The safety features of the Model X had a spotlight on them in the recent unveiling, but the safety features of the Model S had slipped under the radar until recently when a slew of events occurred that shed light on just how safe these cars are. Safety is one of those things you want to assume is there when you buy a $100,000 car, but not something everybody puts on their list to verify before buying a car. Much like getting cancer, we kind of want to pretend that we just won’t get into a car accident each day when we head out on the road. But the statistics say that the average driver will get in an accident every 18 years or so, with 3,287 deaths as a result EVERY DAY, statistically speaking. Food for thought.
Image courtesy: Tesla
Having said that, on October 19th, Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO of DreamWorks Animation and producer of many of Disney’s hit movies from my childhood, decimated his Tesla Model S when he was in a brutal car accident, totaling the car. That would not normally be a newsworthy event, but the accident put him in the hospital for 3 days before he was let out to let his right wrist and broken arm heal up.
What’s notable about all this is that, less than 24 hours after he was was released, he said that he felt Elon Musk had saved his life. He wasn’t talking about Elon flying down in black and silver spandex and a cape to save the day, but that the superb safety features of the Model S were responsible for saving his life. The Tesla Model S is a 5-star-rated vehicle (and is technically the safest car ever tested by the NHTSA) so one would expect that it would fare better than most, but to have this punctuated by yet another close call where the person lived to tell the tale is starting to build a substantial track record as the king of safety.
Mr Katzenberg’s gushing was quoted in an article by the Hollywood Reporter and Elon responded, deferring credit for the life-saving car to the full team at Tesla.
What a great pop of publicity for Tesla from Hollywood’s elite supporting the growing collection of real-life accounts of Tesla’s tech saving the day.
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