You're listening to their auto be a law, the
center for auto safety podcast with executive
director, Michael Brooks, chief engineer, Fred
Perkins, and hosted by me, Anthony Cimino for
over 50 years, the center for auto safety has
worked to make cars safer. Okay. Never got promoted
back to the world of the living. Okay. Welcome
to the world of the living folks. It is a new
episode of our podcast. It is Monday, Wednesday.
Wow. Wednesday, March 11th. You know, we start
recording 15 minutes earlier and the brain's
just not working yet. We're going to start off
this week with a topic that I'm personally getting
tired of. I know Michael's been tired of it forever.
Fred loves it though. Ready? Waymo. Oh boy. Oh
boy. Oh boy. So the NTSB has come up with their
preliminary investigation, their review of the
investigation that happened in Santa Monica,
where in the school zone, the Waymo hit a kid.
And Waymo's like, hey, we did nothing wrong,
man. And what they were really like was, hey,
we did it better than a human. Yes, that's right.
We hit your kids so much better than you, you
meat sack. Oh, boy. But the NTSB, we. We have
a link to it here. They go through the whole
thing and saying this is where it happened. What
what what went on? I don't know. I mean, they
weren't speeding as far as we can tell. You know,
it looks like there was there's kind of a 25
mile per hour school zone and a 15 mile per hour
school zone very close to each other. But this
was in the 25. So. I think we discussed before
that it may have been a 15 -mile -per -hour zone.
And the Waymo was going 17, which technically
is over the speed limit. However, it looks like
they were well under. Yeah, but they say part
of this is after the collision, a Waymo road
assistance agent in Novi, Michigan, contacted
911 and later provided the vehicle with directions
to move to the curb on 24th Street north of the
crash site. This brings up a couple of things.
One, how when did this person in Novi, Michigan,
get alerted to this? They get like, oh, we had
a little impact on the sensor. Do we heard a
child scream? But further from that is the person
in Novi, Michigan, provided the vehicle directions
to move to the curb. Is that not a human taking
over the driving task? I mean, I think it pretty
clearly is a human taking over part of the driving
task. And, you know, there's beyond this specific
situation, I think there are a lot of concerns
about remote drivers, justified concerns in a
lot of areas. And then we see it. You know, we
talked about this a couple of weeks ago when
we mainly focused on remote driving an episode.
You know, there's a range of remote driving behaviors
from, you know, an RC car through. whatever it
is that tesla is doing with its vehicles um where
they clearly have someone ready to take over
you know either that's a remote person or a safety
driver in the vehicle anytime too you know what
what waymo and zooks are kind of doing where
they don't want to call these people drivers
they want to call them assistants zooks had a
really fun name for their, I think it was a tactician
is what Zoox is calling them. So they're trying
to kind of blur the lines there and ensure that
most of us don't really understand the process
that's going on there and also blur the lines
of liability. in some respects. I mean, if someone
is not deemed a remote driver or somehow responsible
for the vehicle's actions, it's going to be much
harder to, you know, bring that person or hold
that person accountable for their mistakes. So
there's a lot going on here beyond this crash,
I think. And if you look into the way that, you
know, Waymo is describing situations versus,
you know, the way that others might look at those
situations, there's a lot to resolve. in the
law and in safe, our approach to safety as we
move forward with autonomous vehicles. Yeah.
The NTSB is still investigating this specific
incident. Once I guess we had an update, we will
let you know, but continuing in the world of
Waymo. Now this is either, I don't know which
my gas light is this week. Okay. Cause there's
this fast company article, which is okay. It's
a very long article about. It's titled Uncovered
Records Reveal the Hidden Costs of Waymo Robo
Taxis on San Francisco Streets. And it goes into
basically saying how the Waymos, as we know,
will crap out in the middle of the street. And
then the police and first emergency first responders
have to get in there and be on paid valets, which
is great. And they document a lot of this stuff.
You know, Waymo says things like Waymo is committed
to continuous improvement, says Levante. Cavalcante,
who serves as Waymo's director of operations
like that. Yeah, we're all committed to continuous
improvement. What is an AV company, not a yoga
class? This is nonsense. I don't know. I love
ice cream too much. But some of the issue I have
here is the article itself. They start linking
to as if it's factual is some dubious opinions,
like saying that Waymo's are potentially safer
than humans. And they link to an article in Nature,
which. is deeply flawed like this research it
links to that new york times op -ed piece which
we talked about with a doctor who has no background
in auto safety and was really just a non -paid
fool for waymo and uh and waymo itself for its
safety records yeah well i mean just so you know
you're you're leading into my i know that's why
i'm sticking i know you want to hit you're a
poaching i'm not an intellectual poacher i am
not i'll stay away from fred's gaslight and just
note that there is there is so much nonsense
on the internet today written by people with
little understanding or with an agenda that it's
it's it's kind of a lot it's become a lot like
data. You can pick and choose your data to make
an argument. You can pick and choose the links
you want that can say the types of things you
want to structure your argument. So it's not,
you know. We see this all the time. Right. And
all sorts of articles, particularly around AVs,
which is an area that is continually developing.
And there's just a lot of novelty in this area.
