Officially there have been 29 avoidable deaths, according to a new U.S. government report on Tesla’s fatally flawed Autopilot design.

In total, NHTSA investigated 956 crashes, starting in January 2018 and extending all the way until August 2023. Of those crashes, some of which involved other vehicles striking the Tesla vehicle, 29 people died. There were also 211 crashes in which “the frontal plane of the Tesla struck a vehicle or obstacle in its path.” These crashes, which were often the most severe, resulted in 14 deaths [out of the 29] and 49 injuries.

Why so many? The NHTSA cites serious design deficiencies pushed by Tesla management when compared to industry safety standards.

“A comparison of Tesla’s design choices to those of L2 peers identified Tesla as an industry outlier in its approach to L2 technology by mismatching a weak driver engagement system with Autopilot’s permissive operating capabilities,” the agency said.

Even the brand name “Autopilot” is misleading, NHTSA said, conjuring up the idea that drivers are not in control. While other companies use some version of “assist,” “sense,” or “team,” Tesla’s products lure drivers into thinking they are more capable than they are. California’s attorney general and the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles are both investigating Tesla for misleading branding and marketing.

Not just an outlier, Tesla allegedly is a liar too.

Top management of the infamously toxic brand is suspected of covering up even more death to fool Wall Street.

NHTSA acknowledges that its probe may be incomplete based on “gaps” in Tesla’s telemetry data. That could mean there are many more crashes involving Autopilot and FSD than what NHTSA was able to find.

How big a coverup? Over 80% of crash events allegedly are being hidden from authorities by design.

…[due to management choices] Tesla only receives data from certain types of crashes, with the NHTSA claiming the company collects data on around 18 percent of crashes reported to police.

Tesladeaths.com, for example, provides evidence using local journalism of 44 deaths from Autopilot. That’s a huge delta from the 29 being reported by Tesla to the NHTSA.

We may finally be approaching a point of no return for the brand, where it is rightfully banned for covering up its intentionally terrible design that poses a dangerous threat.

Lawn darts killed fewer.

Ford Pinto killed fewer.

Enron lied less.

The new report highlights that Tesla remains unique in that its drivers had more than enough time to prevent an accident, yet they alone falsely relied on Autopilot.

We’ve known this since 2016 and I’ve explained it many times before. Elon Musk, since the beginning, rashly promoting Autopilot to the stock market (as something it’s absolutely incapable of delivering) becomes especially dangerous… because he disagrees directly with his own product manual.

This is a toxic form of propaganda; gaslighting 101.

If the manual said drivers have to pay attention, and Musk didn’t say anything, it would be safer.

If Musk said drivers don’t have to pay attention, and the manual didn’t say anything, it would be safer.

The problem is the contradictory combination, destroying truth, which is the very definition of gaslighting.

Because Musk invariably and intentionally contradicts safety statements in the product manual, he willfully creates the most unsafe combination possible.

His believers thus operate in the anti-science realm of beliefs, putting society at risk, just like with any cult following anti-patterns doused in snake oil.

This is not about whether technology can improve safety of humans. That’s not even worth discussing. Vaccines are effective and safe. Don’t let that grain of truth get tainted in the fraud campaign.

This is about a negligently designed technology system that discourages drivers from paying attention, creating a huge rise in accidents that easily could have been avoided if a CEO had not gloated about completely fraudulent concepts of safety.

Is there any reason to continue allowing a proven death trap design that sends dozens of people to early graves? How many communities must mourn these avoidable deaths before roads and homes are free from Tesla?

Related: After proving itself more antisemitic than even Ford, Tesla has been trying to copy Edison’s worst ideas. Expect an “88 hate station” near you.

A VinFast electric car is confirmed (not initially revealed) in a Pleasanton crash that killed four. The car mysteriously left the road, burst into flames and burned the trapped occupants to death.

A family of four was killed in a single-vehicle crash in Pleasanton Wednesday night, according to officials.

The crash happened at about 9 p.m. on [5800] Foothill Road near Stoneridge Drive, police said.

The vehicle left the roadway for unknown reasons, hit a tree and burst into flames.

Police said the victims were a mother, a father and two children under the age of 15.

Notably, it abruptly veered at high speed off the road into a tree and burned everyone. That’s the hallmark death trap of a Tesla.

Now the VinFast apparently has similar safety issues.

Larry Lai, người sống gần Đại lộ Foothill, cho biết ông đang ở bên ngoài thì nghe thấy tiếng nổ vào thời điểm xảy ra vụ tai nạn. Ông nói: “Cứ 5 đến 10 giây lại có một tiếng nổ lớn, có thể khoảng 5 đến 8 lần”.

Translation: Larry Lai, who lives near Foothill Avenue, said he was outside when he heard an explosion at the time of the crash. “Every five to 10 seconds there was a loud bang, maybe about five to eight times,” he said.

Police weren’t revealing much initially, other than the tree was a large oak.

Related, the nearby Pleasanton-based EV rental car sales company Hertz has put 1,500 of its used death trap Tesla on the market, starting at $20K.

All of these should probably be written off as unsafe and go straight to the crusher; do not even bother to pass by the hundreds of Tesla tragedies already clogging junk yards.

Update:

The family had borrowed the car from someone else, who filed a formal NHTSA complaint in April for “veered” steering issues.

The original sin. A Tesla S killed a cyclist when it was first released, which allegedly prompted Elon Musk to promise he would make an Autopilot to end all deaths. Instead, after a decade of rising fatal crashes, Tesla with Autopilot are now the unmistakable cause of more death than without.

A 56-year-old Snohomish man had set his Tesla Model S on Autopilot and was looking at his cellphone on Friday when he struck and killed a motorcyclist in front of him in Monroe, court records show.

Are motorcyclists being trained to avoid being killed by a Tesla behind them?

Police say in this case the use of Autopilot is to be charged as vehicular manslaughter.

The trooper cited the driver’s “inattention to driving, while on autopilot mode, and the distraction of the cell phone while moving forward,” and trusting “the machine to drive for him” as probable cause for a charge of vehicular manslaughter, according to the affidavit.

We could have all seen this predictable end back in 2016, which is why back then I described Tesla as the modern Titanic. Despite my warnings, far too many people fell into the fraud.

Five years ago this week [in 2019], Elon Musk stood on stage at Tesla’s Autonomy Week and told the crowd that his company would deliver fully autonomous robotaxis by the following year. “I feel very confident,” he said. “Mark my words.”

2020 was a long time ago in technology terms. Arguably Tesla has only gotten worse since then.