I agree...The kind of driver who can buy a Tesla is likely the kind of driver who has acquired enough education and comfortable wealth to be a competent driver (on the average). Moreover, there's survivor bias here: If you've made it far enough in life to buy a Tesla, you're probably a person with pretty decent habits.
And finally, if you've bought an expensive car like the Tesla, you may be more likely to drive it more carefully than the average person does their Honda Accord.
I don't think Musk is any more dishonest than any other CEO, and he's probably more honest, by far, on average. However, it kind of pains me to see how easy it is for him to sway the hacker crowd with data-interpretations that would be questionable by any standard. If this is among the strongest empirical evidence he can provide, then I think we should maintain some skepticism.
A study by UC Berkeley and the University of Toronto actually showed that luxury car owners were by far the most aggressive drivers, and the least likely to stop for other road users.
For whatever reason BMW stood out most of all as the worst of the worst in this study, but 'expensive car drivers are better drivers' has been proven to not be an assertion you can make from common sense or intuition.
Without reading the study, I'm ready to agree that its conclusions are correct. But I'd argue we're still comparing apples to oranges here:
1. We can't assume that Tesla drivers are the same as traditional luxury car drivers. While cars are a statement of wealth, and many arrogant bastards like making that statement...A Tesla is ostensibly a statement of a few other things, such as concern for the environment, optimism about technology, etc. etc...in the same way, even though many programmers make high-end salaries (low-6 figures), I wouldn't say that we can expect these programmers to golf as much as the average non-programmer low-6-figure-earner.
2. Reading the link you posted, it said the study evaluated based on the frequency of accidents and the size of payout...I couldn't find the study on the website, but this statement from the article was ambiguous to me:
> According to data from IIHS website, the collision insurance losses on BMW 7 Series are more than twice the average for vehicles nationwide, and BMW 3 Series two-doors are more than three times.
Twice the average of what...? Payouts total? Payouts per claim? Payouts per claim normalized by number of total cars of that kind on the road?
3. The NHTS data concerns the number of fires. For the study you cited to be more relevant, we'd have to know what proportion of the insurance claims also involve vehicle fires. If you're thinking, "Well, if a car caught on fire, then that's likely because of an accident...so more accidents mean more fires"...well, a> That's a classic logical fallacy (All dogs are animals. Sara owns a lot of animals. Therefore, Sara owns a lot of dogs) and b> the kinds of accidents that make up a majority of insurance claims (my guess is low-to-medium speed fender benders) may not represent a significant portion of incidents that end up in a flaming wreck.
All in all, I wouldn't say that Musk is clearly wrong here...He could be right, we just don't have enough information either way...so it feels slightly dirty -- a slap in the face of analytical thinking -- for him to cite these statistics as being anywhere near conclusive.
And finally, if you've bought an expensive car like the Tesla, you may be more likely to drive it more carefully than the average person does their Honda Accord.
I don't think Musk is any more dishonest than any other CEO, and he's probably more honest, by far, on average. However, it kind of pains me to see how easy it is for him to sway the hacker crowd with data-interpretations that would be questionable by any standard. If this is among the strongest empirical evidence he can provide, then I think we should maintain some skepticism.