Not really. The EJ25 was first released in like 1892. It's pretty slow compared to the rest of the field. Lotta turbo lag, lots of engine problems due to the antiquated boxer (flat) design. No doubt they are fun cars though and Subaru AWD is hard to beat. With snow tires, it is unstoppable in bad weather. Here is my wife (in her STI) doing donuts in an empty snow covered parking lot across from where we used to live. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBV1J9V9s3A
0-60 in 4.5 seconds or something like that isn't exactly slow either no matter what year the EJ first started production in and its many issues(head gasket much?).
I am more of an EVO guy myself.
Not surprised by this at all. I’ve never seen anyone more entitled and reckless than a Tesla driver. It’s like they think they were sold the entire road with their shitty car.
Is the corollary true? do the worst drivers drive those brands? It would require a classification of driver quality.
But it's possible that the worst drivers - multiple accidents a year - are out there in Fords (or some other brand), but lost in the massive group of regular Ford drivers to which they belong.
They didn't cover unpredictable stopping (especially acceleration lanes), failing to go on green turn arrows or turning from thru lanes - or else Kia Soul would be cleaning the board.
There’s definitely bias in these numbers. I’m not sure what’s at play, but the lowest accidents per driver being from brands that no longer exist (Pontiac, Mercury, and Saturn) certainly looks suspicious. Maybe these are good proxies for age and filter out new drivers?
This may surprise you, but some people are poor and drive very old cars, some of whose brands no longer exist. They can only afford to incrementally fix them.
or, maybe, if you are the type of person who can only afford a car whose brand no longer exists, you are sufficiently risk averse that you are much less likely to get an accident. Makes sense to me. Also, it may be that a lot of these car brands only exists in a sort of suvivorship-biased place. For example, I drive a '94 Camry, in large part because I've never had a need to replace it, having never been in an accident.
There's something so interesting about post-hoc reasoning. Everything is always explainable. Once you have the facts, you can construct the rationale. Somehow, if the stats showed the inverse, I bet there'd be someone explaining how "people driving cheap cars don't care if they get a few bumps and scratches" and so on and so forth.
The _average_ age of a light vehicles in the US is nearly 13 years. That means half the cars on the road are pre-2010. These "dead brands" mostly died around 2009.
The brands are proxies for the buyers, so it's biased only if you think the manufacturing of the car is the culprit.
Pontiac, Mercury & Saturn are more likely to be driven by older drivers or at least people who keep their cars in service for a long time (which doesn't work out so well if you are getting into accidents).
DUI is very much a white guy crime (check the stats), and very much tied to a sense of entitlement... sounds like a lot of BMW drivers, no?
More likely they're getting hand-me-downs from relatives or buying very old used cars. It's hard to keep an old car running if you don't either have capital or free time to replace aging parts.
In my experience, since getting a replacement vehicle is challenging, deductibles are crushing, and increased insurance costs are debilitating, the poorer you are, the more careful you are driving your car.
It could also imply that they drive them less. People without money for new cars also generally might want to spend less on gas, or, might need to forgo driving until they're able to afford repairs. Several of the brands at the bottom of the list in particular are brands I see driven by older folks: Buick, Lincoln, Cadillac, etc. In rural areas at least, this often means retirees without a commute who may only take the car out for church on Sunday.
Other theories: Kids tend to inherit older cars from their parents, and may but fewer miles on them. Older cars might get used more as "the beater for around town" if the household has a newer primary vehicle. There could also be some geographical distribution that's a part of the puzzle.
Yeah, that'd be my guess. People who have been driving the same vehicle for 20 years are probably not in it for the thrills. In contrast, Teslas are fashionable and probably disproportionately owned by younger drivers who like to "take it for a spin".
Another bias might be in product line-ups. Pickup trucks are often used in construction, hauling, snow plowing, and so on. All of these activities are accident-prone. So why is Ram #1 and Ford is way down the list? Probably because Ram only makes trucks, while Ford sells a lot of smaller vehicles too.
Age must be the hidden variable here. Saturn, Pontiac, and Mercury were all discontinued (in America) more than ten years ago, and those are the three safest makes.
It's possible that age is a hidden variable, certainly, but it's also possible that Saturn, Pontiac, and Mercury are exceptionally low due to selection bias -- as you note, they've all been defunct for a decade at least; this means that every car from those brands still being driven has been in use for at least a decade (presumably longer on average). Since collisions and other accidents (statistically) reduce a car's lifespan, the cars from those brands that are still drivable likely have safer-than-average drivers.
“Rams are known for powerful engines with impressive speed and horsepower. The Ram 1500, featured on J.D. Power’s list of fastest pickup trucks, is particularly notable for its ability to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 7.4 seconds.”
Was this article written by an AI or something? Ram makes exclusively pickup trucks, no one actually calls them “Rams” (the model used to be “Dodge Ram”), they’re not really known for impressive horsepower figures, and a Toyota Camry beats that 0-60 mph time by over 2 seconds.
