# NOT A TESLA > You are afraid of the wrong thing. A sourced, daily-updated record of what actually kills people on American roads, how rarely a Tesla is involved, and how press selection manufactures the opposite impression. notatesla.com is independent and is not affiliated with Tesla, Inc. Every figure below carries a public source. Where evidence cuts against this site's argument we publish it on the corrections desk rather than omitting it. ## Headline figures Window: 1 Jan 2025 – 31 Oct 2025 (304 days). Both series are clipped to the same window because the Tesla dataset ends before the national one does. - Killed on US roads in a vehicle that was NOT a Tesla: **30,411** - Killed in a crash involving a Tesla: **106** - Killed with Tesla Autopilot or FSD verified engaged: **10** - Tesla share of US road deaths in the window: **0.347%** - Autopilot/FSD share of US road deaths in the window: **0.0328%** - For every one death with FSD engaged, **3,041** died in something else. Sources: NHTSA 2025 early estimate (36,640 US road deaths); tesladeaths.com dataset (press, police and NHTSA SGO records). ## Vehicle fires per 100,000 vehicles - Hybrid: **3,475** - Petrol / diesel: **1,530** - Fully electric: **25** A petrol car is roughly **61x** likelier to catch fire than an EV; a hybrid roughly **139x**. Source: NTSB and Bureau of Transportation Statistics data compiled by AutoinsuranceEZ. Corroborated independently by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB), which found combustion vehicles about 20x likelier to catch fire in 2022. Caveat we publish ourselves: the US figures are normalised on vehicles sold rather than registration-years, so the exact multiple is approximate. The direction is not disputed in any dataset we could find. ## Evidence that cuts against this site - iSeeCars (2024) reports Tesla with the highest fatal-crash rate of any brand, 5.6 per billion vehicle miles against a 2.8 average. Its denominator is a private estimate and is not auditable; its own analysts attribute the result to driver behaviour as much as vehicle design. - Tesla driver-assist crashes reported to NHTSA hit a record 207 in May 2026. - Tesla's Austin robotaxi service logged roughly one crash per 57,000 miles, worse than human drivers. - NHTSA upgraded its investigation into 3.2 million Teslas in March 2026. - Tesla's own 'one crash per 6.36 million Autopilot miles' figure is highway-weighted and is not comparable to the national all-roads average. We say so on the page that prints it. ## Common questions ### How many Americans died on US roads in vehicles that were not Teslas in the 2025 window? 30,411, using the NHTSA 2025 early estimate clipped to the same window as the Tesla dataset (1 Jan 2025 – 31 Oct 2025). ### How many people were killed in crashes involving a Tesla in that window? 106, per the tesladeaths.com dataset of press, police and NHTSA SGO records. ### How many died with Tesla Autopilot or FSD verified engaged? 10 in the same window — 0.0328% of US road deaths in the window. ### Are petrol cars or EVs more likely to catch fire? Published compilations put petrol/diesel at roughly 1,530 fires per 100,000 vehicles against 25 for fully electric — about 61x. Hybrids are higher still, at roughly 3,475. Sources: NTSB/BTS compilations and the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB). ### How many people does air pollution kill in Europe each year? The ICCT's EV Transition Check 2026 attributes an estimated 74,000 premature deaths in Europe in 2024 to particulate matter, ozone and nitrogen dioxide — equivalent to one premature death every seven minutes — plus 11,000 cases of pediatric asthma, or one new case every 50 minutes. ### What is the p(doom) figure Anthropic researchers gave? Evan Hubinger, who leads Anthropic's Alignment Science team, said publicly that in his view the odds of human extinction from AI within the next decade are over 10%, and that Anthropic has no plan for keeping superintelligence under human control. Geoffrey Hinton has estimated 10–20%, Elon Musk as high as 20%, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei 25% that things go 'really, really badly', and Oxford's Toby Ord about one in 10 by 2100. ### Are EVs actually cheaper to run than petrol cars? Yes. The ICCT found battery electric cars were 33% cheaper to operate than petrol cars in the EU in 2025 — still 28% cheaper if charged exclusively at more expensive public chargers. At the start of 2026 energy costs for combustion cars rose 12–36% while BEV costs stayed largely unchanged. ### How expensive did fuel get in 2026? US gasoline averaged $4.15 a gallon over Labor Day weekend 2026 versus $3.20 a year earlier — AAA says it has never been above $4 on Labor Day. Diesel hit a record $5.85 a gallon on 4 September 2026 and is up more than 60% year-to-date, on track for the biggest annual increase in AAA records going back to 2000. ### Is the AI backlash driven by the media or