Tesla Has Highest Rate of Deadly Accidents Among Car Brands, Study Finds

Braking by letting off the gas? So you can’t coast, it’s either go or stop?

Yeah and I HATE it. I drove my cousins Tesla when it first came out, way before musk started publicly acting like the douchebro he is and before there was really a Tesla fanboy club with a bunch of wannabes slobbing musks knob online.

I think I drove it in the neighborhood for like five minutes, stopped and parked the car and asked my cousin to drive it back. Hating it is an understatement.

Last year all the valets and I agreed we won’t be parking Tesla’s because of how much we hate them, but management overruled us this year.

I’ve been driving for 20 years. I shouldn’t need a lesson from a Tesla owner on how to drive their car. The fact that I do shows how fucking dangerous they are. They’re not designed by people who drive and it’s so fucking obvious that the computer nerds who design them get chauffeured everywhere by Ubers.
- Until I lived here I wouldve assumed that last line about Ubers was an exaggeration but...yeah, a huge portion of the bay area strategic techbro reserve actually can't legally drive. Then once they turn 28 and move to the burbs they lost a full decade of learning and they shift from not legally allowed to just "shouldn't".
  
  Yeah I understand why people don’t get their licenses living in cities there’s really no reason. But ability and semi frequency of driving a car should be a prerequisite for being hired to design one.
  
  Yep. Obvs there's a lot more than goes into a car than just the UI but...I don't trust user experience engineers. Some of them gave us the Mac os. Other gave us windows 11. Others gave us gnome. None of them should be allowed near the UI for a 2-ton metal brick on wheels. "But what if we compressed all of the icons in one to get a 'clean' design and then had a 2 second fly-out animation to show you what they all are"
  
  Yeah they absolutely do not need to be making the decisions. Car designers should be designing cars not UI designers or software engineers.
  
  Designs have been relatively standardized for decades for safety. every other car out there I haven’t needed to talk to the owner to find out how to drive it, I just drove it. But teslas I’ve had to ask…
  
  That being said I once spent a solid 10 minutes inside an electric Porsche trying to figure out how to turn it on… the power button is to the left of the steering wheel in the strangest spot. Then there’s the newer cars with their weird toggles and what not but it doesn’t take too long to figure out how to shift.
  
  Back before about 1920, there weren't standard interfaces in cars. Pedal arrangements were arbitrary, there were levers to control things like spark advance, stuck wherever the manufacturer liked, and secondary controls were even more random than they are now. There's no reason to go back to those days.
  
  Using a tablet to control a moving car is a dangerously stupid move that regulators should never have allowed. It's even worse than the notoriously shit BMW Tiptronic modal controller of cursed memory.
  
  At least before 1920 there was only a hundred drivers on the road in the whole country!
  
  (Exaggeration but I hope you get the point haha)
  
  I fucking hate the tablets!
- Hard disagree on this one. The regenerative braking has a learning curve yes, but the pros outweigh the cons imo. When you brake (in a traditional car or an EV), you are wearing out yor brake pads, turning friction into heat. Done right, renerative braking means almost all energy is captured back, and even lower maintenance by not bothering the brake pad.
  
  It takes getting used to, you hate it at first, which is why tesla has an option to disable it, but there is a reason why most people who own Teslas use it, and other EVs are getting it as well.
  
  Regenerative braking is good thing, yes .But implementing it as one pedal driving is terrible. Other OEMs like Ford or VW blend regenerative braking into the brake pedal of their EVs such that it feels exactly like a normal car. The friction pads are there for either emergency braking or for bringing the car to a final stop after slowing down.
  
  I drive exclusively in 1-pedal. It's a pretty quick transition.
  
  Probably easiest to make an analogy to the transition to analog sticks for gaming.
  
  It was a bit difficult but, once you get the nuance, it's pretty game changing.
  
  I drive my ID.4 exclusively in normal drive mode. I tried one pedal driving and hated it. I don’t understand the hype. To each their own. My point was that regenerative braking doesn’t depend on one pedal driving.
  
  I haven't driven the id.4, but our car has a visual indicator that shows the percentage of regenerative braking efficiency achieved when you at coming to a stop. Hitting 100% is significantly easier in my experience with my test sample of 1 vehicle using the single pedal option, like everything though, I'm sure it's not the same across the board.
  