I wouldn't be surprised if you're right about the AI bit, but I feel compelled to nitpick your assertions.
Ram is a series of models (1500, 2500, etc) and includes vans. It's not one specific pickup model, and not even exclusively pickups.
I am too lazy to refer directly to the data the article is summarizing but "Ram" in the article context probably covers more than just the 1500 which is what most people probably associate with "Dodge Ram."
To your point though, referring to all F-series models as Fs would be odd, but I can't tell if that's just because it's a single character. I think a s/Rams/Ram Series Models/ would probably have made more sense.
Lastly, comparing a pickup to a sedan is sort of silly, don't you think? Trucks are much more difficult to control at higher rates of speed and acceleration, due to a number of factors and so being the fastest truck of the bunch is probably significant.
A gearhead I am not, but a cursory search of pickups reveals Rams are indeed marginally faster/more powerful than their counterparts from other brands.
They also make the Promaster van. Between work trucks and cargo vans, I wonder whether these results (which are incidents per 1000 drivers, not incidents per mile) are skewed by commercial vehicles that see a lot more annual mileage than a typical passenger car (which Ram doesn’t even make).
The Ram Promaster van is a rebranded Fiat Ducato. It's not really accurate to say "Ram" makes it, it's made by the Stellantis group -- car brands don't really mean much anymore.
Before the Fiat Ducato, the "Ram" brand van was a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter.
Incredibly anecdotal, but as a cyclist I’ve found Tesla drivers to be the worst. They are always speeding, always too close to me as I bike, and seem to be unaware of it all.
My first guess is that the acceleration is so fast and the car is so quiet that it’s very easy to be unaware.
As much as I dislike the company, I find these sort of discussions to be sort of tired, but what the hell, I'll bite.
IME Tesla drivers are mostly average, but for the ones that aren't, let's say 90% are completely incompetent(driving erratically or well under the speed limit) and the rest are dangerously aggressive.
Tesla driver here. I agree. I did some pretty sketchy overtaking before and it's been sketchy because I've overestimated the torque available. Had I had better model it would've been less sketchy.
That said I notice other drivers, esp pickup truckers, fuck around with me for no reason.
I live in an area that has a lot of mews lanes (previously access lanes for, in this case, large Victorian terraced houses, now local roads for smaller houses and commercial units built in the back gardens of the terraces) - I live on such a lane. These are narrow and often have no or inadequate footpaths, and the general understanding is that pedestrians have right of way and that cars should be cautious. Virtually the only people who don’t abide by this seem to be Tesla drivers; I’m not sure how it’s happened, but they seem to have cultivated a market of stupid arseholes. It’s not even an electric car thing; the VWs and Hyundais and even BMWs (long the stereotypical arsehole car) usually behave themselves.
I wonder if the BMW having the highest DUI rate is just selection bias in who cops tend to pull over for such things (much like they do with red sports cars).
I'm pretty sure that 50% of the cars driving between my city's downtown and the upper-middle class suburbs on a Friday and Saturday night are above the limit. Hell, I did it for years. Not saying it's a good idea, just that this sort of behavior is ingrained in upper-middle class culture. So, yeah, I think DUI rates are highly influenced by police bias towards certain makes/models/colors.
I agree. But the limit is set super low now in many states, you just need a drink or two a few hours ago to go over. I’m a teetotaler, so I don’t think about it much, but it’s definitely something that can catch someone unaware, and it’s a huge revenue source for local governments, so maybe they are just going after people who they know can pay up?
The only strategy for not getting a DUI these days is not drink anything and then drive, but our society is still not set up for that, the temporary success we had with Uber not lasting.
I’m not aware of any US state that has a DUI threshold below .08. Nobody is above that threshold after one drink, unless your “drink” consists of multiple drinks worth of alcohol (eg, a cocktail that’s technically multiple units of alcohol). Most people would be safe legally to drive after 2 drinks. If you waited an hour or 2 then even 3 drinks would be safe.
Not condoning anyone driving when they’re intoxicated, but it’s not like a single drink is enough to do it.
For a single standard drink to put them over the BAC limit, a person would have to weight less than 50 pounds. Legal standards of BAC are crazy if you think about them. A typical man would have to pound 3-4 drinks and then walk right out to his car immediately to exceed 0.08.
You are assuming the breathalyzer tests are very accurate, but anything below .1 their error margin begins to show. And many states will still fine you if they read anything above .02 if certain circumstances are met (eg kids in the car). A lot of legal advice in the subject goes simply don’t drive if you drink anything at all, because if you get pulled over you are coming out with some fine, or worse.
If you live in a place that doesn’t require driving, none of this is relevant at all. You can drink all you want in most of China, no one is worried about you driving because most aren’t (but some still do so the government had to crack down, though to be honest, I can’t tell the difference given the typical crazy driving style in Beijing).
Given the well-known problems with Tesla's Autopilot and (not even close) Full Self Driving, I wonder how many Tesla accidents occurred as a result of driver inattention.