And that's going to lead to misinformation, disinformation
and, you know, frankly, a lot of unknowns that
contribute to this kind of, you know, writers
grasping for information wherever they can get
it. Yeah. So, Fred, my. My Gaslight is really
the Fast Company article itself. That's who it
is. And I don't think they're intentionally doing
it. I think this is more of the journalist on
a deadline and kind of being like, well, here's
some information. It was in the New York Times.
It must be good. Here's something in nature.
It's an incompetent, lazy journalist. And my
Gaslight goes into exactly how and why that's
so. Take it away, Mr. Perkins. All right. So
we're talking about this article by Fast Company.
And the title of that is Uncovered Records Reveal
the Hidden Cost of Waymo Robotaxis on San Francisco
Streets. So that's fine. There's a lot of that.
We'll go into more of that in a time later. But
quoting from it, research suggests that autonomous
cars can outperform human drivers. And are even
less likely to be involved in serious accidents.
This links back to a New York Times article.
And that New York Times article in turn references,
well, information provided by Waymo on their
website. And so I took a little bit deeper dive
into that. And the Waymo references three different
papers. all of which were based on data that
was produced in 2022, so very early versions
of Waymo driver, when it was still restricted
to low -speed operations in a limited area. So
you can't really generalize this into the modern
versions of the software, the current driver,
which is several generations removed from the
data that they claim justifies their genetic.
reductions in accidents. So I looked at those
three references and first is titled the MASH
case control analysis of autonomous versus human
driven vehicles. And a key statement in there
is the analysis suggests that accidents of vehicles
equipped with advanced driving systems generally
have a lower chance of occurring than human driven
vehicles in most of similar accident scenarios.
However, accidents involving advanced driving
systems occur more frequently than human driven
vehicle accidents under dawn, dusk, or turning
conditions, which is 5 .25 and 1 .98 times higher
respectively. So this article says that it's
producing lower, that AVs are producing lower
accident rates, but then when it puts the numbers
on it, the accident rates are actually Five or
twice as high as the human -driven vehicles based
on their data. And that article actually included
ADAS systems. So it shouldn't even be remotely
relevant to an overall analysis of ADAS. Right.
So that's one of my points. There's a lot of
irrelevancy in these studies underlying the Waymo
publication on their own website. I'll also point
out that these are touted as being peer -reviewed.
But there's no evidence that anybody outside
of Waymo employees ever was involved in these
studies. So all of the names that are attached
to it are all Waymo employees. On the second
reference, the data on self -driving cars is
clear. We have to change course. This is the
one by Jonathan Slotkin, who is a neurosurgeon,
which I'm not sure how that qualifies him to
be a statistician associated with. Self -driving
vehicles, but that's okay. Watch out if you need
neurosurgery, I guess. The self -driving car
company, Waymo, recently released data. Okay,
so where is the data? The three references are,
as I said, by Waymo, based on data from 2022,
which is not even remotely related to the current
operating system. And the one by Scanlon says
this study focused exclusively on data from 2022.
It was actually published in 2024. And then the
second one is a comparison of Waymo rider -only
crash data to human benchmarks at 7 million miles
in 2024. Well, they're not saying they've been
up to, what, 150, 200, some many hundreds of
millions of miles. So this is... based on very
early information, a different version of the
software than the current using now, and a different
version of the actual vehicle itself than they're
using now. So the relevance of one to the other
is not clear. According from the article, the
direction and significance of comparisons in
any property damage or injury outcome group are
inconclusive due to difficulties in estimating
a matching human benchmark. So one of the key
documents underlying all of this is it's irrelevant
and inconclusive. And the third one is titled
Dynamic Benchmarks, Spatial and Temporal Alignment
for ADS Performance Evaluation. And in this article,
they don't make any claims at all about the reduction
in accidents associated with the automatic drivers.
All it talks about is how if you use different
methods of analysis, you come up with different
answers. For example, the time of day adjustment
in San Francisco, limited to this region due
to data availability, resulted in adjusted crash
rates, 2 % lower to 16 % higher than adjusted
rates, depending on severity level. So the website
says 90 % reduction. The underlying data says,
well, hell, we don't even know. And if you believe
it, The data, even though we don't really trust
it, it's either 2 % lower or 15 % higher. So
it's not clear to me where these claims are coming
from. But generally speaking, all the peers that
they reference are Waymo employees. They're not
the customer independent reviewers, which are
usually involved in, quote, peer review, close
quote. It's all old data. Doesn't include the
latest versions of Waymo driver software or hardware.
Does not include the bulk of miles driven by
Waymo. It's restricted to small areas and low
speeds associated with driving before 2022. The
comparisons are questionable at best. So I'm
nominating this as a great example of fecal locution,
which is bullshit emerging from people's mouths.
getting my Gaslight award for this week. So who
specifically gets the Gaslight award? Waymo.
Waymo? Because they originated all this nonsense.
Okay. And it's been filtered through the New
York Times and now filtered through, what's that
other one? Fast Company. Yeah, it's multiple
sources at this point. Now, I will say that the
article does a pretty good job of looking at
the kind of the first responder issue and speaking
with some of the folks in San Francisco on the
ground. So, you know, we see this a lot, though.
