If there’s one thing Tesla owners love, it’s daydreaming a few time when their cars will ferry them from point A to point B with no single little bit of driving in between. Unfortunately for us all, it seems those owners are doing that daydreaming behind the wheel as, in accordance with a brand new study, they’re the worst drivers within the U.S. of A.
LendingTree, an insurer out of North Carolina, looked into insurance claims by brand for 2024 to see which automakers had the worst drivers. The insurer examined speeding tickets, citations, DUIs, and crashes, and located that every one those aspects added as much as finger Tesla because the worst-driven brand.
Tesla had 36.94 incidents per 1,000 drivers, beating out Ram in second place with 33.92 and Subaru in third with 32.85. The identical rating held true for accident rates, though not for DUIs — of all brands, Pontiac won on the market, presumably on account of a preponderance of Pit Viper-clad mullet-haired dudes with Keystone Light within the cupholders of their Trans Ams. Amongst current automakers, though, Tesla got here in second for drunk drivers after BMW.
LendingTree’s evaluation specified certain forms of citations to count towards the worst driver championships, but oddly didn’t specify whether it only accounted for at-fault collisions under the “accidents” section of the study. That makes it unclear whether Tesla drivers are literally the worst, or whether every other driver on the streets is whipped right into a frothing, violent anti-Musk rage upon seeing a Cybertruck out and about. The frothing rage is a given, really, it’s only a matter of whether or not people act on it.
It’s interesting that two of the highest three worst-driven automakers — Tesla and Subaru — make loads of noise about how secure their vehicles are. One has to wonder if these cars are driven poorly because drivers select cars based on advertised safety knowing they’ll wreck sometime or one other. Perhaps they trust their cars more, or, perhaps, the explanations are entirely divergent: Perhaps Tesla owners really are only counting on “Full Self Driving,” and Subaru drivers are only distracted by all those dogs within the automotive.
This Article First Appeared At jalopnik.com
