You're listening to There 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. Hey, listeners, thanks
for coming and interrupting our really enlightening
conversation. I'm glad you're here. Today is
Wednesday, May 27th, and we're going to talk
to you about the wonderful world of what? Waymo.
That's right. Waymo is going to dominate this
week's episode, is my guess. Because, as we talked
about last week, Waymo still has problems with
flooded roads. That's right. So this is from
TechCrunch. I'm going to quote directly. Waymo
admitted that it hadn't finished developing a
final remedy. Now I got to stop there because
that's the way most PR is generally top notch.
But they decided to use for a software solution.
They use the term final remedy, which just sounds
like something Elon would have written. Anyway,
continuing, they hadn't finished developing a
final remedy for avoiding flooded areas when
it issued its software recall last week. Instead,
the company said it had shipped an update to
its fleet that placed restrictions at times and
in locations, whereas an elevated risk of encountering.
A flooded higher speed roadway, according to
documents sent to NHTSA. Further down, Waymo
told TechCrunch on Thursday that the storm in
Atlanta produced so much rainfall that flooding
was happening before the National Weather Service
had issued a flash flood warning watcher advisory.
The company said those alerts are part of a larger
set of signals it relies on to repair the vehicles
for poor weather. So this is almost my gaslight.
I'm not sure what my gaslight is, but I think
this last sentence is my gaslight. So Waymo and
every other AV company tells us that AVs are
smarter, better, more perfect, greater than humans.
But they have to rely on data from the National
Weather Service to tell them the road's flooded
or potentially flooded. Whereas even the dumbest
human can just go, oh, that's more than a puddle.
Well, I wouldn't give humans too much credit
there. We continually see them drive into the
same circumstances. Despite the fact that, you
know, the phrase, turn around, don't drown, was
coined in 2003 by a Texas meteorologist. And
we're all pretty aware of it. People, you know,
people underestimate the power of water. And
they also under it's really hard to tell how
deep water is both for humans and for Waymo's
apparently when it's on the road ahead of you.
But it's interesting here. You know, Waymo essentially
said, well, we're going to pause in San Antonio
and our solution is going to be essentially to
we're relying on National Weather Service flash
flood warnings to, you know. prevent our vehicles
from operating in an environment where that's
likely, you know, that's an approach that works
to some extent. But then you have things like
flooded water mains. You know, there are a lot
of other sources of flooded roads that that,
you know, precipitation is probably the number
one by by good margin. But there's a lot of reasons
that happens. And shouldn't the cars here be,
you know. able to notice that the road ahead
is is no longer asphalt and is covered in you
know six or more inches of water i'd say yes
or and in that case you know if there is water
in front of the in front of a vehicle and the
vehicle can't detect how deep the water is why
isn't it following the age -old advice of turn
around don't drown well there's a couple of problems
with this uh the first problem that's fundamental
is that they've loudly announced that they're
now using end -to -end AI to develop the algorithms
for their car control. So how do you send out
a rapid fix to the software if you have to wait
for AI to develop the solutions? You don't. You
know, if it's going to be AI, it's going to have
to be trained with many, many examples because
that's how AI works. So something's there's a
gap here. I mean, either they're doing end to
end AI or they're doing something else. And in
either case, it seems to me that they're bullshitting
the public on exactly what is between the computer
and the controls on the car. Well, I haven't
delved too much into this in recent times, but
I believe even with an end to end model, what
they can do is they can basically put a rule
around that saying, you know, here, here's our
learning. These are the neural network we have.
But, hey, if you see something that resembles
water, we can stop the vehicle and not go in
there. Well, sure, that's a rules -based control,
which is what they already had. But if they are
advertising that they're moving away from rules
-based controls to end -to -end, as is Tesla,
right? They're announcing the same thing. Then
how do you square that circle? I don't understand.
I don't think that they even know how to square
it because their first resort here was to a recall
that was based on geofencing vehicles to prevent
them from entering flash flood areas, right?
