Maye Musk, Elon Musk’s mother, wrote on X on Monday, October 12, that her son’s focus on safety is the reason a Tesla owner and his son are alive after a freeway crash. The owner had posted that he and his son were “sitting in the ER alive tonight” and thanked his Tesla. He said they were coming back from the X Takeover event.
What Maye and Elon wrote
Maye quoted the owner’s post and wrote that she remembered when Tesla was just starting, Elon would say Safety First. She said that is why the father and son are alive and that many other lives will be saved. Elon quoted her post and wrote, “Your safety has always been priority 1 at Tesla and SpaceX.”
What is not known
The owner’s account is his own. The accounts we read give no details on how the crash happened, how badly anyone was hurt or which Tesla model was involved. One crash story cannot show how safe a car is overall, and a post from the CEO’s mother is not safety data.
The federal review in the background
The posts came while U.S. regulators are looking at Tesla’s driverless fleet. A petition asking the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to open a defect investigation says Tesla’s robotaxis speed through school zones. NHTSA opened the file on October 9, and it is a petition under review, not an investigation. Separately, NHTSA is asking how the Cybercab was certified as meeting federal safety rules, and Tesla’s answers are due October 30. We covered the petition in Tesla Robotaxis Face Federal Petition Over School-Zone Speeds.
Our take: family posts about safety make good social media, but the numbers that count come from regulators and from Tesla’s own answers. Watch what Tesla tells NHTSA by October 30.