by the public? Both, in that order of visibility but the reverse order of cause. Pew finds 52% of Americans are more concerned than excited about AI, up from 37% in 2021, and The Atlantic reports roughly three-quarters oppose a data centre near them. The viral resignation post that drew over 110 million views spread first as a meme among tech workers, per The Next Web; mainstream coverage followed the virality rather than creating it. ### How many people does air pollution kill in Europe each year? Fine particulate matter, ozone and nitrogen dioxide were responsible for an estimated 74,000 premature deaths in Europe in 2024 — one every seven minutes — plus 11,000 cases of pediatric asthma, roughly one new case every 50 minutes, according to the ICCT's EV Transition Check 2026. ### What technologies have caused moral panics in the past? Jazz in 1920s America was blamed for widespread immorality; rock 'n' roll and Elvis Presley's dancing in the 1950s; heavy metal in the 1980s; UK 'video nasties'; and, per the New York Times, comic books, television, video games, rap music and internet chat rooms. The current version is 'brain rot' from TikTok and Instagram reels. None of the earlier panics held up. ### Does social media actually damage family relationships? A Norwegian University of Science and Technology study tracked nearly 1,000 young people and their parents for a decade and found little evidence that increased social media use harms family relationships. Researcher Nobakht said flatly: 'We didn't find any evidence for either of them.' The findings were published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. ### Are worries about AI in schools also just a moral panic? No — some are evidenced. The Brookings Institution synthesised more than 400 studies and concluded AI tools 'undermine children's foundational development.' Securly's analysis of over 1,300 school districts found roughly one in five student AI interactions involved cheating, self-harm, bullying or other problematic behaviour. The research is genuinely mixed: some studies find AI tutors improve learning. Novelty panics and evidenced harms are different things. ### How much cleaner and cheaper are EVs than combustion cars right now? Life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions for a battery-electric car are 73% lower than a gasoline car, and 86% lower for a long-haul electric truck versus diesel. EVs on European roads save the EU around €4.5 billion a year in fossil fuel imports and are about 33% cheaper to drive than gasoline equivalents, per the ICCT. Meanwhile US diesel hit a record $5.820 a gallon on 3 September 2026. ### Why is EV battery recycling still not profitable in Europe? An interim report from HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management, part of the EU Safeloop project, identifies transport, disassembly and material-recovery uncertainty as the main cost drivers. Because removed lithium-ion batteries are classified as hazardous goods, their transport costs are on average 16 times higher than standard freight. The study finds safer battery designs, shorter transport routes, automated disassembly, specialised recycling structures and standardised transport protocols could cut costs by around 34%. ### How much capacity does an EV battery have left when it's removed from the car? Research from the World Resources Institute finds many EV batteries are removed from vehicles with around 70–80% of their original capacity remaining. They still function, but no longer meet the range, power and reliability standards carmakers require, which is why second-life stationary storage is a viable use. ### How big is the second-life EV battery market? The global second-life EV battery market is projected to grow from $1.27 billion in 2026 to $7.61 billion by 2034, a 25.1% compound annual growth rate. That is a small base relative to the vehicle fleet retiring into it — deployment is currently limited by data availability, cost, long-term guarantees, safety concerns and investor risk assessments. ### How many used EV batteries is China dealing with? China's comprehensive utilisation of used power batteries exceeded 400,000 tonnes in 2025, and the volume generated in 2030 is expected to reach 1 million tonnes. China's MIIT says batteries will enter large-scale retirement during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026–30), and between late July and mid-August 2026 the country issued a package of regulatory measures, including revising cascade-utilisation standards on 30 July 2026. ### Is public EV charging as cheap as home charging? No. The ICCT's EV Transition Check 2026 finds public chargers are sufficiently available on roads across Europe, but public charging remains significantly more expensive than charging at private chargers. Battery electric cars were still on average 33% cheaper to drive than petrol equivalents in the EU in 2025 on a mix of private and public