They didn't have a solution where the vehicle
detects the water or detects how deep the water
is or decides whether or not it can proceed in
those situations. They simply had to apply a
blanket rule. And I think they did this, what,
in the San Antonio area first. I think we were
looking at that recall last week. They applied
that rule to prevent operation in the San Antonio
area. And then later, after, you know, Atlanta
flooded a week later and they had problems there.
They, I guess, have to broaden their geofence
now to Atlanta and to a number of other cities
that will, you know, I think Dallas and Houston
as well. You know, virtually anywhere in America
can experience flash flooding events at some
time. And, you know, unless you're on the tip
top of a rocky mountain somewhere, maybe. So
it's, you know. There needs to be something here
beyond a geofence if Waymo is going to, you know,
be able to operate in the future. And, you know,
flash flood warnings happen and flood warnings
happen all the time across America, you know,
and in the future when America is deployed, I
mean, when Waymo is presumably going to be deployed
in a lot more spots, are they going to be able
to deal with this problem? I have a lot of questions
about whether they will if, you know, if the
LIDAR and all the other systems they have aren't
capable of detecting the depth of water. Like,
how do you determine whether you're just crossing
through, you know, what's really just a puddle
in the middle of the street versus a, you know,
four foot deep trench? It's difficult. It's very
difficult for humans. I'm not sure what the solution
is. I think Waymo is probably still struggling
with that to some extent. I'm sure they are.
Because what they would say is they have remote
assistance available so that they've got a human
being watching over the vehicle operation, which
means they're not really autonomous, by the way.
But that's okay. We'll say they're autonomous
adjacent. The problem is with that, that the
remote assistance is not nearly fast enough to...
deliver a reasonable solution. If it's going
down the road at highway speed and it confronts
water in its path, there's no way in the world
a remote assistant can go through all of the
hoops and hurdles they've got to do to triage
the complaints coming in from the car, analyze
the situation, and then send a solution back
to the car in time for that car to make a reasonable,
safe operation. So it doesn't have a false positive
that causes it to jam into brakes versus a real
problem with water that's too deep. And by the
way, why is it that this is an approach that
makes sense for them to geofence around water
when they know that there's a known hazard associated
with the school buses and driving through school
buses and hitting pedestrians in school zones?
which they're not willing to geofence. I mean,
what's really going on here? What's more important,
capital preservation or life preservation? I
think that there's a fundamental issue here that's
not been settled. Well, beyond that, I want to
know, Fred, from a technical point of view, okay,
this Waymo, it's covered in, it's got radar,
it's got LiDAR, it's got a bunch of cameras.
Why can't... Figure out this is just a little
bit of a puddle versus this is the Mariana Trench.
Well, because water is muddy. So you can't use
LiDAR outside of water to determine how deep
the water is. Basically, you've got to use sonar
inside the water to determine the depth of the
water. And in order to do that, you've got to
immerse the sonar in the water. Otherwise, sound
energy gets reflected off the interface. So there's
a real technical problem of how can you remotely
determine the depth of water at all, particularly
when you're approaching it at a high rate of
speed. The only other way I could think of would
be to map, you know, the elevation of every inch
of road in America to know, you know, what height
the water is collecting versus the height of
the roadway. But that seems... That seems like
a gigantic process. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, think
of it. You've got to have an algorithm that monitors
the surface of the road everywhere to determine
where the potholes exist and what the depth of
the pothole is when it's dry. Then determine
that, well, it's not dry anymore. It's full of
water. So we've got to have that memory of what
the dry pothole depth is versus the smooth surfaces.
