The Cybertruck Appears to Be More Deadly Than the Infamous Ford Pinto, According to a New Analysis

...and unlike the Pinto, because we are so deep into fucked-reality-ville, it won't get recalled.

Ford's reasoning was that it was cheaper to pay out for the injuries and deaths than to change the car. Cybertruck has a much better plot armor, a fanbase that refuses to believe it's crap.
- I think that fanbase is staying to wane. But who knows, maybe the gas loving Maga rednecks will start buying...who am I kidding, most of them can't afford the ridiculous price tag.
- The very real origin of the Fight Club joke about not doing a recall
- I don't know. I'm not sure I've seen or encountered strong pro cyber truck sentiment. Maybe a bit of online excitement for like a day when they were first rolling out but now it's been a laughing stock.
Nah. The Ford Pinto laid the groundwork for the NHTSA's regulatory control of forced recalls. The only way this thing doesn't get recalled for being dangerous is if Musk's D. o. g. e manages to undercut or defund the NHTSA.
Additionally, other countries with better regulatory bodies won't even allow it to be sold or will require mandatory recall of these vehicles which means the end of the cyber truck. They can't even sell them because people don't want them.
The other thing is that insurance companies can absolutely refuse to insure them and if I'm honest, they may be the main reason that the NHTSA doesn't back down from regulating them (insurance companies are a powerful lobby, and they absolutely can countermand the automotive lobby in some cases).
My point is, it's more complicated than just "Musk is a government official now, and historically dangerous cars weren't recalled".
- NHTSA
  Project 2025 has explicit targets for reforming NHTSA. It is unambiguously in their sights, just lower on the priority list.
- I'd like to thank you for this measured take in response to my unbridled cynicism.
- I believe they're absolutely not street legal in the UK, nor in the EU. Those were never "ridiculous sized trucks" Walhalla to begin with (although I see more Rams than I care to, these days), so there's roughly zero chance those things will become mainstream here.
  Heck, we have rain here, that's enough of a wankpanzer repellant.
- Let me simplify it for you... Musk has been targeting agencies that stood in the way of SpaceX. Did you hear he started targeting OSHA this week because of the spotlight on Musk's intentional dismissal of safety regulations? Or that he is also targeting the consumer protection agency? Everything that protects regular citizens is being shut down as "wasteful", and his only criteria is anything that costs him money or prevents him from exploiting workers.
- I mean, the thing is already outright illegal in most countries where pedestrian safety is taken into account. An EU version would have to look completely different.
- It will take Leon 20 minutes to shut down the whole agency claiming that they actually eat babies and people will just go with it.
Probably why he’s closed the CFPB.
These are cybertruck owners....
Nah, he will just get more government grants to "fix" it. (Aren't they up to like 30% grants at this point?)

I love Elon Bad posts, but I think it's worthwhile to examine why Elon bad in this case.

Like many reactionaries, Elon's business philosophy is pure tech-bro-libertarianism. And like all libertarians, he's stuck in the neoliberal mindset of less regulation (don't scrutinize) and more efficiency (let me be cheap), in order to create the safe space that industrialists need to ~~extract~~, er create.

He's literally said things like (paraphrasing)

When I see a specification for three bolts I ask: why can't we do it with two?

His transparent reasoning is that if he's allowed to cut corners, he'll save money today and consequences can be dealt with when they arise.

He's following the software model of release a minimally viable product and patch it later. Only instead of user frustration at being beta testers, you fucking die maybe.

