Oh NO, Dhork, why did you have to be RIGHT about it
Update: We broke this news over the weekend from a lucky catch on Reddit, but the Washington Post and TechCrunch are expanding on it, citing anonymous sources. They report that 10% of the NHTSA employees have been cut, which would be about 80 staffers, with especially heavy cuts for the employees in...
Update: We broke this news over the weekend from a lucky catch on Reddit, but the Washington Post and TechCrunch are expanding on it, citing anonymous sources. They report that 10% of the NHTSA employees have been cut, which would be about 80 staffers, with especially heavy cuts for the employees in the new office overseeing autonomous vehicle safety.
Sure, sure. The "official" just means that the first year of results are measured. Felt too early to look at before we had a full year of data.
The statistic for the Cybertruck wasn't intended to determine cause, just effect. Maybe you're right and they'll wind up about as safe as other Teslas, which are the most lethal brand of car to drive based on NHTSA data. You can see why the DOGE effort is closely scrutinizing the NHTSA.
Totally hear you and agree to the broad sentiment if not the specifics. I really hope you're right, I hope they fix it and it becomes safer. The door emergency release designs in particular feel antagonistic to the lives of rear seat passengers.
Also, just my opinion. I mostly tell jokes, I just stumbled into a joke where I was like "wait that can't be true, can it," and then a couple hours of research later, it looked like it was confoundingly true.
LOL, I dishonestly flagged it for the reader to review themselves? Wow, I must be a real piece of shit.
So anyhow, you're an honest person, so if I'm a lying bastard with some non-specific ulterior motive (or I just really fuckin suck at math), what's your number when you run the stats with one fewer fire fatality in the Cybertruck column? Does it change the overall meaning of the study, or nah?
Alright, boss.
If you can't believe a PHD holder on their subject of expertise, and you won't run your own analysis, I guess you'll believe whatever you like no matter what anybody else says. Ok! I'm fine with that if you're fine with that.
I should probably explain: I do find it acceptable to include all the deaths in the Cybertruck... simply because 100% of the fatalities have been in Cybertrucks that burned. Isn't that absolutely AGGRAVATINGLY ridiculous? That alone is worth the headline. Car fires are not common in 2025. Every single car built in 2025 should be safer than the Ford fucking Pinto!
EldritchFemininity: Describes being hired to build the human centipede, but out of Ford Pintos
Also EldritchFemininity: Refuses to elaborate; leaves.
No, that's not what I said at all. Get your quote right. I said "fuck it, we ball."
Serious tho, if you're curious why I did that, read up the thread, I explain it. Nothin nefarious (I hope)
I'm just copy pasting from above, but here's my thoughts on that:
"People often ask about me including the Las Vegas case, so maybe I answer that concern, too. That's the methodology - I set out to count every fire death for the Cybertruck that I could confirm through reliable news sources. And I struggled with that one. I worried if I didn't include it, I'd be open to the opposite criticism - folks would say "wait these stats suck, I literally saw a guy die on the news in a flaming Cybertruck, and y'all didn't count it, so these numbers can't be right." So, sort of a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation. It was controversial, I knew it would be, so I flagged it in the article so folks could make their own decision about it. Ultimately, it didn't meaningfully change the final findings. I've run the numbers with and without it, and the story is fundamentally the same either way."
You're back! I've seen this article posted a couple different places (not by me), and you keep finding it! And posting an image of one of the many data tables from the same study.
So, after seeing it a couple times, I do have a couple of ideas about it:
- You should also include a screen grab of the page of the report that specifies the 27 deaths due to the notoriously fatal design flaw in the Pinto that is included in my article.
- If you read my article, I'm specifically comparing the fire death rate due to the notoriously fatal design flaw. It's specified in plain English in the methodology section. If you don't like the clearly stated methodology, re-run the study with a methodology you do like, IDGAF.
- The reason for that methodology: 100% of the Cybertruck fires involved ONLY the Cybertruck. Which is weird, single car fire accidents are not common. The Ford Pintos, I could only verify that SOME of the fires were caused ONLY by the Ford Pinto. I wanted an apples-to-apples comparison as best as I could make it. If you don't like any aspect of this, like the vehicle totals or whatever, you can always re-run the numbers like I told you to in the original article.
People often ask about me including the Las Vegas case, so maybe I answer that concern, too. That's the methodology - I set out to count every fire death for the Cybertruck that I could confirm through reliable news sources. And I struggled with that one. I worried if I didn't include it, I'd be open to the opposite criticism - folks would say "wait these stats suck, I literally saw a guy die on the news in a flaming Cybertruck, and y'all didn't count it, so these numbers can't be right." So, sort of a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation. It was controversial, I knew it would be, so I flagged it in the article so folks could make their own decision about it. Ultimately, it didn't meaningfully change the final findings. I've run the numbers with and without it, and the story is fundamentally the same either way.