  Toyota's been doing that for over 25 years in its hybrids.
  
  It's an excellent, highly reliable system.
  
  The complaint isn't that regeneration is bad, because that's been part of any battery vehicle since the first Prius in 1997. The complaint is that while Toyota solved this problem before much of Lemmy's userbase was born, only Elon decided to make the car behave fucking weird.
  
  It's like engine braking in an ICE-powered car in terms of its effect on the car's dynamics.
  
  there is a reason why most people who own Teslas use it
  
  Yeah, it's because they go with the default.
Lot of assumptions in this thread about how terrible one pedal driving must be. No, you can just set the car to coast like normal if you want. There's still a brake pedal of you need to slam the brakes. One pedal driving takes maybe an hour to get used to, but once you learn it you won't want to go back. There's a level of regen that can be adjusted, and you quickly learn how fast that is. I generally have my foot set at a certain level to maintain a speed and if I need to stop at some lights I've gotten very used to when I need to lift my foot up for the regen to stop me at the right spot.
It's called regen braking and puts energy back into battery. You can also control how strong the regen is in settings.

I prefer strong regen and hold mode. The car will slow as soon as you release the accelerator pedal. Hold mode basically means the car stays put when it's stopped until you press the accelerater. Creep mode would have the car roll forward when you release the brake.

The one pedal driving works really well but there is a small learning curve. I would find it a bit annoying to switch back and forth like the valet guy.
- Regenerative braking happens through the brake pedal on my Ford PHEV. I prefer it, because it drives the same way every other car does but still allows you to stop with 100% regenerative braking as long as you don’t press too hard on the pedal.
  
  I like the instant response and feel its safer since the car will already be slowing down by the time I mash the brakes.
- Do you put your foot over the brake and maybe hold some pressure on the pedal?. Just asking as I'm going to just put this out there If not your doing it wrong. As a responsible driver your foot must at least press the brake pedal to hold you still and I'll tell you why. What if you get hit from behind. Where is your foot? Over the brake or gas? Most people like 99 percent tense when hit with sudden stress. But are you going to clamp down and shoot into traffic or help everything behind you also come to a stop?
  
  I do not put my foot on the brake when its held. It does apply the brakes when the car stops so that should take care of the being rear ended issue.
  
  No they don't. The hydraulic system is not used to stop you at any time unless your foot pushes that peddle. Do use your actual brakes everyonce in awhile so they don't rust into place and fail to work when you need them.
  
  I've had the car for 5 years, I'm familiar with how it works.
  
  I did not say that the car uses the brakes to stop. I said that with hold mode, it applies the brakes once you are stopped. Also there is a mode to blend brakes with regen. This is used when the battery can't accept any energy via regen. Usually when the charge level is close to 100% or the battery is cold. In order to provide consistent dynamics, the car will auto use brakes to make up for low regen.
  
  Here's the manual for hold mode.
  
  Oh that the very bottom it says never rely on hold to ever anything that is literally their caveat to they are not liable to you. put your foot on the brake.
Regen breaking. My guess they can't bake it into the brake pedal because some rules for what a break pedal is allowed to do or just bad design. Both very possible.
- Bad design. Plenty of EVs have their brake pedal apply a mixture of regen and friction braking, with the actual proportions dependent on factors like how quickly you hit the brake (soft braking is entirely regen, slamming the brakes apples almost entirely actual brakes in my experience), or how much charge is in the battery (you can't safely pump power from regen into a nearly full battery).
  
  Plenty of them also let you control how much passive regen happens when you lift the pedal, with the default on mine at least feeling very similar to the slowing you get when lifting off the gas with an automatic transmission. It's adjustable from none at all to moderate braking force, and when I turn it up lifting my foot from the gas illuminates my brake lights.
- My Ford PHEV does regenerative braking through the brake pedal. The brake pads only engage if you press hard enough that the braking demand is higher than the slowing caused by regenerative braking. It will show you how well you’re doing with a gauge to show how much of your regen-braking force you’re using, and if it never engages the brake pads until you’re already stopped (for the brake hold function) it tells you 100% of the braking energy went into the battery. Pretty cool.
Any decent car in the tesla price bracket has configurable regen from all the way off to progressively more regen all thr way up to one pedal driving that will apply the brakes for you to come to a complete stop without touching thr pedal.