We see reporters covering autonomous vehicles
often revert to this safety argument that is,
you know, at this point we have, you know, really
no way of. falling down on one side of the line,
safety or not safe, particularly because Waymo
is one of many autonomous vehicle companies.
And often articles just kind of generalize the
whole. as safe or not, instead of looking at
the specific companies operating in their records,
which at this point, none of them have enough
data to be statistically significant. So any
claims of safety are objectionable. Right. The
article is, as Michael was saying, does have
some good points in there. It talks about how
when these cars basically crap out the issues
that in San Francisco they've been having where.
The city had to call 911. No, sorry. The city's
911 service placed more than 31 calls to Waymo's
first responder hotline and spent more than two
hours and 36 minutes of call time trying to contact
the company. So the city itself had problems.
It got to the point where the mayor of San Francisco
had to contact the co -CEO of Waymo who responded
with a thumbs up emoji. Like the absolute balls
on this person be like, cool, bro. It's all taken
care of now, whereas that's not the issue. The
issue is why are we doing this? From a related
article in, I believe it's Futurism, they talk
about a hearing at San Francisco, their city
council. And I'm going to quote from this article.
When Supervisor Bilal Mahmoud grilled Waymo representatives
on what steps the company was taking to ensure
first responders can help. can be helping people
in the moment of a crisis, Waymo Sam Cooper,
an incident response specialist, had pointed
to how Waymo had helped train 1 ,000 first responders
in San Francisco with its online program. So
basically saying Waymo's stance is, no, we're
not going to fix our shit. We're going to train
you to fix it. And you're not going to get paid
for that, but we're going to train you for free.
And when our cars break down and Uber Eats driver's
too busy, we're going to make the cops do it.
Or we're going to make a fireman do it like the
the absolute hubris. It's it's it's government
paid babysitters. You know, it's just another
level of subsidies. Right. Yeah. So this is this
is just pure nightmare. But there's another just
one more quote from this article here from Futurism.
This is Mary Ellen Carroll, executive director
of the Department of Emergency Management. warned
that the frequency that the police and firefighters
have to respond to immobilized Waymos was becoming
a public safety issue. Quoting, what has started
to happen is that our public safety officers
and responders are having to be the ones to physically
move the cars. In a sense, they're becoming a
default roadside assistance for these vehicles,
which we do not think is tenable. So these are
two great articles to look at. We've got links
to them in the details. Obviously, any time they
reference could be safer, maybe it's safer. Take
a gallon of salt, then get yourself to the ER
because you might have a stroke. Wow. Yeah, I
know. It's too much. Look, it's a little gallon
of salt. Look, we start 15 minutes early. I'm
all messed up. Wrong side of the bed. Look, the
clocks changed. Weird things have happened to
myself. But okay, so my gaslight was the Fast
Company itself. Fred's was Waymo because he's
trying to keep it original. And then Michael.
Time for your Gaslight. All right, I'm going
to my latest Gaslight involving the media and
descriptions of, you know, a provision from the
2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that
required alcohol detection technology in vehicles.
Now, the title of the article pretty much gives
away that it's nonsense. It's federal surveillance
tech becomes mandatory in new cars by 2027. Okay,
let's unpackage that. So the provision is Section
24220 of the IJA. That's been essentially sitting
there now for five years, mandating NHTSA to
do something in this area. And all NHTSA has
done is issue an advanced notice of proposed
rulemaking that asked more questions than had
very few answers. But the statute itself does
not mandate any sort of surveillance tech, much
less federal surveillance tech. This article
gets it completely wrong there. What the statute
mandates is a system, whatever that system might
be, that can detect the presence of impaired
driving. Now, whether that is a driver monitoring
system, whether that is a an air sampling technology
that can detect the driver's alcohol through
their breath, whether it's one that can detect
the driver's alcohol levels through a scan of
their finger is one thing. But that's something
that NHTSA and the government haven't worked
out yet. It's certainly not going to be worked
out by... 2027. So the entire title of the article
is wrong. It's not becoming mandatory in new
cars by 2027. In fact, if they wrote the rule
today, it wouldn't be mandatory until 2030 at
a minimum, I believe. And so, you know, we're
talking about something that at the rate Nitz
is moving in with this current administration
is probably not going to be making it into cars
until the mid 2030s, I hope. And so this is the
kind of journalism that is – this is the true
lazy journalism, as we were talking about earlier.
This takes talking points from – people, whether
they're politicians or these people who think
they're freedom fighters out there preventing
federal surveillance from occurring. But ultimately
here, it's not the federal government who's,
even if these systems, even if they decide to
put this technology into cars as some type of
camera and a system that physically or actively
monitors what you're doing in your car. There
are no requirements that that information be
retained, right? That information can be immediately
deleted by the vehicle in its decision -making
process as to whether you're drinking that day,
never used again. It's ultimately going to be
up to the manufacturers. to determine whether
or not this information is available to them
via data or to you and whether they can sell
it or not. So it's not federal surveillance that
you hear that you should be scared of. It's corporate
surveillance. So if for all of these problems
and in the interest of time, because I could
probably spend a lot longer on this one, I'm
going to give this. Let's see who wrote the start.
