Featured Teslas crash more than gas-powered cars—Here’s why

A video already posted here clearly shows it hitting the aforementioned blue car. Which, according to the newsreader, had already slid and took out a fire hydrant and electrical box, prompting the call that brought the fire truck.

But now I have a clue of whose "Ignore" list I am on back on.

 

You won't see a reason for teslas crashing more, because they actually crash less.

If you want a reason why rental teslas have higher repair costs, it is fairly simple. They rent standard and long range model 3s, and model Ys. The standard range is RWD and fast, the Long range model 3 and Y are AWD and faster. RWD can act differently than a fwd, but I doubt that is it and the AWD models steer really wherever you point them. It is likely the driver not paying attention and going too fast. Its pretty easy in these cars. The acceleration is nearly instantaneous so there isn't the lower acceleration at the beginning that most ICE cars have. It takes a little getting used to, but there is chill mode that retards the acceleration.

Its never the 4wd or AWD that gets you in the ditch, its the driver going in conditions that they don't understand or that are too bad to drive. I live in a place it rarely snows, and when it does people don't know how to drive. Those of us that do often don't drive to avoid being hit. During snopacalypse here a couple of years ago few were on the road, and the tesla's AWD system easy to adjust speed, and weight allowed me to make grocery runs for friends that couldn't get out.

 

4/AWD allows certain newbies to find and get to ditches they couldn't reach with 2WD. And allows them to get deeper into other ditches than 2WD can go.

I had a job interview in Dallas a bit over forty years ago, during severe December weather up here that, on the way to my home airport, had me evading a freezing slush spinout that started in the adjacent lane barely in front of me, and required several maneuvers to avoid. After the spinner came to a stop, facing me in my lane, I provided blocking cover until she could turn around and continue on her way.

Arriving at DFW where a driver picked up a van full of fellow interview candidates, my first reaction was of most drivers using a very 'spirited' driving style that would have had them in the ditch within a few blocks back home.

One of my interviewers was a Minnesota native, and we compared winter notes. During his first Texas snowfall, he had driven to work as normal, noting how few cars were on the road and how many in the ditch, but otherwise not thinking much of it until getting to work and discovering the building door locked. Then he turned on the radio to discover that everything was closed.

In flatlands without undercarriage-dragging snow depths, tires and driver are nearly always more important than vehicle choice. But on the climbing sides of our mountain passes, it is common for traffic to temporarily stop. When traffic begins moving again up the 5% slopes, numerous 2WDs with open differentials and less than winter-ready tires are commonly unable to re-start moving forward, creating roadblocks. (Commercial trucks are even worse, hence their earlier chain requirement.) Such 2WDs are really "worst 1 out of 2 wheels", so when any 1 drive wheel finds an extra-slick spot, or an uneven surface that partially unweights any drive wheel, it is stuck. For 4/AWDs, it takes the same problem happening to each axle before it gets similarly stuck. While this does happen to them too, within the regular icy road width it starts happening much later. Around that time, the DOT and State Patrol typically close the whole road, though it usually gets closed earlier for "multiple spinouts and collisions".

 

More nonsense, her license should be revoked:


I've Driven Tons of EVs. My First Time Driving a Tesla Was Still Difficult.

 

A Prius has an open differential, but starting in 2004 it has traction control that can brake the worst wheel, achieving the same thing a limited-slip differential meant to achieve. Isn't that a pretty common feature across car models these days?

 

It and vehicle stability control have been mandatory in the US since 2012MY.

 

My point was its not the 4wd or Awd or electric All wheel drive that causes it, its the drivers. Its like saying hammers cause injuries because people that don't know how to use them it there fingers.

Yep. Offices and schools close not because the snow is that bad, its the drivers are clueless on how to drive in it. I got my dual motor not because of driving in snow, but because we often have severe thunderstorms, and it helps with traction. Still I see some people going fast (still slower than normal but way to fast for conditions). I often see them off the road further up.

 

"This felt weird at first, but I got used to it quickly. So much so that when I got back into my Subaru five days later, I walked out of the car while it was still running".

I have to confess, twice, when getting out of my son's Kia Optima, I pushed the Start button to turn off the engine, but forgot to put the car in park! Twice, when I've let go of the brake, I was going Wth the car is moving??? (slight slope at home).

Both my Model 3 and Prime switches to Park when turned off. Some habit are more easy to break than others lol.

 

it is odd that you can shut the suburu off in neutral. even the old keyed ignitions didn't allow that

 

When 2WDs stepped up with TCS, so did the 4WDs, so it would seem the performance gap persists, just shifting the threshold for changing the "Traction Tire Required" warning to "Chains Required (except 4WD)". Though here on the less-salted West Coast, there is still a large legacy population of non-TCS vehicles.

This century, enforcement practices have also shifted, with drastically fewer proactive chain checkpoints (though one did appear on local news last week), and a more reactive pattern of issuing citations to those who find themselves crashed or stuck without proper equipment and unable to flee ahead of approaching officers. The same news item indicated 270 such citations in an unknown but short period on Snoqualmie Pass.