Unfortunately, the study just counted accidents and did not look into what kinds of accidents occurred. It would be fantastic to be able to conduct further research.
This is probably largely a measure of how much the vehicles are driven.
RAM makes commercial vehicles like trucks and vans, which are driven long distances by drivers on their job, so it ends up near the top of the list even if the accident rate per-mile-driven is low.
Old vehicles are more likely to be driven infrequently (e.g: kept in a pensioner's garage), hence brands that no longer exist like Pontiac, Mercury, and Saturn end up near the bottom.
A metric based on per miles or time spent driving would shed additional light on the subject. We really need all of them taken together to paint a better picture
I have three acquaintances who own Teslas whose family members have gotten into accidents because they were looking at, and tinkering with, that gorgeous giant shiny screen... without first engaging any form of autopilot, not even cruise control. Kinda like driving while texting, but worse.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 120 ms ] threadImpressive for that time though.
But it's possible that the worst drivers - multiple accidents a year - are out there in Fords (or some other brand), but lost in the massive group of regular Ford drivers to which they belong.
This may surprise you, but some people are poor and drive very old cars, some of whose brands no longer exist. They can only afford to incrementally fix them.
That certain doesn’t seem in the HN spirit. Can you elaborate on what that has to do with brands being a proxy for hidden variables?
No, I think DP (1) didn't understand "rates" in the title then (2) critiqued methodology without opening the link
Edit: nevermind, your comment makes more sense after re-reading the parent comment.
Pontiac, Mercury & Saturn are more likely to be driven by older drivers or at least people who keep their cars in service for a long time (which doesn't work out so well if you are getting into accidents).
DUI is very much a white guy crime (check the stats), and very much tied to a sense of entitlement... sounds like a lot of BMW drivers, no?
Heh. Nah. All those brands are being driven by my poor friends and relatives.
Classic case of Lying with Statistics.
This could imply that people who drive old cars tend to drive them more carefully.
Other theories: Kids tend to inherit older cars from their parents, and may but fewer miles on them. Older cars might get used more as "the beater for around town" if the household has a newer primary vehicle. There could also be some geographical distribution that's a part of the puzzle.
Another bias might be in product line-ups. Pickup trucks are often used in construction, hauling, snow plowing, and so on. All of these activities are accident-prone. So why is Ram #1 and Ford is way down the list? Probably because Ram only makes trucks, while Ford sells a lot of smaller vehicles too.
Was this article written by an AI or something? Ram makes exclusively pickup trucks, no one actually calls them “Rams” (the model used to be “Dodge Ram”), they’re not really known for impressive horsepower figures, and a Toyota Camry beats that 0-60 mph time by over 2 seconds.
Ram is a series of models (1500, 2500, etc) and includes vans. It's not one specific pickup model, and not even exclusively pickups.
I am too lazy to refer directly to the data the article is summarizing but "Ram" in the article context probably covers more than just the 1500 which is what most people probably associate with "Dodge Ram."
To your point though, referring to all F-series models as Fs would be odd, but I can't tell if that's just because it's a single character. I think a s/Rams/Ram Series Models/ would probably have made more sense.
Lastly, comparing a pickup to a sedan is sort of silly, don't you think? Trucks are much more difficult to control at higher rates of speed and acceleration, due to a number of factors and so being the fastest truck of the bunch is probably significant.
A gearhead I am not, but a cursory search of pickups reveals Rams are indeed marginally faster/more powerful than their counterparts from other brands.
Before the Fiat Ducato, the "Ram" brand van was a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter.
https://www.0-60specs.com/ram/1500-0-60-times
Faster than me = crazies putting everyone's life at risk
Slower than me = morons with nowhere to go
Behind me = tailgating and breathing down my neck
Bigger than me = gas hog with a masculinity issue
Smaller than me = must have a death wish to drive that tiny thing
Nothing brings out egocentric attitudes more than getting behind the wheel.
My first guess is that the acceleration is so fast and the car is so quiet that it’s very easy to be unaware.
IME Tesla drivers are mostly average, but for the ones that aren't, let's say 90% are completely incompetent(driving erratically or well under the speed limit) and the rest are dangerously aggressive.
That said I notice other drivers, esp pickup truckers, fuck around with me for no reason.
The only strategy for not getting a DUI these days is not drink anything and then drive, but our society is still not set up for that, the temporary success we had with Uber not lasting.
Not condoning anyone driving when they’re intoxicated, but it’s not like a single drink is enough to do it.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/40108/nissan-is-rewarding-deal...
Unfortunately, the study just counted accidents and did not look into what kinds of accidents occurred. It would be fantastic to be able to conduct further research.
RAM makes commercial vehicles like trucks and vans, which are driven long distances by drivers on their job, so it ends up near the top of the list even if the accident rate per-mile-driven is low.
Old vehicles are more likely to be driven infrequently (e.g: kept in a pensioner's garage), hence brands that no longer exist like Pontiac, Mercury, and Saturn end up near the bottom.