What's DeCosta? I believe he is the founder of
Gadget Review. He's going to get my gaslight
of the week for a really, really bad, ignorant
article. Yeah, I had to look into who this person
was. And I believe you're right, Michael, it's
the person behind Gadget Review. Looking at their
LinkedIn profile, they're brand friendly is essentially
their tagline. and this might be too harsh and
i i'm sure their mother loves them but no this
is somebody who couldn't tech bro enough to become
a tech bro and it's still trying to become a
tech still trying to become a tech instead they're
like those fish around a shark those yeah yeah
remora remora uh remora not if does a remora
have a remora because that's kind of what this
guy is as you look at it this is Utter nonsense.
Michael, hands down, you are the winner of this
week's Gaslight, specifically because I had somebody
I know came to me saying this was a real thing
and it's being in use right now. And I took out
our tinfoil and wrapped it around their head.
Look, I would say, you know. Yes, be concerned
that manufacturers are using internal and external
vehicle cameras and all sorts of sensors on your
car and saving that data and selling it to insurance
companies, selling it to... whoever they want
to that's willing to pay for it, yes, that's
a concern. But in the context, blaming this law
and in the context of this law, which solely
goes after, is solely interested in passive alcohol
detection to prevent drunk driving, right? Has
no interest whatsoever in retaining that data,
storing it and selling it. These are all things
that the manufacturers are doing on the side
of safety over here. So, you know. postulating
that some kind of federal surveillance is nonsense.
And this is again, this is a proposed rulemaking
for comment. This is not the law. It's you know,
it's mandated that Netsub take a look at this
and and hopefully make a rulemaking on it in
the future and get this into all vehicles. But.
You know, it was mandated that NHTSA reach a
determination by a certain point and then mandate
this technology by 2027. But as usual, as we
discussed, you know, ad nauseum on this podcast,
the agency is. unforgivably, in some circumstances,
and incredibly slow when getting rulemakings
out there. And the DADS technology and the other
technologies that are out there, the DADS technology
is probably ready to start being integrated into
vehicles right now, but they're having trouble
finding manufacturers, shocker, that are willing
to support that process. And then there are other
technologies coming down the road that can do
a similar job using different types of detection
formats. But at this point, it's just way, way
behind. And thinking that NHTSA is going to get
this into cars by next year is beyond absurd.
Continue the funding of this show and all the
wonderful work that the Center for Auto Safety
does for 50 years. We've been over 50 years.
How many years in the 53? 54, 55, 56. The longer
this podcast goes, the more years get added on
autosafety .org. Click on donate. Someone who's
not going to click on donate is Jeff Bezos. And
let's talk about Zoox. He wouldn't be allowed
to click on donate. As an individual, he could,
not as a corporation. It's hard to disconnect
from that, right? We're not taking money from
Elon or Bezos or any of those guys. But from
his ex -wife. Absolutely. Yes, there you go.
Please, Mackenzie, donate. It will piss off your
ex -husband. That's the new fundraising model.
Find these billionaires with their spouses. Piss
off your ex -spouse. Come on. Elon's exes, that's
enough to fund us for centuries. Okay, back to
Zoox. So Zoox is the little toaster Pixar -looking
car that doesn't have brakes, steering wheels,
mirrors, all this stuff. That's doing test runs
right now in Las Vegas and I believe somewhere
out in the Bay Area in California. Anyway, they
have... Yeah, they're in San Francisco. Yeah,
so they have... Well, now NHTSA is saying, hey,
can we get some public comment on what people
think of this? And so we think, hey, this is
great. No, no, no. Well, what's happened? I mean,
they submitted a petition. I believe it was in
fall of last year. NHTSA announced that they
had received it. You know, and, you know, you
can look on the government regulation site and
see. Some of the petition, a lot of it's redacted,
particularly in the very interesting parts. But
essentially what Zoox is doing with that petition,
beyond the usual gaslighting of everyone reading
it with the idea that autonomous cars are going
to save us in the next few months, is petitioning
for an exemption from some very specific federal
motor vehicle safety standards that apply to
things used by the human driver, mirrors, windshield
wipers. There's even a part in there where they're
petitioning around sun visors because they don't
have sun visors in the vehicle. And yet their
belief is that the motor vehicle safety standards
require one in some respects. And so we still
haven't been able to see or review all of their
submissions to NHTSA. because I think some of
that stuff is still popping up in the docket.
But we'll talk about it more in the future. But
for now, you know, I think it's just important
that, you know, our readers be alerted to the
fact that, you know, there's an opportunity to
comment on this. And I think it's going to be
coming up in about a month. um to voice you know
your opinion on you know what do you think about
the safety of these vehicles and you know whether
they've met the burden of showing that in the
absence of meeting these federal motor vehicle
safety standards they're going to be as safe
as the vehicles operating on our road now um
i'd say it's it's kind of it's hard to determine
from their submission because so much is redacted
and it's it's almost an exercise of futility
trying to comment on a document when some of
the most pertinent parts of that document aren't
available for view by the public. So that's a
challenge we're all facing, you know, as we,
you know, monitor the auto industry generally
is simply a... sharp lack of information. You
know, when companies want to keep something confidential,
they do. And more and more companies are taking
advantage of that when it comes to, you know,
NHTSA safety inquiries and other things. They're
simply not turning over data like they used to
or not turning over a lot of things and making
a lot of redactions to information that might
previously have been available. So it's a tough
job, I guess I'm saying. So I want to let's pretend
this is as safe a vehicle as a Waymo. And let's
so as we know, Waymos, as we've talked about,
they will stall in the middle of the road and
just block traffic and whatnot. But an emergency
first responder, a fancy valet could get into
the vehicle and move them because they're steering
wheels and pedals and whatnot. Yeah. Like we
saw in Austin a couple. Right. Like we see you
almost weekly with a Waymo. So. How does do we
have any idea how that problem is solved with
the Zoox? Is it just small enough people push
it? I think they're assuming that it is going
to be operated remotely in those situations.
