What I take issue with is saying that the cars are 4 wheeled death machines killing everyone in their path. That is not true. It is also not true that other companies are solving the same problem without risk.

I never said that. It isn’t black or white. I said musk creates a culture that despises safety engineering. Other companies like Volvo embrace it. Different companies embrace it to different degrees. As a result, you have wildly different fatality rates. Teslas happen to be the worst (although, like you said, it’s impossible to get good data that accounts for all the factors).

Yes, it is a people problem, but it is also a systems problem. Volvo has aimed for zero fatalities in their cars. They engineer for problematic people. They went 16 years without a fatality in the UK in one of their models. Tesla simply doesn’t care about problematic people. In fact, problematic people may even get a boost from a Musk re-tweet.

I agree, zero incidents may be impossible and people are problematic. But attitudes, practices, cultures and systems can either amplify those problems or dampen their effects. Musk and Tesla amplify the negative effects. It doesn’t have to be that way.