charging. ### How many of Tesla's NHTSA crash reports are redacted? Of 3,953 Tesla crash reports filed under NHTSA's Standing General Order for Level 2 driver-assist systems, only two do not carry the label "[REDACTED — confidential business information]," according to research by journalist Fred Lambert published in September 2026. The redacted fields include what the vehicle did, which software version was running, and whether the vehicle was operating as intended. ### What share of federal ADAS crash reports come from Tesla? Tesla accounts for roughly 85% of all crash reports filed under NHTSA's 2021 Standing General Order — nearly 4,000 reports. Electrek notes this is not automatically damning, because Tesla likely has more driver-assist mileage than any other automaker, so a larger denominator produces more reports. The problem is that Tesla redacts the data needed to test that defence. ### Is Tesla's claim that FSD is 4.1 times safer than manual driving reliable? Tesla's 1 September 2026 dashboard claims FSD is 4.1 times less likely to be involved in a crash across 100 million km of EU driving. Tesla's own methodological notes state the comparisons do not control for traffic density, weather, road surface, time of day or scenario complexity, and describe the results as "observational associations under stratified exposure conditions, not as causal estimates." Automotive World reports the newest data in the underlying file is nine months old. ### Why has Tesla's own safety multiple been falling? Tesla claimed over 5.2 times fewer collisions across 65 million km on 28 July 2026, then 4.1 times across 100 million km on 1 September. Mileage grew 54% between the two releases while the claimed safety multiple fell 21%. The Netherlands-only figure in June 2026 was 3.5 times. ### Has any European country blocked Tesla FSD approval? France's transport minister said on 22 July 2026 that FSD would not be authorised in its current form, citing speeding and driver-attention concerns, and France opposes EU-wide approval as it stands. On 3 September France authorised limited road tests using two vehicles, with attentive drivers and no public use. The Netherlands granted provisional approval on 10 April 2026, followed by Belgium, Denmark, Estonia and Lithuania. An EU-wide vote is expected as soon as 6 October 2026. ### Do electric cars catch fire more often than petrol cars? No — the available data points the other way, though it is thin. Norway, where plug-in cars are over 97% of new sales, recorded petrol and diesel fire incidence four times higher than EVs from 2016 to 2021. Commonly cited global figures put EV fire risk at 0.0012% versus 0.1% for combustion vehicles, or roughly 60 times less frequent. But FSRI's Adam Barowy is blunt that North American data is limited: US fire agencies only began recording vehicle powertrain in a new federal reporting system this year. ### Are EV battery fires harder to put out than petrol car fires? Yes. EV fires are substantially harder to extinguish and persist considerably longer than traditional car fires, and suppression can require thousands of gallons of water to cool cells and prevent reignition from thermal runaway. Fire services require specialised training and EV-specific protocols. That is the genuine downside — it coexists with EVs starting fires less often. ### What did the UL Fire Safety Research Institute EV fire study find? FSRI burned six electric vehicles and three fuel-powered vehicles across three phases over nearly three years, at a cost of nearly $3 million. In free-burn experiments, EV and ICE vehicle fires showed similar fire growth rates, similar peak fire sizes and similar durations. FSRI's summary: EV fires are still vehicle fires, with unique challenges around battery access and vehicle construction. ### How many EV fires have there actually been in the United States? NIST Technical Note 2365, published in March 2026, estimated 5,718 battery-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicle fires in the US since 2011 — with a 95% confidence interval of 2,866 to 10,846, and with Florida excluded because its data behaved unusually. The width of that range is a measure of how poorly this has been tracked. ### Are 'park outside' fire recalls mostly for electric vehicles? No. Most "park outside" warnings involve vehicles with internal combustion engines, and the causes are usually seat motors, power steering wiring, starter relays and always-on control modules. NHTSA recall 26V-363 covers 2021–2025 Jeep vehicles whose electric hydraulic power steering pump wiring may overheat and cause a fire even while parked; it carries an "Urgent, Park Outside" warning. Battery recalls do exist too — 25V-741 and 24V-720 cover high-voltage packs in certain Wrangler 4xe models. ### Did London's ULEZ actually improve children's health? A study by Queen Mary University of London, published in the Lancet Public Health, measured nearly 1,700 