And maybe I don't know if they have someone that
can come out and plug a joystick into the car
to move it or if they're just going to have to
rely on, you know. tow operators and others to
get these things out of the road when they inevitably
stop and delay traffic. So and perhaps, you know,
and I was glancing through the submission this
morning, Ben, they do have a fairly large section
on remote operations. However, that's one of
the most significantly redacted sections of the
whole thing. So I'm not sure, you know, that
while that may be answered in there, I don't
think that we're able to see that information.
Well, once public. Comments open. We'll let you
know. People need to recognize that these Zoox
vehicles allow people to sit frontwards or backwards
or sideways because all those positions are available.
None of them have ever been crash tested. So
there's absolutely no data on whether or not
this vehicle hitting another vehicle or stationary
object or this vehicle being hit by something
else. will protect the people inside who are
only using restraint systems that were designed
for people facing forward in the vehicle. Yeah,
and that's a concern. And there's some weird,
like they developed this new airbag type system
for the side -seated passengers that supposedly
is going to protect against this. But it's, you
know, it's impossible to say. It's not something
the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards have.
even wrap their heads, remotely wrap their heads
or its head around or whatever the federal motor
vehicle safety standards collective head is.
But also, you know, it's very novel seating system.
And, you know, a lot of companies, I think in
the bus industry, have struggled with the problem
of side seating and protection in the past. So,
you know, it really raises the question of, you
know, beyond these human operating controls,
this is a vehicle that doesn't meet federal motor
vehicle safety standards and has a novel crash
protection system, and how do you make a safety
assessment in that type of situation? I don't
know that you can. No data. Yeah. Hey, no data
is the way to be because then we don't have to
prove nothing, right? Something. Hey, Fred, how
are you feeling in TOW -ish? Because we've talked
a lot about vehicles having to be moved by municipal
workers. So the TOW this week is about consumer
subsidies. Of private company finances that are
unknown to the consumers for the most part and
what to do about it. So this is a little bit
broader range than normally. So nuclear power
industry, inflated rates for unprofitable nuclear
facilities, unknown costs for high level radioactive
waste disposal, unreasonable limits on utility
nuclear liability, streamlined approval of lower
power nuclear stations. a la Bill Gates, data
center power, and limitations on the right to
sue. Those are all problems that are associated
with unknown subsidies by all of us consumers.
So basically, if one of these plants blows up,
you are screwed because you're not going to be
able to get money for your now contaminated house
and property from anybody. Congress, in its wisdom,
has said that that's okay, guys. You can go ahead
and blow up your reactors. No problem. So the
remedy for that is there should be no approval
for non -economic nuclear stations, particularly
these stations that the data industry now wants
to spot all around the country to run their data
centers. Every one of them is indemnified against
their true liability. So there should be no liability
waiver or limitations. for these stations and
commercial operators should bear the full cost
of the waste disposal that they're generating.
All of that right now relies upon public subsidy.
Then we move into oil. Oil, the unknown or unacknowledged
subsidies from you, the consumer, are special
tax benefits, the generous bankruptcy rules that
inhibit remediation. Basically, people can just
walk away from their spent wells and holes in
the ground, whatever they've got. They also use
eminent domain for pipeline construction. Basically,
the government steps in and says, the need for
the pipeline is more important than your need
for your house and property. So it doesn't seem
fair to me. And the companies also enjoy insulation
from environmental liability, in part through
this. ability to just walk away from the wells
due to the bankruptcy laws. So to remedy that,
there should be the removal of special oil business
tax credits and deductions, and there should
be assignment of pollution remediation costs
to the industry, not for the public at large
to pick up the check for remediating these old
wells and all the other crap they leave lying
around. But our focus is on cars, of course.
So let's talk about AVs. So how do we, the public,
subsidize AVs? Well, we give them free risk and
penalty -free use of public roads and rights
-of -way. We've paid for those public roads.
Why should we give them to the industry for free?
Because they're not going to send their profits
back to us. The AVs, basically, they confiscate
the right to sue as the price of using their
services. So that's another subsidy from the
public. If you have to sue, you're just out of
luck. You go to forced arbitration. They enjoy
the free use of public safety officers and regulator
staff to support their operations, right? Police
have to come and move the vehicles. They don't
say that they're going to take care of that themselves.
They just say, we're going to train the police
in how to do it. Somebody's going to pay for
those police. They enjoy consequence -free involvement
in injury and death collisions because there's
basically no mechanism to hold them accountable.