Like, I'm a comedian who tells pickup truck jokes most the time. I've linked in the original article to a very credible scientist who re-ran my numbers more rigorously and they came to the same conclusions, with the added benefit of confirming the sample sizes were statistically significant. Take their word for it, not mine. Or hell, run the numbers yourself, you got all the same sources I do.
We now have a full year of data for the Cybertruck, and a strange preponderance of headlines about Cybertrucks exploding into flames, including several fatalities. That’s more than enough data to compare to the Ford Pinto, a car so notoriously combustible that it has become a watchword for corporate...
We now have a full year of data for the Cybertruck, and a strange preponderance of headlines about Cybertrucks exploding into flames, including several fatalities. That’s more than enough data to compare to the Ford Pinto, a car so notoriously combustible that it has become a watchword for corporate greed. Let’s start with the data...
Quiet down, Zangoose... You'll get us all-expenses paid tickets to Guantanamo Bay
No worries, boss. Not taken as mean or unfair.
Out of curiosity... what credential would make you trust an automotive journalist more? If it's academic paper, I'm S.O.L.
The About Us, I didn't realize folks would have a hard time finding it if it were in the header! What do I know about websites, right. But I can fix that, I'll duplicate the About Us entry into the dropdown, that should clear up any confusion.
I'm not trying to win you over, that's not really my bag... but you might find this interesting. I've had a couple folks, some with recognizable names, reach out to me through the website. The pitch is a little different each time, but they all seem to want to know my name, they share your view that it ISN'T Kay Leadfoot. I wonder why they're so interested about that? Haha, I'm sure they wouldn't publish it if I told them, they seem trustworthy... Some folks start with a more direct approach, and they just hit me with the threats from the word go, and THEN get to the "we'll see you soon" part. I wonder what those two groups would do if one knew who I was, and the other WANTED to know?
Ain't that funny? I tell jokes about cars, who cares who I am? Apparently, several folks care, some of them real ornery about it. It's less funny when you think about the actual journalists who don't have the same options... the wave after wave of threats probably has a chilling effect on their coverage, god knows what that does for a democracy in general if your press core is afraid to speak their mind and follow facts wherever they go in case some crazies come knocking.
Thanks for the feedback, by the by, it helps.
I looked over the data pretty closely: looks like, irrespective of your bits, if you were recorded as certain genders by first responders, that data was later purged from the federal government database. Your accurate gender was replaced with "Sex: Not Reported."
I suspect if the NHTSA knew what bits the car crash victims had, they would have updated the data with that, but the first responders didn't collect that data so they instead erased the data they did collect (obviously the police aren't peeking in your pants... yet).
I want just ONE YEAR to go by without a foreign rocket landing in Poland (or any other NATO nation but especially Poland)! I feel like this is not a hard ask, and reality is really struggling to make it happen.
Last week, Ars Technica broke the news that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) quietly took down their 2022 crash data, for the rumored purpose to scrub gender data from its Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). At the time, the records had simply vanished from the publi...
Last week, Ars Technica broke the news that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) quietly took down their 2022 crash data, for the rumored purpose to scrub gender data from its Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). At the time, the records had simply vanished from the public database, leaving only speculation... now that the data has been reposted, we see that Ars Technica had it exactly right.
I just discovered... a scientist tested my findings! Well that's real nice, we held up with statistically significant findings.
Well, I don't know. You see deer strikes all the time where I live (rural folks will know what I'm talking about).
You rarely see deerS strikes, where the deer get chopped into multiple deers. It happens, it's just rare, other than like, 18 wheeler hits.
I shared the story because I thought that was strange and alarming. The truck that looks like a guillotine blade seems to cut just how it looks like it would.
No, no, that's how you heil the Cybertaxi.
The Cybertruck can't see well enough to recognize hand signals, you'll get plowed for sure.
Here’s a story you all saw coming. If a new model pickup truck is on the road for any amount of time, somebody is going to ram a deer with it! What makes this collision unique is the pickup truck in question: a 2024 Tesla CyberTruck, the Cyberbeast edition. The headline tells much of the […]
Here’s a story you all saw coming. If a new model pickup truck is on the road for any amount of time, somebody is going to ram a deer with it! What makes this collision unique is the pickup truck in question: a 2024 Tesla CyberTruck. The headline tells much of the […]
That's more than 1 brake check per hour at the speed they were testing the system at.