Him and his libertarian friends fuck up left and right. Crashing startups and just getting more money for another. Constant recalls. Blowing up rockets until it works.
Yet they hold the government to a standard of being perfect and high performing with no room for failure. NASA can’t be blowing up rockets. As soon as they do the world comes down on them.
And Trump is the biggest fuckup of all these guys.
- Blowing up rockets until it works is a far better approach than trying to get everything to work on the first try and ending up with a hugely overpriced white elephant.
You can't use "literally" and "paraphrasing" like that.
- Thank you, my pedantic friend. (I say this because I'm often the one making the comment and getting the eyerolls)
- You can’t use “literally” and
  .. be over 14
I think it's also worth noting that Elon Musk is a scammer. Every other word out of his mouth is likely a lie. He's been claiming to already have technologies available for his Tesla cars, his SpaceX rockets, etc, all ready to go and.. it never happened. Tesla full self driving? The Tesla taxis? SpaceX on Mars? The Tesla laughably stupid robots? Even those were faked.
Claims after claims for decades and literally no results
The guy is a full on bait and switch yet everyone seems to lap up everything this scammer says.
Also, normally the cost savings should go to the client, not into some billionaires bank account.
He is like a child who is still rebelling against his parents who made him go to bed early too many times.
An MVP should not be a beta version, but fully functional and bug-free. The idea is to reduce scope to not necessarily even release it (though that's possible) but to have a solid foundation onto which to duct-tape bells and whistles.
The MVP of a car doesn't have heated seats, heck the seats might not even be adjustable without a wrench, but it's absolutely going to drive and drive well and be crash-safe. Because if it doesn't it's nowhere close to being a viable car, go back and fix that before spending time on those seats.
oh god that quote. he's so lame and fucking stupid.
I'm sure corner cutting is a concern but also he's so insecure he probably read things about Steve Jobs or something, and tried to ape him. I remember something about Jobs supposedly telling employees to reduce steps in some processes or whatever. this idiot doesn't understand anything so he thinks asking for fewer bolts is the same thing.
why can't we do it in two? cause that's how you secure things you fucking dumbass. your proud fascination for "fewer bolts" is why your hypercuck tried to kill a driver.
I wonder if Elon is a follower of Ayn Rand?
There's nothing inherently wrong with a simplification mindset. Automotive manufacturers certainly do like to overcomplicate things. Unfortunately people like him only care about costs and not quality.
is pure tech-bro-libertarianism
Tech bros are usually not libertarian. Being excited about a failed solution to only one of libertarian problems (blockchain) doesn't make one libertarian, too.
And like all libertarians, he’s stuck in the neoliberal mindset of less regulation (don’t scrutinize) and more efficiency (let me be cheap)
That's not libertarianism, more like Ayn Rand and her inverse bolshevism with good mighty benevolent industrial aristocracy and bad stupid mischievous everyone else. She even reads like one of Valentin Pikul's "historical novels", only with inverted good and bad guys. That ideology is radically different from libertarianism, instead of freedom, voluntarism, non-aggression and such, resulting in a free society with free contracts, Ayn Rand says that some people are better than the others and thus freedom, voluntarism, non-aggression etc are measures by relative value of the offender and the victim. It's jungle law.
Anyway, it's not "neoliberal" either, anti-monopoly regulations are part of the "ideal" free market model. And I think Elon likes patents and trademarks, which are not necessarily there (and in libertarianism are not a thing).
His transparent reasoning is that if he’s allowed to cut corners, he’ll save money today and consequences can be dealt with when they arise.
You might have seen the recent news about Tesla sales falling. Maybe it took so long because of accumulated trust into regulators not allowing car makers to make dangerous crap. So - then maybe in other reality, where Elon came to an industry already allowed to cut corners, he'd go bankrupt by now because of consumers understanding who he is.
Life is complex, I'm not saying he's right, just that.
He’s following the software model of release a minimally viable product and patch it later. Only instead of user frustration at being beta testers, you fucking die maybe.
The way software industry works, a lot of people have died due to its failures. One has to count people who've committed suicide due to events cause by some bug or even UX problem, people who failed to communicate something in time, thus possibly saving someone, people who disclosed what they shouldn't have, thus possibly causing a criminal death, medical errors due to software problems, wars, catastrophes.
But yes, it's already allowed to do that and Elon wants such wonders in other industries, so that we'd have a bit of natural selection in our daily lives. Dystopian cyberpunk is called dystopian because it's not utopian, but being a billionaire, I guess, one would dream of living in such instead of utopian version of boring past.

I'm guessing that some people at the National Transportation Safety Board are about to get fired by Elon Musk.

Safety belts are a waste of precious money!
- Won't someone think of the shareholders!
- Safe at any speed!

Cybertruck will have 14.52 fatalities per 100,000 units — far eclipsing the Pinto’s 0.85.

Holy shit, that means the Cybertruck fatality rate is around 17 times higher than the Pinto's!

If you read the article is was specifically died by fire. Not any other cause of death.
- Right but the specific issue with the Pinto was that it would explode into flames on a rear impact, so this is the appropriate metric.
  Like deaths from other accidents would skew the numbers anyway because 70s cars were death traps compared to today, but even in that context, the Pinto's explosions were alarming.
  Beating it on that isolated metric is a very special kind of achievement.
- Top of the line in utility sports.
  Unexplained fires are a matter for the courts.
- Wish I could find data on all fatalities/100,000
Tesla #1
Do you realize how fucking insane that is? From 1921 to 1951 the rate of auto deaths dropped by around 50%, and from 1921 to 2011 the rate dropped by 90%. This is not just due to regulations on cars and pedestrian travel, but also in very large part due to crash safety in cars that steadily improved. With crash safety becoming a science, and crash test dummies being invented, and crumple zones, and air bags and seatbelts and the laws thereof.
Musk, asshole motherfucker that he is, is trying to destroy all of that.
- Absolutely! What's weird is that Teslas have been top-rated for crash-worthiness in the past, so there are a few possibilities I can think of:
  They need to be top crash-worthy, because of the stupid autopilot trying its best to kill the occupants
  They need to be top crash-worthy, because otherwise any crash at all would result in a fiery death
  The Cybertruck is an outlier and is not as crash-worthy as the previous Teslas
  All of the above
  What was that rule of thumb for taking multiple choice tests? If you don't know the answer, always select "all of the above"?