Being confronted by the sensor suite that's in
the car. It's a mess. Yeah. I don't know how
you can do this. I mean, I think until, you know,
I think Waymo should be applying a very, very
broad turnaround. Don't drown philosophy to these
situations. I mean, there are situations where
I think humans could be even better at judging
the. depth of a puddle versus the sensors that
are installed on Waymos right now. I think the
real solution is put a human being in the car
so that they can, you know, use judgment as to
whether or not they got a problem. Is this a
puddle or is this a flooded road? We're pretty
good at that. I think we've all survived, well,
in my case, 120 years of driving experience.
Yeah. Some better than others, right? Without
being swept away. Yeah. Even if the water's clear
and whatnot, I mean, can a remote operator even
tell the depth? I'm thinking the remote operator
doesn't have a stereo image of it. They just
have a flat image. If you're in the back of the
Waymo, do you trust the remote operator to make
that decision for you? I've made a lot of life
choices that are incorrect if I'm in the back
of a Waymo. But yeah, and that brings us into
our next story. Another related one. Yeah, I'll
do this as the transition. There's a guy on the
Internet and he was in the back of a Waymo. And
he's the I'll quote from this article in Auto
Evolution. The writer was at Elliot underscore
Slade, who's goes by the handle Quiet Light on
X. This is just too much. Elliot posted a couple
of videos showing his robot taxi accelerating
through a construction area on a freeway while
police were chasing it. Minutes before this happened,
a remote operator tried to help steer the robo
-taxi out of the blocked area. The car then accelerated
through traffic cones until it reached highway
speeds in the construction zone. Which is crazy.
I watched one of the videos that was in this
article, and I couldn't make any sense of it
as far as I could tell. The phone was in his
pocket. Do you think there's something wrong
with this? With his phone? Possibly. Something
was really wrong here. And Waymo suspended all
of its highway service, freeway service, I guess
they're calling it for the moment. And they need
to like what the hell happened here? There was
a remote operator involved and the car just kind
of went nuts, you know, speeding through a construction
zone with police chasing it. OK, so this is this
gets to my big pet peeve is, OK, so the police
are chasing a Waymo. One, we all know that should
never happen because a Waymo drives perfectly.
It never drives drunk. It never drives distracted.
It never drives while farting. No, it's perfect.
It's wonderful. But somehow the police are chasing
it and it decides to speed up and run away from
the police. Now, again, if you or I did this,
other police would be involved. There'd be that
move where the police hit the back of the car,
spin you out, potentially. The car has stopped.
There are multiple armed and angry men pointing
guns at you, right? We've all seen this a thousand
times. And you're getting handcuffs on you. You're
getting thrown in jail. Bad things are going
to happen to you for at least, you know, 24 hours.
Waymo, in this case, nothing bad happens, right?
They don't get a ticket. They're not getting
a fine. No one's getting a gun. Maybe the people
in the backseat are getting a gun pulled on them.
I don't know. I guess that depends on whether
you think having to shut down all their freeway
service across the country was bad. But that
wasn't a requirement. That was something they
chose to do in the interest of safety. And, you
know, I want to see somebody in handcuffs. There's
there's yeah. I mean, there is no one. I mean,
there are. I don't know. You have to. I don't
know that there is. It's hard to say here that
even though if a human did this, it would be
a crime that there was a crime committed by the
Waymo or. Whoever is running the scene for the
rainbow in the background, the remote operator,
are you going to get them? Are you going to hook
this hook? You know, are you going to handcuff
the CEO for something a car did on a freeway?
I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. In the interest
of driving defensively, which we've all been
told to do for a long time now, we should have
identifiers on the car that says this is a self
-driving vehicle. Be aware, you know, this is
a great example of how. People, average people,
are being endangered by the operations of this
autonomous adjacent vehicle that's out there.
In Germany, Mercedes is using turquoise lights
to identify self -driving operation when it's
under automatic control as a way for people to
know that this is coming and that there's additional
hazards associated with the unknowns of the AI.
So here in America, we want to pretend there's
nothing there. We want to pretend, at least if
we're a robot taxi company, that these are just
regular vehicles. No reason to take any special
concern about them. Nothing to see here, folks.