children in London against a similar number in Luton, a town with comparable traffic pollution and no clean-air zone, from before the ultra-low emission zone was introduced until 2022. The London children started with significantly smaller lungs and ended with roughly equal lung capacity. Nitrogen dioxide exposure also fell faster in London than in Luton. Independent researchers caution that other factors must also be considered, as this is an observational comparison rather than a randomised trial. ### How many people die from indoor air pollution? About 3 million people a year globally die prematurely from indoor air pollution, largely from solid fuels and biomass in developing countries, according to figures cited by the Guardian in August 2026. Separately, new studies indicate 40,000 Europeans die prematurely each year from pollutants emitted by gas stoves. The International Energy Agency's clean cooking campaign has attracted more than $3bn in pledges. ### How many Americans are affected by the EPA's proposed rollback of diesel truck standards? The Trump EPA's proposal to weaken the 2027 clean-truck standards affects 72 million Americans exposed to diesel pollution linked to severe health impacts, according to Forbes reporting from August 2026. The EPA separately repealed the endangerment finding in February 2026, which removes greenhouse gas emissions standards for light-duty vehicles. ### What share of new cars in Norway are electric in 2026? In August 2026, battery-electric vehicles were 98.7% of Norway's new car registrations: 13,274 of 13,451 new cars. Just 30 petrol-only cars were registered (0.2%) and 64 diesels (0.5%). Year-to-date through August 2026, BEVs took 97.8% of the new passenger car market. Norway's OFV notes that further CO2 and NOx cuts now depend on how fast older petrol and diesel cars leave the existing fleet. ### How much do fossil fuels cost Pacific island nations? The report Counting The Cost of Fossil Fuels in the Pacific found fossil fuels cost each Pacific nation between 10 and 25 per cent of economic output — more than the regional average spent on education (8%) or health (6%). Those same nations contribute 0.03 per cent of global emissions while being among the most vulnerable to cyclones and rising sea levels. ### Are gas cars or EVs more likely to be recalled for fire risk? By volume, gas cars. A Washington Post analysis of the 93 "park outside" fire recalls NHTSA has issued since 2021 found gas-only campaigns covered 4.6 million vehicles, compared with about 662,000 EVs and hybrids. By campaign count it was closer: 44 recalls covered internal-combustion vehicles exclusively and 38 covered only EVs or hybrids. ### How many vehicles are under a "park outside" recall in the US right now? About 3.2 million, according to a Carfax estimate confirmed by NHTSA in August 2026. In 2026 alone, US authorities announced 17 new park-outside recalls covering 1.7 million vehicles. ### What is a key-off fire? A fire that starts in a parked, switched-off vehicle because circuits remain electrically live. Former NHTSA investigator Frank Borris described it this way: "The engine is off, but the circuits are still hot and they stay hot all the time." Examples include Kia's recall of 463,000 Tellurides over a front power-seat switch that could ignite the seat, and 66,000-plus 2021 Ford Expeditions and Lincoln Navigators whose battery junction box circuit boards could short — at least 16 fires were blamed on that defect. ### Have there been big EV fire recalls in 2026 too? Yes. Lucid recalled 27,185 Air sedans from model years 2022–2026 in August 2026 because an exterior lighting circuit with insufficient overcurrent protection could overheat and catch fire; owners were told to park outside. GM also recalled 10 model-year 2026 electric trucks and SUVs — Silverado EV, Sierra EV, Escalade IQ and IQL — over a high-voltage battery pack issue, replacing the full pack at no cost. ### What is the NHTSA investigation into GM's 6.2-liter V8? NHTSA has opened a new investigation covering nearly one million GM 6.2-liter L87 V8 engines following continued reports of engine failures. It follows an earlier campaign that, as writer Eric Starkman put it, took more than 28,000 failed V8s to trigger. ### Do we actually know whether EVs catch fire more often than gas cars? In the United States, not reliably. Regulators have not historically collected vehicle fire data by powertrain, and fire agencies only switched this year to a federal reporting system that records it. The clearest outside evidence is a UK government review of Norwegian data showing gas and diesel vehicles had a fire incidence rate four times higher than EVs from 2016 to 2021. ### How many people do vehicle tailpipe emissions kill each year? A global study of on-road vehicle exhaust attributed approximately 361,000 premature deaths in 2010 and approximately 385,000 in 2015 to tailpipe emissions