Vast majority of these it's switched between the modes using the paddle shift. If you can understand changing gears on a modern ice auto using the paddles, then it's not beyond the average driver to quickly get to grips with using it for regen.

I'd you feather the throttle as you start to slow down you can moderate the amount of regen dynamically without having to change modes. However that requires more skill than the average driver seem capable of.

Cheaper evs tend to have off, on, and may be one pedal driving modes, but they have to cut things to be cheaper as with all cars.

I get between a fifth and a quarter back of my energy consumption from using regen. Learning how to use it is essential for good economy, and it makes you safer as you plan ahead more for where you want to slow down. The least safest way to drive is emergency braking 10m before a stop sign as your default driving style
- If you can understand changing gears on a modern ice auto using the paddles, then it’s not beyond the average driver to quickly get to grips with using it for regen.
  
  Teslas have a CVT. No paddles.
  
  And I'd like to know why one-pedal regenerative braking would be any more economical than two-pedal.
  
  Incidentally, hybrid cars have had two-pedal regen braking since 2000 (and before that in Japan-- the Prius came out there in '97).
  
  Tesla have a CVT gearbox? Like actual gearbox that ice cars have? First, I've ever heard of them having a proper gearbox. First production ev I heard of with an actual gearbox is the taycan, that has a two speed, fully auto gearbox. Nit aware of any others with an actual gearbox.
  
  You know how regen works right? And that the brake pedal on modern evs don't engage regen as fully as they are engaging the brakes as that's what that pedal is for. Engage the brakes and you aren't going to get anywhere near the energy back from regen as a ton of energy is being wasted by friction and thus heat of the brake pads.
  
  I've owned a lexis 400h, i like the idea of them, but cvts are garbage to drive, even in hybrids. They also completely unsuitable for evs due to their wide torque band, they work best for ice engines have have narrow torque bands as the entire function of a cvt is to adjust to a narrow rev range to optimise that narrow torque band.
If you wanna coast just use cruise control. Otherwise you have to keep the "gas" slightly pressed to maintain speed. It's way better but the very real downside is that you forget how to drive ice cars.
- Couldn't agree more.

People always clown on BMW drivers, Tessholes are the absolute worst.

Teslas replaced bmw for sure, now I'm just like "sure they are dicks but at least they can drive" while teslas are mostly dicks who don't know how to drive.
They were bad before teslas existed! Benz drivers too

My Nissan Leaf has the one pedal regenerative braking and I prefer it because you are not wearing down your brake pads and rotors. Thankfully, Nissan continues to use buttons and not a bloody touch screen. I agree with you on that point.

Idk I live where there’s snow on the ground six months out of the year and I like the finesse one gets by being able to let off the gas without braking. Braking can trigger a spin or loss of control in slick conditions.
- +1 Indeed!!! My Leaf has winter tires, a heavy ass battery in the middle and the constant regen braking pressure keeps the car under control. Accelerating, this thing leaves the ICE powered pick-up trucks and SUVs in my mirrors. It really surprised me.
  
  But one doesn’t want all that torque when starting in snow. Too much and wheels spin out. Not enough and you lose traction and slide.
  
  Winter tires and don't press the pedal to the metal.

B-but it looks so sleek and clean! Who cares about safety!

Does it? Looks outdated to me.

I rode a Tesla Uber once and the guy clearly didn't know how to drive it because we were lurching forward and backward while just going down a straight road. We got carsick.

That sounds like he doesn’t understand how to use one pedal driving.

The touch screen is an interface-design antipattern. It causes worse driver distraction than a phone, since experienced users can often interact with simple phone apps without looking. They should be banned, and Tesla (and all carmakers) should be forced to retrofit car controls that are proven safe by third-party testers.

But instead, we have Trump, so next year's Teslas will have automomous chainsaw-bots prowling the car's cabin.

And so is braking by letting off the gas.

First thing I disabled when I was lent a model Y by a friend. Second thing was any kind of self-drive.

I think it’s a huge factor in the increase in traffic deaths. That, inexperienced new / rusty drivers after covid, covid fucking with peoples brains, bigger heavier faster vehicles, increased day to day life stress.

No way bro, single pedal driving is amazing. There's also voice commands and you can hotkey stuff to the left scroll wheel (I use it for toggling chill/performance mode), and you can put it in autopilot if you really gotta use the touchscreen - but how often do you need to do something not covered by voice commands steering buttons?

