Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by pininja 579 days ago
Every Uber I take in a Tesla would practically need an airline safety briefing for this. There’s no way I’d find it on my own.
3 comments

> Every Uber I take in a Tesla would practically need an airline safety briefing for this.

If your Uber ride is a Model Y you may be SOL:

    Not all Model Y vehicles are equipped with a manual release for the rear doors.
How did this even get past the NHTSA/DOT - that has to be illegal. Electrical doors, with no failsafe?
I'm an oligarch an I'm o.k.

I break laws every single day ...

That would be a fantastic idea: sell printed Tesla safety cards in the style of airplane safety cards.
I think it'd be fantastic to not need it in the first place. It is just utterly beyond reason that this is even a thing.
Sorry, I meant “fantastic” in the same sense as the fight club airplane safety cards: for example https://www.etsy.com/listing/1017594442/project-mayhem-fligh...
Yeah. Wonder if this "safety feature" was designed by a Boeing contractor?

It'd be on-par for them, or at least the MCAS designers.

Cancel and rebook (another brand).
They've had huge pushes to add EVs to their network, which is great but this means it’s an increasingly likely for someone to get stuck. I’d include these instructions in their in-app safety center if I were them…
Wouldn’t the average car safety be significantly below a Tesla Model Y anyway?
Tesla has the highest fatality rate, so that is ruled out! :)

Secondly, it is the coupling of electronic controls with unintuitive manual backups that create the danger.

> Tesla has the highest fatality rate, so that is ruled out! :)

Do you have a source? Genuinely interested. From the little reading I've done Tesla seem to have put quite a bit of thought in to making their cars perform well in crash tests so it seems surprising that they'd have a high fatality rate.

"Tesla Has Highest Fatal Accident Rate of All Auto Brands: Study" (2024)

https://autos.yahoo.com/tesla-highest-fatal-accident-rate-16...

Interesting quote from that piece:

> The study's authors make clear that the results do not indicate Tesla vehicles are inherently unsafe or have design flaws. In fact, Tesla vehicles are loaded with safety technology; the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) named the 2024 Model Y as a Top Safety Pick+ award winner, for example. Many of the other cars that ranked highly on the list have also been given high ratings for safety by the likes of IIHS and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, as well.

> So, why are Teslas — and many other ostensibly safe cars on the list — involved in so many fatal crashes? “The models on this list likely reflect a combination of driver behavior and driving conditions, leading to increased crashes and fatalities,” iSeeCars executive analyst Karl Brauer said in the report. “A focused, alert driver, traveling at a legal or prudent speed, without being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, is the most likely to arrive safely regardless of the vehicle they’re driving.”

Isn’t it missing the death aspect ?
The analysis you refer to isn’t super interesting as it’s not controlled.

You’d need to be able to prove that independent safety and crash testing organisations are pushing out faulty results, since Teslas are among the safest (if not the safest) cars by their standards.

That statistic is not controlling for the drivers. It's interesting, but it may be biased by who buys Tesla and how they drive. Similar to likely "cars with aggressive custom paint jobs have higher fatality rate".
Doesn’t matter if you’re getting in someone else’s car.
Maybe. Taxi drivers have different incentives/experience/routes than the other population. It may apply to them, or not. For ride share, the choice of Tesla may have been mainly economical for them.
I would still favour the car that has good crash test safety scores and AI powered safety features that work relatively well according to independent tests, over the random taxi.

But otherwise I agree, the door opening mechanism should be improved.