of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone. Around 70% of that burden occurred in China, India, the European Union and the United States. Diesel exhaust accounted for nearly half, roughly 181,000 deaths. ### How many people died with Tesla FSD or Autopilot engaged? In the United States between 1 January and 31 October 2025, ten deaths occurred in crashes where Tesla Autopilot or Full Self-Driving was verified as engaged, according to the tesladeaths.com dataset, which cross-references NHTSA's Standing General Order database, press reports and court records. Over the same window roughly 30,411 people were killed on American roads in vehicles that were not Teslas. ### Is the 'long tailpipe' argument against EVs correct? No. Building an electric car does emit more carbon than building a petrol car because of the battery, but the payback period is short. In the United States on average grid mix the breakeven is roughly 13,500 to 21,300 miles, typically under two years of driving. Across a 250,000 km lifetime a medium battery-electric vehicle produces about 27 to 71 percent lower lifecycle CO2 than an equivalent combustion vehicle. The grid also gets cleaner over time, so an EV's lifetime emissions fall while it is owned, whereas a combustion car's are fixed at manufacture. ### Does breathing vehicle exhaust cause anything other than lung problems? Yes. Beyond respiratory and cardiovascular harm, there is strong evidence that exposure to PM2.5 impairs neurological function and increases the risk of Alzheimer's disease, and that it affects the developing fetus. Transportation is responsible for up to roughly a quarter of US premature deaths attributable to PM2.5. ## Blog - [110 million views for a maybe. 74,000 deaths for a certainty.](https://notatesla.com/blog/ai-doom-110-million-views-vs-74000-deaths) — 2026-09-11 — An AI researcher's resignation post drew over 110 million views on X and a week of wall-to-wall coverage. Tailpipe and smokestack pollution killed an estimated 74,000 people in Europe in 2024 — one every seven minutes — and got a line in a think tank PDF. - [Jazz, Video Nasties, Brain Rot — and 74,000 Actual Deaths](https://notatesla.com/blog/jazz-video-nasties-brain-rot-and-the-thing-actually-killing-people) — 2026-09-10 — Air pollution killed an estimated 74,000 people in Europe in 2024 — one every seven minutes. Meanwhile the moral-panic machinery that once came for Elvis is fully deployed against TikTok, and hundreds of people show up to fight data centres. Nobody holds a town hall about tailpipes. - [A paperwork rule makes battery shipping cost 16 times more](https://notatesla.com/blog/battery-recycling-hazmat-transport-16x-cost) — 2026-09-09 — Dead EV batteries are classified as hazardous goods, so moving them costs on average 16 times more than standard freight. That single line — not chemistry, not physics — is a big part of why European recycling doesn't pay. Fixing the logistics could cut costs around 34%. - [Tesla redacted 3,951 of its 3,953 federal crash reports](https://notatesla.com/blog/tesla-redacted-3951-of-3953-federal-crash-reports) — 2026-09-08 — Tesla has filed 3,953 crash reports under NHTSA's Standing General Order for driver-assist systems. Journalist Fred Lambert found that all but two are stamped [REDACTED — confidential business information] — including reports on crashes that killed people. - [Most 'park outside' fire recalls are petrol cars](https://notatesla.com/blog/park-outside-recalls-are-mostly-petrol-cars) — 2026-09-07 — UL's Fire Safety Research Institute spent nearly $3 million over three years burning six EVs and three fuel-powered cars. The finding: similar fire growth rates, similar peak fire sizes, similar durations. Meanwhile the urgent "park outside" orders keep landing on combustion vehicles. - [London's clean-air zone gave children their lungs back](https://notatesla.com/blog/ulez-children-lungs-grew-back) — 2026-09-06 — Nearly 1,700 London children were tracked against a matched group in Luton. Before the ultra-low emission zone, the London kids had significantly smaller lungs. By 2022 the gap had closed. Meanwhile the US EPA is proposing to weaken 2027 diesel truck standards affecting 72 million Americans. - [4.6 million gas cars told to park outside. You heard about 662,000 EVs.](https://notatesla.com/blog/park-outside-recalls-4-6-million-gas-vehicles) — 2026-09-04 — Since 2021, NHTSA "park outside" fire recalls have covered 4.6 million gas-only vehicles against about 662,000 EVs and hybrids — a seven-to-one gap you almost certainly never read a headline about. - [Your car kills people without ever crashing](https://notatesla.com/blog/the-tailpipe-body-count) — 2026-09-04 — Ten Americans died with Tesla's FSD engaged in ten months. Vehicle exhaust kills roughly 385,000 people a year worldwide — and not one of them counts as a car accident, because nobody hit anything. ## Contact Independent site. No affiliation with any manufacturer.