No way bro, single pedal driving is amazing.

What's amazing about it? Seems ~~intuitive~~ unintuitive as hell but I've never actually experienced it personally. How do you control how fast you stop or just coast? What if the electronics fail? My car the brakes are mechanically connected to the pedal, if the power brakes go out I can still brake without them (although it is much more difficult).

edit: that was supposed to say UNintuitive
- I have a Mach-E and drive exclusively in one pedal mode. With my car you can still use the brake if you want. But honestly once you adjust to it, it becomes very instinctive to let it accelerate and decelerate based on the traffic patterns around you.
  
  Now, if someone's doing some stupid shit in Seattle during rush hour traffic I end up using the brake more but for 95% of my daily driving I'm just using the one pedal.
  
  It's honestly more jarring going back to driving my truck with a traditional setup than it was adjusting to the one pedal setup.
  
  Like a lot of things about cars today (your bright-ass lights, size making it impossible to see around you, that fucking beeping) this is annoying for those around you because the brake lights don't go on your car just suddenly decelerates.
  
  Actually they do, if you would slow down faster than a normal car would from coasting the brake lights do turn on.
  
  Can confirm this is not the case. I'm 100% confident there is a decel that will trigger the lights, I'm also 100% sure it's not "normal car coasting" decel.
  
  Source: driven behind hundreds of teslas
  
  I think I’ve read about existing or upcoming regulations that specify how many Gs of deceleration require the brake lights to come on.
  
  If you're reading the brake lights on the car directly in front of you as an indicator to slow down, you have already lost the plot.
  
  A competent driver is actively driving a minimum of half a mile ahead of themselves with more than adequate distance between the vehicle directly in front of them to allow a response to changing road conditions.
  
  The car doesn't suddenly decelerate unless the driver completely pulls their foot from the pedal. This sounds like a skill issue on both sides.
  
  It doesn't sound like you've driven in a city before. Half a mile is 3 stop lights and 5 stop signs ahead.
  
  Sigh, have a nice day.
  
  Oooh, solid smug
- Your speed is directly tied to how hard you're pressing the accelerator. You don't have to guess momentum. If you fully let go the the accelerator, your rate of deceleration is tied to how much you can regen. If the battery is too full, the regen brakes can't absorb as much (the metaphor I like is imagining a full piece of luggage, it's hard to jam it from 90 to 100% full) - so instead of slowing the car down and not being able to absorb the energy, it'll just not slow down as much so it doesn't give waste energy - - this is actually pretty dangerous, so now there is a setting so that in situations like this, the car will use the real brakes so that you have a consistent maximum deceleration when letting go of the accelerator.
  
  If the computer crashes the screen goes black so you lose the speedometer. It even rarer now and reboots quickly but obviously if you have a first time passenger they're gonna freak out. The car still has a normal brake, you just never use it since you wanna max the regen. If you use the real brakes, and browse the energy consumption screen it'll let you know how much battery you've wasted by not using regen and, if you have the safety score enabled you will probably get shit on for driving unsafely (if you need to use the real brake this means you are exceeding the capacity of the regen brake so yeah you're doing something erratic) - in California, this safety score cannot be used against you for insurance rates.
  
  Only the cyber truck is full drive by wire. Idk the extent of it but there should be "mechanical connections" in the other cars. There's also a mechanical door handle that damages the trim if you use it (tell your passengers how to properly open/close doors)
  
  Don't test drive unless you have the money to buy, lol. I already kinda knew I was gonna get one (I had just gotten hit by a drunk driver and used it as a catalyst to upgrade since I really wanted the FSD), but I was sold on the instant torque and the one pedal driving. You just envision yourself wanting to pass someone on the freeway, and the other dude doesn't stand a chance. It's awesome.
  
  Don’t test drive unless you have the money to buy, lol.
  
  Don't worry I would never do anything to intentionally give Elon Musk money.
  
  He already has infinite money. Don't let that stop you from getting the car if you want the car.
  
  Nah, I want a car with the bare minimum of electronic shit to break. If I could just buy a new copy of my 2012 civic I would do that. I can fix just about anything on that car myself and it's not phoning home to tell the manufacturer and who knows who else my personal info.