Just move along. That's just wrong. We, in the
interest of people preserving their own lives,
defending themselves against errant vehicles.
There should, as a minimum, be some way of identifying
that this vehicle is on the road and approaching
you, and you need to take special consideration
of the fact that there's no human being in there.
And actually, the algorithm that's driving the
vehicle is still under development because the
company is using end -to -end AI, which is still
untrained. This is a mess. There's a lot of issues
here. I mean, all of them important. I mean,
I don't think it's beyond the pale to say, you
know, this is a bad driver. Right. 100 percent.
So, Michael, you said you think as a consequence
of them, Waymo shutting down their all their
freeway operations. They did that voluntarily.
Again, me or you, we run away from the police.
We're not voluntarily giving up anything. The
government, the police, they're taking it from
us. That's the disconnect here is Waymo just
goes, all right, we'll stop for a little bit
while we look into, you know, we'll put an update
out there. Have a nice day, everybody. Here's
a contribution to the police athletic fund. Yeah.
It's meanwhile, the human is suspended license
and possibly gun to the head. In this case, it
would be probably felony eluding or escape or
something like that. And you would be in jail.
Absolutely. And I'm not just given the fact that
you're in a construction zone. I mean, remember,
this is all happening with orange cones and construction
vehicles. There's discussion of this act of domestic
terrorism. that's part of the story all of a
sudden with a human in there there's you know
there's a person on the pavement with a gun to
their head at some point during this whereas
waymo just goes all right guys uh you know everyone's
getting bonuses this year and uh we'll go on
from there so what waymo has said is uh quote
we have temporarily paused freeway operations
as we work to integrate recent technical learnings
into our software and expect to resume these
routes soon I want to next time anyone listeners,
you get pulled over at any time, say I'm going
to temporarily pause operations. Well, I get
these technical learnings of not stopping at
the stop sign and doing 85 in a school zone.
I hope to resume driving soon as soon as this
officer moves away. And you hope to. But how
do you even figure this out? Right. I mean, if
there's a lot of black box characteristics to
an A .I., if you've got in the end A .I. operating
these vehicles. How do you even figure out what
happened here? And how do you fix it from that
point? I guess that's kind of the scary part
of all this. The really scary part of all this
to me is that there aren't the traditional answers
that we would see in crashes. You know, help
us avoid them in the future if you can't even
figure out why it happened in the first place.
I agree with that. But so I agree with that.
But at the end of the day, there are people responsible
for putting this how this unknown mystery technology
works out on the road. And they are the responsible
parties. It's like me. I don't know how a gun
works. I don't understand ballistics. You know,
if I pull the gun and I kill somebody, I'm not
going to like, look, I didn't know how I didn't
know flight patterns and trajectories. Come on.
Yeah. So anyway, I expect Sundar Pichai in handcuffs
soon. Is that how you pronounce his name? The
CEO of Alphabet? You're on the wrong person to
ask about pronunciation. Anyway, continuing with
this, our friend of the show, Phil Kopman, has
a very good long article titled Autonomous System
Safety. Is that what the, no. Robotaxi safety
problems are the new normal. And he talks about
driving into floodwaters. I'm going to quote
a little bit from him. The fix was not a software
update, but rather a restriction in the operational
design domain to exclude areas at high risk of
flood. In other words, avoid places that might
flood pending a later fix. In principle, that
seemed a smart risk reduction techniques that
lets them get back on the road while avoiding
the identifying hazard. But that just opens up
a whole new set of problems. Man, I can't focus
my brain. In one incident, a car stopped itself
on a flooded Atlanta street on May 20th with
a journalist inside twice. Other human driven
cars were proceeding, but in the video, the passenger
was told to expect a 54 minute wait for roadside
assistance to arrive. Another stranded Waymo
was shown stuck in the middle of a flooded intersection.
