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" The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) isn&amp;#039;t too happy about Tesla&amp;#039;s claims that the Model S is the safest car ever tested by the government agency. While the NHTSA hasn&amp;#039;t specifically named Tesla, the agency released a statement qualifying the EV-maker&amp;#039;s claims. &amp;quot;The agency&amp;#039;s Five-Star Safety Ratings program is designed to provide consumers with information about the crash protection and rollover safety of new vehicles beyond what is required by Federal standards. One star is the lowest rating; five stars is the highest. More stars equal safer cars. NHTSA does not rate vehicles beyond five stars and does not rank or order vehicles within the star rating categories.&amp;quot; The statement goes on to point out that the NHTSA has guidelines in place for automakers to follow when it comes to conveying accurate test results to the public. Early this week, Tesla announced in a press release that the Model S scored a 5.4 out of five stars and that the sedan managed to break the NHTSA roof-crush test machine. I&amp;#039;ve reached out to Tesla for comment and will update this post with any response. UPDATE: In an email, Tesla responded by saying, &amp;quot;We stand by what we wrote in the press release. We believe it to be true based on NHTSA&amp;#039;s numeric Relative Risk Score (RRS) and overall vehicle-safety score (VSS) that ranks cars across its crash-test categories. The VSS score correlates to the overall probability of an occupant being injured in an accident. This data can be found in publicly available government documents online here. Tesla&amp;#039;s vehicle safety score was 0.42, which was lower than any other car listed in public documents.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/news/a5259/nhtsa-says-the-model-s-isnt-the-safest-car-ever-tested/>