They are destroying public investment in urban
transportation assets. That's their whole purpose,
to take advantage of people's frustrations with
having to take a bus, to instead fill the streets
with AVs. reduce the number of people using public
transportation, which has the effect of destroying
the public investment, making it too expensive,
and trying to start a death spiral for the public
transportation industry, the same way they did
this with public transportation back in the 50s,
killing off all the bus companies, particularly
in Los Angeles. And, of course, they enjoy insulation
from liability via compulsory arbitration. When
you click that box that says you accept the terms
of use, you are giving them a great license to
do damage to you without the possibility of being
sued. That's another subsidy by the public that
you probably don't think about when you're signing
up for this AV service. So to fix the problem,
there should be prohibition of compulsory arbitration.
There should be reasonable fees for safety officer
time. in lieu of tickets for legal violations,
right? There's no mechanism to give a ticket
now. So I would say that the police or that the
state or the local municipality should charge
them $1 ,000 per instance as a service fee when
they have to spend their time and assets enforcing
the law, regardless of whether or not, you know,
there's a legal problem with their, the AV's
violation of the law. There should be a service
fee for the police to try to manage this machinery.
I think $1 ,000 per instance is probably a reasonable
number. There should be reasonable fees for public
official participation in resolving operational
defects or traffic interruption. And I think,
you know, you just have to personally get involved
in fixing these things. So the fire department
has to get involved in fixing these things or
anybody else who works for the public. There
are costs associated with it. So I think there
should be a minimum $10 ,000 per instance service
fee whenever a human being who's employed by
the municipality or is otherwise an emergency
responder has to interrupt their work in order
to service the corporate assets. And finally,
I think there should be confiscation of vehicles
that are involved in injury or death to the public.
or for impeding public safety officer activity
or response while using civil forfeiture laws.
These are well -established in, I guess, every
state, Michael? I don't know. But civil forfeiture
law seems to be a vehicle that the cities and
states can use whenever these vehicles are out
of control and injuring or killing somebody.
So those are my suggestions for this week. Take
them as you will. But I think clearly the AV
industry is out of control. That we, the public,
are subsidizing them in many ways. They haven't
even gone into the upgrades of the electrical
system that are needed to support these electric
vehicles. But there are ways of doing this, I
think, that don't require litigation every time.
I think we can do it through service fees and
civil forfeiture laws. in ways that benefit the
public and somehow equalize the financial impact
that the AV companies are putting on the public
by forcing them to pay the fees, service fees
required to remediate the problems. That's it.
That's what I got. Those fees and the things
that states could do are threatened by a lot
of the preemption language that the AV industry
is supporting at the federal level. So that's
one of the reasons why we so vigorously oppose
that language, because it removes options for
localities that want to essentially make a fair
trade on letting this technology come into their
cities versus subsidizing the industry. Well,
one of the things you said there, Fred, is part
of their goal is to get people off of mass transit
like buses and get everybody into AVs. Well,
I think researchers at the University of Texas
Arlington might agree with you. From USA .StreetsBlog
.org, I'm going to quote. Researchers at the
University of Texas Arlington found in a new
meta -analysis of 26 earlier studies that vehicle
miles traveled would increase. If U .S. cities
made a major shift away from human -driven automobiles,
with the papers collectively predicting about
a 6 % bump in average VMT, which stands for vehicles
miles traveled. My version was going to be better.
It was going to be bad. I know it was. I had
nothing. I preempted you. Yeah, the V just threw
me off. Anyway, worse, they'd still increase
more than 5 % if people shifted away from personally
owned cars towards shared or not autonomous taxis
instead. That might not seem like a huge increase,
but even those modest -sounding increases would
be completely sufficient to break the road by
jamming up key intersections, study author Stephen
Mattingly told Box. Completely break the road?
A 6 % increase? Like, even a 5 % increase? That
sounds dramatic. I like it. Well, I mean, I think
it probably takes into account the fact that
we're bumping up against, you know, our roads
already being broken by traffic at the moment.
And a 5 % increase without changes to infrastructure
could be significant. Um, but this is, you know,
it's, it's, it, this is something we've continued
to hear from the AB industry that they're, you
know, going to make our roads more efficient,
but they're, you know, not always accounting.
We don't think accurately for, you know, the
deadhead miles specifically that these ABs are
going to be traveling from point to point, um,
in, in this article. And then I think in this
study, they call these EVMT. So I guess that's,
um, electronic or electric vehicle miles. It's
confusing if you say electric vehicle. because
it does kind of confuses it with electric vehicles.
But the EVMT, they're saying could double the
number of miles that are traveled in cars and
cities in a day. So that's, you know, we are
not headed in the right direction here by further
subsidizing companies that are only going to
increase the problems on our road and take away,
and also at the same time, taking away funding,
as Fred noted, from our public transportation
agencies. Well, good to know that the two of
you live in areas heavily covered by mass transit.
No, I do not. And, you know, even even, you know,
even in Washington, D .C., I would argue that
the, you know, the transit there, the metro stops
in a very few number of locations. It's you know,
if you compare it to the subway in New York,
I think it's pretty obvious, you know, what the
problem is. They're just. You know, even once
you get to a stop, you have a long way to go.
