Comparing Tesla to the US incident average is a neat way of ignoring that high-end electric vehicles are not driven by the US average driver, in average situations.
The driver (or should we call them executives, in self-driving cars?) is likely to have much more to do with the statistics, that the car.
I wrote article [1] along these lines a few years ago. There are lots of non-comparables between Teslas and the US fleet average, although this has been getting less true over time (as Tesla released less expensive cars, and as its vehicles aged).
It's not even comparing Tesla to US incident average, that would be an improvement. It's comparing Tesla in situations where people are comfortable activating Autopilot to US incident average.
The absolute easiest miles for a luxury vehicle vs all miles for all cars.
Public policy in the town I grew up in was that intersections only got lights after a certain number of reported accidents had happened there.
There was a particularly nasty intersection near the most popular bike shop that the bike club kept going to the city about but since nobody had died yet, they weren't going to put one in.
People know which intersections are accident prone, well before the city does something about it. There are routes I don't take because there are others that are safer or easier to follow at all hours of the day instead of just outside of rush hour, or also when I'm tired/distracted. But there are also magnets that pull certain demographics to them. Like that bike shop, or the shitshow outside of CostCo where I live now.
Calling Tesla drivers executives seems a bit... out of touch? Maybe the most premium model is an executive car. The vast majority are $50-$65k, with a house hold income of $133k. This means they are top 25% earners, not top 5%.
More important is the fact they are driven by older people (median age 48 years old), that is more important.
I think GP's "Executives" remark was less directly about the employment state of the subject than an attempt to distinguish them ("people in the driving seat of self-driving cars") from "drivers" (people who actually drive cars). IMO "operators" is probably a term with more fitting analogies.
The reason for that difference should be evaluated then. Is it an income thing? Car cost thing? (compare stats to non-Teslas in the same group) Does Tesla's marketing create a false sense of confidence in the car's abilities? Does the UI distract? Numbers can lie, but in general, I think the data is out there to support or reject the "fake news" narrative.