News sources reporting this stand down as temporary
pause during stormy weather. I mean, that raises
another level of concern, too. You're not just
going through the water, right? I mean, a lot
of times you will see people, when the flash
flood begins, you can get through water that
is not that deep. But if you stop in the middle
of that situation, the water is likely only going
to get higher, right? And create an even more
dangerous situation. Stopping for 54 minutes
in potentially in water that's potentially rising
quickly during a flash flood is a terrible way
to ensure passenger safety. Right. I mean, especially
if the vehicle can see other vehicles proceeding
through the problem. So a lot of this is, you
know, it just seems like, again, a really bad
driver. Right. So I'm going to continue a little
bit more from Phil quoting the interesting part
about the Waymo flood water recall is that it
specifically calls out higher driving speeds
as a contributing factor, suggesting that the
robot taxi fails to realize it is in a high risk
situation. And until it was too late to stop
before plowing into deep water. That again, sounds
like a teenager. Yeah. I mean, that is not the
person I want to be on the road near. So I don't.
And I just think this is something that, you
know, as Phil notes, you know, this is something
that Waymo should have planned four years ago.
This is not some new crazy thing that's just
started happening in 2026. You know, this is
something that people have been warned about.
Ad nauseum for many years now and something that
everyone that drives a car should be highly aware
of if they're driving in bad weather or anywhere
around, you know, flooded roads. Yeah, it's something
every driver has seen. Fred, you've seen this,
right? That's amazing. He wasn't on muted a second
ago, but now he's muted. I am not. What a thing
to say about me. There's another dimension to
this, which is that the occupant of the vehicle,
if there is one, should have some way of aborting
the trip. Oh, I got it. Sorry, I got to go to
the door. Someone's ringing my doorbell. No,
no. Fred was going to say the occupant should
have some way of aborting the trip or stopping
the vehicle if the occupant is able to see this,
you know, risk. Big red stop button. Yeah, I
mean, it's you shouldn't have to have a conversation
with the vehicle. Hey, Waymo, can you stop? I
mean, there should be an immediate way to, you
know, prevent the vehicle you're in from entering
a flood area. But that right. That ruins part
of their sales pitch. Part of their sales pitch
is you don't have to pay attention to the road.
We've got you covered. Sit in the back, read
a book, watch a movie, eat, eat a meal. I don't
know. I mean, I mean, I guess it's going to take
some time and a lot more work to, you know, kind
of convince those of us who are afraid of that.
I mean, I can't imagine being in one of these
vehicles and not monitoring what it's doing every
second of the drive. Right. I get that. But,
you know, you, like most listeners, will go to
autosafety .org and click on donate. That wasn't
my best sales pitch. But with that, hey, Michael,
do you have a gas light this week? Well, I'm
kind of going back and forth. You know, Fred
stole the one I wanted, which was Uber, but I'm
going to let him have that. And mine goes into
another story we might take a look at, but it's
kind of a short. thing, you know, and it's Tesla,
you know. Never heard of them. And it wasn't
a statement that they made, but what they've
done in the, you know, the standing general order
that NHTSA issued basically requires all autonomous
vehicle companies to report crashes and other
incidents that occur with their vehicles. It's,
you know, kind of the first. attempt by the federal
government to wrap their hands around the operation
of not just automated, but also partially automated
and ADAS vehicles. Tesla has long redacted what
I believe is probably the most important field
in that data reporting, which is the description
or the narrative around the crash. They claimed
it was somehow a trade secret and harmful. Meanwhile,
every other autonomous vehicle manufacturer.