The Pinto got well known for a couple of reasons.

One, the classic "exploding in a rear end collision." The design flaw here was that in certain rear collisions, the fuel tank would be pushed into the rear differential. Not only could this rupture the fuel tank, it could also produce a spark. Boom. Lots of cars had this same design in the 70s, with the fuel tank low in the rear, right behind the rear differential.

Two, the infamous Pinto Memo, which did a cost benefit analysis that determined it would be cheaper for Ford to not fix the problem, and just settle whatever cases came up. This very clearly inspired the Fight Club recall formula scene. Take note that the car used in that scene is a Lincoln Town Car, produced by Ford Motor Company.

The kicker for the Pinto recall? What they did to fix it:

Two sheets of 1/8" plastic, each about 18" square
Some long zip ties
Layer the two sheets over the rear diff, zip tie them to the axle

That's it. My dad pointed this out to me in his shop some time in the late 80s or early 90s. He had a Pinto in for an oil change or something, "Hey, let me show you this." It was such a hacky "repair."

Curious: how effective was that “repair”? Did it actually make a difference at all?
- It would have prevented the "spark" part of the failure condition, but not the tank rupturing part.
Hackey, but I guess some plastic would be enough to stop metal on metal contact and prevent sparks?
Not that my Miata "temporarily" has cardboard wrapped in tape wrapped around the cold air intake pipe to prevent it from rubbing against the frame. Nope, definitely not.
- My challenger's whole plastic front end is connected with zip ties at this point. Those pathetic plastic clips they use just break apart if you try to work on them. I realize my solution to preventing plastic dragging on the road is less important than preventing metal on metal contact though.
Lots of cars had this same design in the 70s, with the fuel tank low in the rear, right behind the rear differential.
Jeep Grand Cherokees were this way between 1993 and 2004 and Jeep Libertys were this way between 2002 and 2007.
I do believe they were plastic though.
But they are jeeps. Quality was never an expectation
- I love my Jeep. Why make it unbreakable, when you can make it easy to fix!

And some people wonder why the cybertruck is barely sold outside the US.

Everything I hear about this thing is bad.

It's barely sold in the US as well.
- Might have something to do with it looking fucking stupid.
keep in mind that while the cybertruck might seem like a bad vehicle, it also is a bad vehicle
It's barely sold outside the US because other places (like the EU) also care about the safety of people outside the vehicle. That's why European and Asian cars (except the models explicitly for the US market like the Tacoma) are designed for pedestrians to be deflected, while US cars are a moving brick wall which will squish them like a bug.
Also, I suspect you'd need commercial plates and a special license to drive it most other places, due to the weight.
- Do you have a reasonable alternative solution to teach pedestrians lessons?
  Edit: (/s)
It’s only available in North America / Mexico. It won’t fly with many vehicle regulations outside of the US.
I imagine the sharp edges are more than enough to keep it out of Europe forever. Pedestrians need to be able to roll onto a vehicle in an EU pedestrian collision. The Cybertruck will lop you in half.

Is it me or are there guts in this picture?

Hard to tell. The picture was widely used in the media, and they're usually quite careful about that kind of thing. There's something reddish in it, but it could be material from the truck or its contents. One of the photos the police released of his guns had some red foamy material in it, another photo had some stringy red material (plastic?) lying in the road, and there were various red items in the bed too. I'll mark it NSFW just in case.
The driver was inside the vehicle at the time, so I'm sure some of that is his remains. But a lot is probably burned seat material and such. It's hard to say for sure.
Apparently it's a photo from "Cybertruck explosion outside Trump international hotel investigated for terror ties"
Looks like it 🤢

Really took the wind out of my satirical comment that Musk wanted to bring back the Pinto.

Who needs satire when you have reality?

The thing is a very obvious death trap to anyone that knows simple physics. There are videos testing what happens when a Cybertruck hits a hard wall at certain speeds. That thing didn't crumple at all until speeds greater than 35 mph. And even then it only barely crumples at all. The damage it could produce hitting another vehicle would be catastrophic and fatal.

