers: From 1.6 miles to 2.1 miles roughly a 25% increase in miles traveled before an accident. That would lead us in the direction of mandating level-2 automation in all new cars for more safety rather than trying to push for level-5 for some brands. |
You're doing that the wrong way, aren't you?
If 479k is total miles across an average of two cars, then the single-car equivalent, the number you'd compare to the Tesla numbers, is 240k.
It doesn't really make sense to adjust the Tesla numbers to do the comparison, but if you did you'd be doubling them, not halving them.
> We cannot translate this to miles per accident comparable to Tesla, because commercial traffic tends to drive more miles than passenger vehicles do, but there are far less of them, etc.
Neither of those reasons makes them incomparable.