And, you know, there are the lines on the metro
in D .C., you know, completely miss a lot of
areas. I could go on for a while about it, but
having lived in an area of D .C. that didn't
have the greatest access to the metro, it's frustrating
that in a city of that size that there aren't
better options for people who want to commute.
via public transportation in a similar amount
of time as they could in a car. I mean, that's
ultimately what it comes down to. You can take
the bus in a metro and do a combination that's
going to take you three hours round trip every
day to get to work versus an hour if you drive
a car. That's a problem. But my magic autonomous
vehicle, I can sit in there, it drives itself,
and I can catch up on all my work -related emails.
I don't feel safe doing that in public transit.
What if someone wants to steal my BlackBerry?
You could do that in an Uber. Okay. So let's
get into something a little more positive. IIHS
has a report about intelligent speed assist.
We've all been fans of intelligent speed assist.
And I'm going to quote from the executive summary.
This is about fleet. This is about 18 wheelers,
essentially, if I'm right. Okay. So quoting,
largely fleets with active ISA, intelligent speed
assist, found that ISA can meaningfully reduce
speeding and associated safety risks. and even
promote cost savings. The two main motivations
cited by fleets engage in the study were safety
for drivers and other road users and financial
considerations such as reducing speeding violations
and improving safety scores that can influence
insurance costs. I love it. Like at that point,
I don't even have to read anything else because
this is basically set. I love the fact that these
fleets are like, yeah, let's put this in there
so we don't have truckers carrying a massive
load of string beans to Utah. speeding down the
highway. Yeah, I mean, it's what we want every
car to have at some point. You know, the trucks
often have, you know, the type of active intelligent
speed assistance that we'd like to see in vehicles.
You know, there's all sorts of types of what
they call intelligent speed assistance, but a
lot of them... are very passive and don't really
force the speeders to take any modification to
their behavior, don't have any type of governor
that would prevent that person from reaching
dangerous speeds or even semi -dangerous speeds.
They're basically just essentially warning systems
that can be turned off at any time versus what
we're talking about in these fleet systems are
actual governing of the vehicle's speed, preventing
them from achieving basically anything over the
local speed limits or within a certain range
of the local speed limits and using whether it's
cameras or some type of geographic information
or roadside detection, that type of thing to
determine the speed limits. and it really you
know i this is what we ultimately want there
to be in cars to actually prevent speeders from
doing what they do and endangering everyone else
on the road so it's interesting you know how
you know it looks like you know many of these
companies kind of they had a couple of bumps
at the start getting this in and getting their
truck drivers reactions mediated and all of that
But they ultimately saw that it was going to
save them money, prevent crashes and and basically
improve their operations, which is what we would
hope that that, you know, active ISA will do
to our big United States fleet as a whole, including
all of us that are out there driving. Yeah, it
makes me think of I just heard on one of the
F1 teams talking about their spit. their pit
tops. Let's try that again there. Hi, everybody.
Go to autosafety .org, click donate. And then
I'll learn how to speak properly about their
pit stop speed. And they described it as slow
is smooth. Smooth is fast, which is apparently
also a Navy SEAL saying. And I get that. Yeah.
And I see that with with this intelligent speed
assist because. The main problem everybody's
experiencing is you've got a whole bunch of people
speeding, and then they're slamming on the brakes
and speeding and slowing down, speeding and slowing
down, and that just causing a larger delay throughout.
And also accidents, your fuel mileage isn't as
great as you keep changing your speeds throughout.
So I love this. That sounds like a shortened
version of the tortoise and the hare. Yeah. Right?
But with Navy SEALs. Yeah. Or F1 pit stop teams.
Much cooler version. Yeah. Not using cute animals.
Absolutely not. All right. So before we jump
into recalls, have to do it. I'm sorry. We haven't
really mentioned them at all this week. Oh, Michael
is cringing. He is cringing. It is. Who is it,
Fred? Who is it? It's Tesla, Fred. You're right.
There you go. So real quick, we have an article.
This is we're going to link to title Tesla full
self -driving drives through railroad crossing
barriers in viral video. That's it. You just
watch this. It is horrific. Somebody films their
car going down the road. The railroad crossing
arms come down. You can see this clearly. There's
no glare. It's not the middle of the night. It's
a nice sunny day. They come down and the car
just runs through the first one and then runs
through the second one. And the driver's like,
oh, shit. Pulls over. Tesla. Garbage. Okay. Yeah,
and that's a known problem. I think, you know,
Senator Blumenthal and Markey actually wrote
a letter to NHTSA about this late last year.
I think it was a Tesla that... basically drove
up onto the tracks and they had to leave the
vehicle before the train hit the vehicle. But
this has been documented. I think NBC documented
this happening more than 40 times, bad behaviors
around trains by Tesla's full self -driving.
So yet another thing that needs to be addressed
by NHTSA's currently ongoing investigation into
Tesla, which yet again. Last week, Tesla requested
an extension on reporting their engineering studies
and other data to NHTSA because they just can't
get it together fast enough over there because
they have so many ongoing safety investigations.
So something that we're really concerned about,
not just the railroad crossings, but a lot of
operations involving. Tesla's full self -driving,
whether that's in their robo taxis or in the
human monitored commercial vehicles. I think
I just figured it out. They're all human monitored.
I think I figured this out based off of Fred's
town. The Teslas are designed to go on railroad
tracks because they think that railroads are
bad for business. I thought you were going to
say it because they're safe for motor transportation.