I was driving out of a parking lot yesterday just as a Cybertruck started to pull in off the street from the left. The driver was white-knuckling the wheel and was frantically looking around as I assume he could barely see out of the goddamn thing as he swung so wide he nearly clipped my car. He needed almost the entire driveway to make his turn.

I cannot imagine dropping so much money on something so useless and so hideous.

well i hate to say this (really i do), turning is actually one of the only strong points about the CT. It can do a u-turn in the same-ish radius as a model 3, much better than most vehicles in its class.
that driver was just a fucking moron
- that driver was just a fucking moron
  I mean, he bought a cybertruck lol

What a dumpster fire that truck is.

- I look at the cartoon from Byrnes and it reminds me of the US healthcare system.

I was thinking “What’s that red stu—oh…” Yikes.

Melted plastic... right? Yup imma say it's melted platic

It seems obvious in hindsight. Sheet metal doors will crumple in a way that can't be opened, trapping occupants. The fire doesn't need to start in the relatively safe and armored battery system. It could be pinched wiring causing a short that ignites plastic interiors, or a fire from another vehicle spreading to the cybertruck.

I'm sure someone mentioned all this to them during design.

Plus there's the electronic opening mechanisms that fail in the event of a fire. This is on most Teslas iirc. Even if the doors are intact, you're stuck.
There's ways to open them, but good luck with this shit when you're concussed from an accident, and sat in a burning vehicle.
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modely/en_us/GUID-AAD769C7-88A3-4695-987E-0E00025F64E0.html

Garbage in, garbage out

Was the Pinto really that bad, though, or did Mother Jones do them dirty?

In the numbers above, the Pinto is hardly a standout deathtrap; I mean, by modern standards, sure, everything on that list is a horrible deathtrap, but the Pinto was safer than the Toyota Corolla or the Beetle or the Datsun 210, and none of those cars are as burdened with the oppressive fiery deathtrap narrative as the Pinto is. In fact, the Pinto’s overall deaths per million vehicles is better than the average!

https://www.theautopian.com/its-long-past-time-to-stop-making-fun-of-the-ford-pinto/

I would trust a Smart Fortwo more than the POS Cybertruck.

Seems like natural selection in progress.

Buy a Cybertruck, fuck around, see what happens.

It also handily preselects for douche.

But it is so financially efficient! It isn't wasting money on safety.

The only thing that makes the cyberfuck safe is it's pricetag and it's virgin protector looks

But at least its bulletproof!

To bb guns

1/6887 is not good odds.

Better than the early days of COVID when they were up in arms about having to smell their own breath.
cough.

Reads like clickbait. There's 34K Cybetrucks, so the actual number of fire fatalities is rounded to 5, one of which is the trumptower guy (so 20% is already intentional). Not that these are encouraging numbers, but you can't draw conclusions from an N of 4.

You can draw conclusions because there's only 35,000 on the road. That is a terrible rate.
- that's how confirmation bias works, not statistical probabilities.
  EM's still a nazi and the CT is a horrible joke, but this is still insufficient data.

HUSH!!! DO NOT TELL THE CUCKWAGON OWNERS!!

The pinto is a myth

Pintos represented 1.9% of all cars on the road in the 1975–76 period. During that time, the car represented 1.9% of all "fatal accidents accompanied by some fire". This implies the Pinto was average for all cars and slightly above average for its class.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Retrospective_safety_analysis

god bless American auto regulations for allowing unique vehicles on the road (and the ability to sue for damages when the idiot driver hits you)

Do they have emergency releases on the outside? I know a locked door of a car with traditional latching mechanisms won't open. But an unlocked vehicle where a bystander cannot render aid in an emergency seems so.... Short sighted.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O2fUhCCuTto
Not in the outside, but the rear releases are hidden in the door well under a vanity mat
It is on purposes. He wants a cyberpunk fantasy car. You know what you can do in many cyberpunk games? Blow up cars with the slightest of ease. They're made of explodium in some games, and in Cyberpunk 2077 there is a quickhack (like a magic spell, but cyberpunk) that can cause the car to literally explode.
Can you imagine for one second if someone managed to find a way to consistently connect to Tesla vehicles AND found a way to cause the battery to overheat and burn? The door autolock will cause the passengers to be trapped and be burned alive.
I don't think this is an accident. No one can be that stupid to make something like that by accident.

Can we like, mark this as NSFW?

Climate Change Simulator

I believe 4 of the 5 Cybertruck fatalities were from a single crash. While the truck may indeed be dangerous, there is hardly enough data yet to draw conclusions.

I mean, it's fatal to my eyes, because it's so ugly.
yeah certainly not enough to have statistical significance

No. Shit. Sherlock.

Why are we talkaing about this? Who needs this sheet?

i knew it!