has routinely, you know, disclosed the narrative
summary of each crash so that, you know, it gives
the public and the regulators at NHTSA a better,
well, the regulators at NHTSA are getting it
anyway because they see behind the redaction,
but it gives the public. The ability to understand
the context of the crash, you know, whether the
autonomous vehicle was at fault or whether it
was something else. And Tesla's routinely avoided
doing that. And so just this past data dump from
this past month that just came out, Tesla has
now magically removed all their redactions from
the. autonomous vehicle data right there's two
levels of data that nets is collecting here um
and so now you can go in and see the 17 crashes
that robo taxis have had in austin and maybe
elsewhere i'm not sure if there's a same thing
yeah but my gas light is There's still the collection
for advanced driver assistance level two plus
systems going on at the same time here. Tesla
has reported thousands of crashes to that database
and they're remaining redacted, right? Under
the same, you know, bullshit claim that that's
somehow going to interfere. It's a trade secret,
somehow going to interfere with their competitiveness,
blah, blah, blah. My Gas Light of the Week is
Tesla for while trying to open up, you know,
17 crashes over here, leaving redacted the I
think it's well over 2000, maybe more crashes
that are occurring in their autopilot and full
self -driving systems across America. So we still
have zero context for evaluating any of those
crashes. Meanwhile, other manufacturers are Honda,
for one, which I saw today when I was looking
at the data is. is giving the public narratives
that explain, you know, what happened in this
crash so that we have a way to evaluate just
how safe these manufacturers offerings are. That's
pretty good from an article in electric who examines
a lot of this stuff. They come out showing that
a lot of these accidents involving the Tesla
robot, robot taxi was these robot taxis being
rear ended. And we've seen that a lot with Waymo's
as well. And they're like, it's not our fault.
We were rear ended. I mean, it's happening at
a lot at a higher frequency than human drivers.
And it seems that, you know, human drivers following
behind these vehicles don't expect the cars to
stop the way that they're stopping or in the
locations or with the speed that they're stopping.
So that I think that leads again to another argument
that Fred makes all the time is put a big old
sign on these cars, say not driven by a person
or, you know. So I think just like a little bomb
icon would be mine. A little flashing neon sign,
a little bomb. I'm sure the autonomous vehicle
companies don't want that because effectively
you're singling out and saying, this is a special
case here and you need to be aware for your own
safety, which suggests that there's a possible
safety risk that we should all be looking out
for. And maybe even a heightened safety risk
that we don't have to look out for, you know,
in regard to human driven vehicles. So I can
see why they are so opposed to that. However,
I would love to there to be a blue light on top
of. Tesla's operating on full self -drive and
certainly on any other type of fully autonomous
vehicle. It would just be nice to know. So I
don't have to guess when one's coming at me on
a two -lane road. Do driving schools, because
there's driving schools near me and all their
cars are labeled student driver, student driver,
caution, student driver. Is there a law that
requires them to label that or do they just do
that to try and hope that other drivers will
be kinder to them? I don't know. But I would
assume they're doing that because they encounter
a bunch of assholes on the road honking at new
drivers. And that can't be a good environment
to learn how to drive. So they didn't cover driving
school signage in law school? No. Well, have
you considered getting your money back? You know,
I didn't take that class. Oh, well, there you
go. All right, Fred, what is your gas light this
week? Rumor has it it's Uber. And he's muted
again, ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen,
he's confusing the mute button with the talk
button. So many buttons, so little time. It's
one button! Well, maybe you're correct. Never
mind. Okay, so I want to talk about our friends
at Uber who are completely corrupting the entire
legal system for their own profit. So what they're
doing is actually very clever. cynical and diabolical.
They are collecting money from everybody for
insurance and putting it into an escrow account
in an insurance company, which is fine. So they're
self -insuring. But what they're doing is they're
putting it into an insurance company that they
happen to own. So the money that goes into their
insurance is going on the balance sheet. At the
same time, they are complaining that they're
paying too much for insurance. So they're going
to the state legislatures and trying to get legislation
put in place that reduces their liability even
beyond the terms of service that they are foisting
onto their unwitting customers. So that ultimately
what will happen is they're overfunding these
insurance accounts with this money. And when
they are successful in either the ballot initiatives
or the state legislatures in reducing their insurance
liability, all of a sudden they're going to find
they magically have a lot of extra money in their
insurance escrow account. What they plan to do
is to take this extra money and use it to fund
purchase of autonomous vehicles so that when
they, because of recent changes in the tax laws.