No, they're trying to block railroads. So stop
funding railroads because you got to spend all
this money repairing railroad tracks and railroad
cars. This is just a waste of taxpayer money.
Get rid of it all. Isn't that something the auto
industry did in the past? Well, that's welcome
to Los Angeles. Yes. Speaking of Los Angeles,
let's go to recalls. I don't know. First up,
Ford. Holy cow. 604 ,533 vehicles in the 2020
-22. Ford Explorer 2020, same year as the Lincoln
Aviator. Same year as the Ford Escape, the Lincoln
Corsair. Inoperative front windshield wipers
may result in reduced visibility or loss of visibility
in certain conditions, increasing the risk of
crash. Oh, their wipers don't work? Yep, basically.
I think it's a, there's some type of misalignment
in the motor's cover terminal, essentially. There's
a problem there. This one looks like owners are
going to get an interim notice in March, but
I don't think they're going to have a full fix
available until mid -May. Next up, holy cow,
Ford, 889 ,950 vehicles. Hey, it looks like the
same vehicles again. 2022 Ford Escape, the Lincoln
Corsair, the Lincoln Aviator, the Ford Explorer,
the 2020 to 2024 Ford Explorer, though. God damn
it. A rear view camera that does not display
a correct image while in reverse gear can reduce
the driver's view as well as behind the vehicle.
Blah, blah, blah. Rear view cameras. That's that's
it. This is a mess up with their printed circuit
board. It looks like apparently it inverts the
image on the screen. I'm not sure if that's upside
down or left to right, but either way, it's not
going to give you good data to operate your vehicle
with. This is another one that looks like it's
going to be, this one actually is going to be
about a little over a month before owners hear
about it. But it doesn't look like they're going
to have the remedy available at that point. They
don't give a date for the final owner notification
when your remedy is going to be available. So
until that time, be sure to use your mirrors
and don't rely on the potentially inverted image
coming through your touchscreen. Well, since
you just did a review camera, I want to jump
into a personal one here. My car has this sour
milk smell. Is this related to traffic? Transmission
floor to a coolant fluid. That's what the Internet
told me. I don't want to speculate on that. There's
nothing to sky. No one was eating ice cream or
dropping a milkshake. And, you know, I actually
dumped a Chick -fil -A peach milkshake all over
my dog and the front seat a few months ago. And
luckily, I avoided the sour milk smell. But is
it you know, I often. But Volkswagens, which
I use frequently, sometimes they seem to have,
you know, even going back to the 80s, you know,
some type of problem with the AC system that
I don't know if it's fungus or something, but
they get this funky smell after a while. Maybe
that's what it is. Well, I don't know. Someone's
going to check it out tomorrow and charge me
way too much, I'm sure. All right. Next recall.
Ford. Goddamn Ford. 849 ,310 vehicles. The 2021
to 26 Ford Bronco. Does Jim Farley get paid by
the recall? Is that what it is? These are massive
recalls, by the way. I mean, these are all very,
very large recalls that they're coming out with.
Oh my God. And the 2021 to 2024 Ford Edge. Another
rear view camera. God, why? A rear view camera
that does not display an image while in reverse
gear. Okay, yeah. The accessory. Protocol interface
modules reaching temperatures of 105 degrees
Celsius. Holy cow. And initiating a temporary
thermal shutdown. Wow. That's a spicy meatball
in that car. That is. That probably shouldn't
be happening, right? That's a very high temperature,
especially if you've got electronics involved
in this issue. Owners, looks like owners are
going to be hearing about a remedy here in late
March, early April. So this one looks like a
remedy is actually coming along. Of course, it's
not the hardware that's heating to, you know,
105 Celsius. That's the problem here. They're
going to do this with software. So we'll see.
Of course, they're just going to put ice cubes
in your car. Yeah. So what's the vehicle total
of Ford so far this year? Because it's just March.
I think these are their three largest recalls
so far. They're once again dominating the recall
charts this year, although I think they are definitely
behind last year's pace, I think somewhat significantly.
But they're still on pace to have a number two
all -time record. But who knows? All right. Last
recall, Honda. All right, 65 ,135 vehicles, the
2024 Acura ZDX, the 2024 Honda Prologue. If the
instrument cluster display goes blank while driving,
the driver may be unable to view critical information.
Is this rear view? If the infotainment display
does not display the rear view camera image when
the vehicle is shifted, god damn it. That's part
of it. It's also, you know, it looks like it's
mainly, you know, like speedometer and warnings.
Which is worse. They're all bad. Software defects,
they're claiming. Yeah, particularly bad. So
I think the owners will have a fix for this fairly
soon. They're going to, of course, update the
radio control. This is coming from the radio
control module, right? Remember how we often
talk about air gapping and preventing infotainment
from interacting with safety? Well, even Honda's
not doing it right. They're going to improvise
and improve their radio control module software
to correct the issue. And that recall should
be available in late April. Oh, boy. If you have
these vehicles, get your recalls taken care of.
And with that, that's our show. Thanks so much.
Autosafety .org. Click on Donate. We'll be back
next week with maybe some updates about batteries.
All right. Goodbye. Thank you. Bye -bye. For
more information, visit www .autosafety .org.