Look at the accident and fatality rates for drivers of luxury cars. They are much, much lower than the same rates for less expensive cars. In fact, if you break it down by vehicle model, there are several models with 0 fatalities at all.
Another way: compare midsize luxury cars with midsize regular cars. People who buy midsize luxury cars die less often, and so do the people they're in crashes with.
Luxury brands depreciate at a higher per-day-per-mile amount than non-luxury brands. A trivial amount of research will prove this out. No disrespect intended.
Several reasons, but again, it is just guessing that cannot replace actual data. That doesn't mean we should take the only data point available (90 million miles) and declare it settled.
Your point about people seeking to drive faster is a valid one.
The counterpoint is there are people who cannot afford luxury cars but also want to drive faster -- they'll end up buying cheaper cars that can drive fast within their price range. Those are likely to be more fatal than the average luxury car.
1) Hypothesis on car age. An accident on a 2002 non-luxury car model is supposedly more likely to be fatal than an accident with your average new car.
This matters because Teslas with autopilot are relatively new compared to overall car population.
2) Hypothesis that low cost cars are more fatal than an average luxury cars.
3) Demographic hypothesis. Because of price point, the buyer demographic of newer luxury cars will be different than the overall demographic. Age group (e.g. teenagers vs. young adults vs. older adults), education level, profession.
>Some people of means choose to drive luxury cars because they are powerful, comfortable cars with lots of safety features and bleeding edge technology.
Probably the kind of people who have never heard or entertained the notion of diminishing returns, and think that spending $200,000 or $300,000 on a car will get you much more comfortable and "bleeding edge technology" than spending, say, $60,000, and not just an extravagant design and the envy factor.
(I'm also not sure why buyers of luxury cars in the US in particular want "powerful" sports cars in a country where the maximum speed limit we get is a kindergarten level 70-75 mph).
(Btw, and whenever someone writes "everyone" for a social group, he means "the majority of them". No need to point out some exceptions to "disprove" him).
I think the fact that luxury goods have become attainable by non-millionaires says a lot more about the decrease in cost in luxury goods than the irresponsibility of non-millionaires.
The classification of these goods is also confusing. For example, I drive a Lexus IS250 AWD which would be considered a luxury vehicle but actually comes in at the same price point as Toyota 4Runner.
Additionally, the variance in prices between luxury and non-luxury goods is decreasing. A low-end Lexus now costs less than $10k more than a similarly equipped Subaru Outback or Honda Accord, making the difference when it comes to actual affordability pretty small.
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