# 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). ### 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 - [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.