When they use the money to buy the autonomous
vehicles, they'll be able to offset that against
their taxes as an investment. So they'll end
up paying no tax at all on the money that they're
accruing from unwitting customers in this big,
vast insurance account, paying themselves a lot
of incentive compensation for their success in
getting this really nefarious scheme into place.
And you've got to admire, I mean, this is such
a bald -faced, corrupt approach that I am surprised
that Trump doesn't have his fingers into it,
frankly. I mean, there's a lot of background
here. And one of the biggest, I guess, the news
right now on this is that last week, I think
it was Thursday. or maybe Friday morning, I think
it was maybe Wednesday night, 2 a .m., you know,
one of our old favorites here, Vince Fong, Fong
is wrong, U .S. representative from California
who was a closet tech bro, got this language
through that essentially eliminates liability
for Uber. in a wide range. You know, this goes
to accidents caused by its drivers. So Uber hired
someone, you know, I think Consumer Watchdog
has been covering this heavily. Uber, and I think
they noted a situation where Uber hired someone,
or not hired, I guess you can't say hired in
the gig worker economy. They allowed someone
to access their platform and drive an Uber. who
was on probation for DUIs and who ultimately,
you know, was apparently riding around drunk
on nitrous at 120 miles an hour and killed two
people. And that's the kind of thing that, you
know, where, you know, Uber has the ability to
vet these people. It's allowing onto its service
beforehand. People who are getting the ride from
Uber don't. Right. And so there's there's a duty
on Uber to to at least, you know, to conduct
a background check on these people and determine
whether or not they should be allowed on the
platform. And this, you know, what what, you
know, Fong is wrong, just put out there in in
the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
They passed this as part of the Build America
Act, which is the surface reauthorization. That
is a giant bill. And so this was snuck in at
the last minute. We obviously didn't hear about
it beforehand or we would have had a lot to say
about it. But it essentially immunizes Uber from
traffic crashes, at least in regard to their
ride share services, whether this, you know,
I don't think this applies or would apply to
their autonomous vehicle offerings that they're
still kind of in their infancy. you know, their
efforts in California and the ballot measure
to essentially drop attorney's fees so much that
attorneys aren't going to be able to take these
cases. We've talked a lot about how expensive
it is to bring product liability cases and crash
cases in court because of the, you know. The
expert witnesses, the time and all the money
that has to go in just to establish proof that
something that there was a defect involved or
that there was somehow fault or liability by
another party. So this is a terrible provision.
I don't think there's any chance that this one
will make it through the Senate, but, you know,
we'll be there fighting it. And it is it just
Uber has. Between this and what they're doing
in California, Uber is a bad, bad company who
is essentially trying to exempt themselves from
any responsibility when it comes to your safety.
Oh, and there's yet another dimension to their
irresponsibility, which is that they're now reducing
their fight against the unionization of the Uber
drivers because they're planning to move to self
-driving vehicles. So what's the point of fighting
unionization of their drivers if you're not going
to have any drivers in the future? Yeah. And
they've made provisions for purchasing a specific
company's vehicles and, you know, they're marching
down this road. So I've got to admire their...
Chutzpah. Chutzpah. Chutzpah. Chutzpah. Yeah.
Well, you got to admire, Fred, your home state
of Massachusetts for, I believe, certifying the
first ride share union for Uber and Lyft drivers.
