Slashdot Mirror
NHTSA Tells Tesla To Stop Exaggerating Model S Safety Rating
cartechboy writes "There's always that kid in the class that ruins it for everyone when being graded on a curve. At the moment, that kid is Tesla and Elon Musk. Tesla's been proudly claiming the Model S is one of the safest cars in the word despite the recent fire controversy. And while it may be just that, claiming it earned 5.4 stars from NHTSA isn't pleasing the safety agency as there is no such thing as a rating higher than five. While NHTSA already released a statement indirectly to Tesla saying it doesn't release ratings higher than 5, Tesla continued to promote this fictitious rating. Now NHTSA has updated its guidelines explicitly stating safety ratings are whole numbers only and that 5 stars is the maximum advertisers can claim. If advertisers and automakers decide to disregard these rules NHTSA is threatening removal from the program or referral to state authorities for appropriate action. Basically, hey Tesla, stop making false claims."
Apparently people aren't reading what's been said. Tesla's press release says: "National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has awarded the Tesla Model S a 5-star safety rating", and "NHTSA does not publish a star rating above 5". Thus Tesla is not claiming that they were assigned a 5.4 since they outright acknowledge that NHTSA doesn't publish a rating above 5. What Tesla did say is that if one were to take the individual scores that were provided by the NHTSA (which apparently includes ratings above 5, and possibly decimal as well) and average those, the resultant number would be a 5.4.
Now what is probably getting the other manufacturers upset is that the clipping of the results at 5 means that the vehicles that just squeaked into the 5 look the same as vehicles which may have blown past the 5. If they didn't like that, why aren't the individual scores also integral and clipped at 5? Then one could not possibly claim (or even appear to claim) a number higher than 5.
So, this whole release is trying to beat up Tesla for something they didn't say. They didn't say that the NHTSA awarded them a 5.4 rating (see the first quote). They did say: "achieved a new combined record of 5.4 stars.".
The Tesla, a vehicle, does not generate emissions.
If you charge it with carbon-sourced electricity, the Tesla, a vehicle, still doesn't generate emissions.
If you strap a diesel generator to the roof to run your personal electronics, the Tesla, a vehicle, still doesn't generate emissions.
If you load up the trunk with flatulent cattle, the Tesla, a vehicle, still doesn't generate emissions.
That some people have trouble parsing natural language is not Elon's problem.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Yet that's the actual, accurate score. I don't see why the actual score can't be reported?
There is no analytical basis to explain exactly how 5.1 is less safe than 5.4 and the analysis makes no such claim. If the NHTSA allowed manufacturers to abuse the figures by claiming these fractions are meaningful then the rating system would lose credibility. Ultimately manufacturers might game the system to amplify a meaningless fraction.
Tesla had this explained to them and Tesla ignored it. Now the NHTSA has had to get official on their asses and tell them to stop. This is Tesla's own fault, whether the fanbois like it or not.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
The NHTSA doesn't want manufacturers to optimise for the particular suite of sample accident scenarios to gain an extra 0.1 score and beat their rivals, because that would not mean that the real-world safety was improved and might even mean that safety declined slightly in non-tested accident scenarios. By rounding the scores it eliminates the motivation for this pointless effort,
If that were true, they wouldn't give the precise VSS scores to the manufacturers, just a "where you failed" review for individual tests. In the scenario Mysidia described (4.4 versus 4.6), there's every reason for a manufacturer to want to sneak above that .5 mark, in order to get a "NHTSA 5-Star Rating! * * * * *". If you were a manufacturer, wouldn't you give up a few percent of real-world safety for that extra star (by sneaking from 4.4 to 4.6)? Say by enlarging the rear pillars to cheaply improve your inverted-drop roof-crush score (your area of lowest performance) in spite of loss of visibility it causes (and thus increased real-world accidents), rather than actually improving roof-crush performance through proper structural changes. Or sacrificing your top score in roll-over stability by adding or removing elements to improve your very low-scoring rear collision survival test. Whereas if you weren't given a VSS score for each test, you would only know that the review says your rear-collision survivability sucks, and you'd have to work to improve it without reducing safety in other areas (because you wouldn't know where you exceeded the tests and thus have margin to sacrifice.) The current system clearly encourages manufacturers to "build to the test" at the expense of real-world safety.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.