In actual practice, the posting thresholds are such that experienced winter drivers with sufficient tires can flagrantly violate the postings with little risk of citation. I'm guessing roughly half the driver-tire combinations have any business being out on our passes during winter difficulties (higher on Stevens, lower on Snoqualmie). It is the other half that cause the great bulk of the road closures, especially the bottom couple percent of them.

 

Ours always have (except Prius), even the non-Subarus.

Oh wait, they have manual transmissions ...

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A local carjacker was very recently foiled and caught because his hostage victim-driver slowed the car at an intersection and jumped out, and the perp was unable to take over driving of the stick shift.

 

You can totally shut off key ignition car, with automatic, while in neutral. At least it was so with the cars I tried it with. The key lock won't let you remove the key when the car isn't in Park though.

 

In the early 90's I was told by a Big Rig triples driver about how he'd run Donner Pass while chains were required. The vocabulary might not be obvious to many, but it was an interesting sentence I'll never forget. Went something like, " I was pulling a triple (3, 28 foot pup trailers ) over Donner with a single screw ( single drive axle tractor ), barefoot".
I'll bet he was glad when he got to the bottom that he wasn't in the % that caused a closure.

 

Shutting off the engine outside of Park, whether in neutral or not, is an essential toolbox item for dealing with several of theoretical problems, including the alleged runaway engines in Toyotas a decade ago, and Audi 5000s in the 1980s.

Stick shift drivers can nearly instantly disengage engine from wheels by simply hitting the clutch (BTDT). Non-stick drivers need other tools.

 

I'm suspecting that also illustrates how quickly CalTrans restricts Tahoe-area roads, which very likely have a greater portion of ill-prepared drivers and vehicles than even our Snoqualmie Pass. The mere fact that he got that 'barefoot single-screw triple' up at all, means conditions weren't really so bad that time. He should have had many more braking axles on the downhill, so that part was (potentially!!) not such a big deal.

I've had several encounters with CalTrans chain checkpoints besides the time my Subaru was waved through Donner Pass in unseasonably early snow, despite having worn summer tires, while nearly everyone else was being turned back. Back in our working days, the spouse frequently booked fly / car rental trips for Tahoe-area ski vacations. The California side would have chain requirements and checkpoints on roads not needing such up here. The Nevada side was -- whatever, we trust you to use your own judgement.

 

It's: The car's capability vs. how this affects the driver psychologically.

For an example, when braking on ice, an AWD/4WD vehicle and a 2WD vehicle are going to react the same or about the same. So if the driver drives either vehicle the same way he or she would the other vehicle (the same speeds, the same turning radii, the same rates of deceleration, etc.) the chances of getting into an accident would be the same in either.

But! the car with AWD/4WD has superior acceleration. So it can accelerate approximately twice the rate than the 2WD vehicle on snow and ice. Mentally the driver feels the road to be less slippery in an AWD or 4WD vehicle than in a 2WD. If he or she feels it's less slippery then there's a greater chance he or she will naturally feel inclined to drive faster and wait to decelerate closer to the stop sign or traffic light than if he or she had been driving a 2WD vehicle.

It's as if every time you accelerate in a 2WD vehicle the vehicle tells you, "Hey! It's pretty slick out. See, you can't hardly get up to speed. SO, imagine how hard it will be to get back down to a stop or turn around on a corner." But the AWD/4WD vehicle will tell the driver "You're accelerating pretty well, so it must not be that slippery out."

(There's a similar situation between driving on neighborhood streets and driving on the highway, again due to needing to accelerate often or not).

While dry pavement is a totally different animal compared to snow and ice, I feel there must be a similarity here. If you floor it and your car and it takes 16 minutes to reach 60mph, chances are you're not going to be flying along above the speed limit all that often. You still could, but it's not all that likely.

But if you can go from 0 to 60mph in 3 seconds, then the chances of you wanting to drive closer to the edge of the ability of your car in other aspects must be higher.

 

Aren't the brakes of the extra trailers connected?

 

Yes, they are supposed to be. One drive axle for this particular triple-trailer case, 8-ish brake axles.

 

For inexperienced winter drivers using acceleration traction as their only guide, this is certainly a problem. Successful winter drivers take in a lot more clues, independent of AWD.

In my experience, most successful winter drivers are generally not the same drivers using the '0 to 60 in 3 seconds' feature in summer. Or even 10 seconds.

 

Exactly!

Although in practice, I feel that there is still a majority of drivers, even experienced with years of driving in the snow, that don't quite get it (me cringing as a friend in his Subaru came rolling through town 5 mph above the 35mph speed limit on snowpack with me in the passenger seat). Every year the first snow falls end up with the greatest amount of crashes. Then most people get it for a while until the next winter comes.

I was comparing summer drivers with slow cars and quick cars to winter drivers with 2WD and AWD.

You take a young driver who was previously driving a Honda Fit he got to go to college. He finally makes enough money to get himself a nice new car. So he opts for a Tesla Model Y with the performance package. His chances of crashing his Tesla Model Y are what compared to crashing his Honda Fit?