- 95 people appear to have died as a result of Teslas that caught fire or were using Autopilot.
- Autopilot-related deaths have increased since the company expanded its Tesla Full Self-Driving beta.
- Tesla says Autopilot cars are involved in 0.2 crashes per million miles, versus a 1.5 US average.
Tesla has won some praise for pushing electric and self-driving vehicles to new heights — but its cars have also been involved in hundreds of deaths.
According to the Tesla Deaths database, which cites news articles as well as reports from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a total of 393 people have died in incidents involving a Tesla.
That figure largely consists of pileups, DUIs, medical emergencies, and other collisions that could’ve occurred in any Tesla models.
But as many as 95 people have died in Teslas that either caught fire or were using the Autopilot feature, according to reports collated by the online database. That’s nearly 1 in every 4 deaths involving Elon Musk’s EV brand.
Based on an analysis of NHTSA data from 2019, the Washington Post reported that in a total of 736 crashes involving Tesla’s autopilot feature, 17 people died, although that excludes older cases, those from outside the US, and some reports that can’t be found in the NHTSA’s most recent data.
The Tesla Deaths database suggests 35 people have died in incidents involving Tesla’s Autopilot.
Jeff Gritchen/Digital First Media/Orange County Register via Getty Images
In 2016, the first known fatality linked to a self-driving car took place when a Tesla Model S failed to stop and crashed into a semitrailer truck.
In a 2019 incident in Indiana, a 23-year-old woman was killed after her husband’s Tesla crashed into a parked firetruck, although the NHTSA has not confirmed whether it was using both Autopilot and Traffic-Aware Cruise Control or just the latter.
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And in Norway in 2020, a man was killed by a Tesla while standing next to his truck.
A total of 62 people have died in incidents where a Tesla caught fire, two of which also involved Autopilot.
For example, in 2022, an NHTSA report said the autopilot on a Tesla Model 3 in Colorado mistakenly drove the car off the road and into a tree before catching fire.
Autopilot-involved crashes have risen dramatically in recent years, with three-quarters of the 35 deaths occurring since 2020.
Eighteen deaths related to Teslas on Autopilot — or about half of those across a seven-year period — have taken place since the start of 2022.
REUTERS/Alexandria Sage/File Photo
That appears to be since Tesla’s FSD beta feature rollout was rapidly expanded. The company said at the end of last year that the Tesla feature is used in 400,000 vehicles, compared with 12,000 just over a year earlier.
However, statistics released by the company suggest the cars are much safer than the average vehicle in the US, and are only getting safer.
In the fourth quarter of 2022, Tesla said its cars using Autopilot recorded were involved in one crash per every 4.85 million miles — or 0.2 crashes per million miles. That’s compared with around 0.7 crashes per million miles for Teslas not using Autopilot, and a US average of 1.5 crashes per million miles. The company has not released any figures for deaths per million miles, or the total number of miles driven, which would be needed to calculate that figure.