Was that a couple of days ago? Yeah. And, you
know, I wish I could get past the terms of service
so that I could actually use Uber, but I don't
know. You're still reading. Yeah. So, hey, what
I was going to say before about the MMOC trials.
remember we were talking about the Waymos going
into the water, is that there's another dimension
to this whole sea trial problem, which is that
it illustrates, I think very well, the idea that
the passengers in these vehicles should have
some means of aborting a trip or aborting the
getting out of the car or whatever on demand
quickly if the car goes crazy. Right. There should
be an easily identified button somewhere that
says, get me the hell out of here. Or command
or that kind of thing, you know, for the for
blind and people who can't hit a button. You
know, there needs to be multiple ways for for
us to say, stop, let me out. Right. And my understanding
is the only way to do that now is to plow through
the menu on the on the touch screen and eventually
find the part that says. stop the vehicle. I've
never used them, so I don't really know for sure.
If anybody knows for sure how this works, please
let me know. But the point is that the remote
assistance is not capable of doing this in the
time scale that is required to preserve your
safety, protect you against the errant vehicles
when you're in the car. The other item we talked
about, which is this errant car that was... driving
through the construction zone at high speed with
police chasing them. If there's a person in the
car, they should have a way of pushing a button
to say, stop the damn vehicle. So this is a huge
oversight. Whether or not intentional is something
that should be fixed in these cars before they're
approved by any state for transporting passengers
within that state. Yeah, I mean, it's a functional
way to avoid what I think is the most, I guess,
the base nightmare for people getting into these
cars, that they're going to be trapped in a vehicle.
It's very similar to what we've seen with people
who are involved in sudden acceleration incidents.
You're trapped in a vehicle that's functionally
lost its mind and you have no way to stop it.
So I guess it's let me jump back to this Uber
article real quick since we're on that and then
we'll wrap up the gaslight. Quoting from a L
.A. Times article. The trial attorney's competing
measure competing against Ubers, which is, hey,
man, we're all good, would classify Uber as a
common carrier akin to a bus operator, effectively
increasing its exposure to sexual assault cases
involving Uber drivers. It would also mandate
annual fingerprint checks, public reporting of
sexual misconduct incidents and disclosure of
an internal driver risk score on the Uber app.
Yeah, which I think is all great and good. And
of course, Uber is like, no, we have. Is it over
3 ,000 sexual assaults reported a year or is
it 30 ,000? I don't know. It's in the thousands.
It's not a good number. It's not a good look.
But their solution is trust us. Yeah, trust us.
I mean, it's all good. And so we'll keep you
updated on that. And now let's recap the gaslight
situation here. So mine was just, mine was an
early one. So actually I'll do mine very, I'll
do another one very quickly. Cause I had one
that just popped into the last second here, but
one, I remember donut, the donut. I'm not, I
mean, I, I'm yeah, I'm going to win this one.
Okay. But you're not going to like why I went.
Okay. No, I'm doing a, I'm doing a third. Okay.
So the member donut, donut. The solid state batteries?
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so we're all like, this is
going to be amazing. It doesn't use any rare
earths. I don't know. It's more and more. It
seems like bullshit to me, right? They're my
gaslight because they said it was going to be
out in March. It is currently the end of May.
TikTok. Okay. But my initial one was a lame one.
It was around, hey, Uber or Waymo being like
having to rely on the National Weather Service
and their whole flood thing. Nothing there. Blah,
blah, blah. Michael. You had a very good one.
I don't remember what it was about. It was too
long ago. It was Fong is Wrong, which was great
and really in -depth around that. Fred, your
one about Uber, very good. And I know it was
very good because I wasn't paying attention,
but Michael got passionate about it. So that's
how you know it's a good gaslight. But your fatal
flaw, Fred Perkins, was you started this off
saying, our friends at Uber. Our friends. Are
you gaslighting us saying that we're friends
with Uber people? I have many more flaws than
that, Anthony. You should not harp on that. All
right. Well, then if we take that away, then
Fred, you win. Yeah, there we go. I'm fine with
that. Yeah, I think that's fair enough. Because
the Uber was my original gaslight, but I ceded
it to Fred. I know you're doing it. Thank you,
Michael. You're a kind and generous person. You're
doing a mitzvah. All right. So continue. I want
to do one more. I think this is just the last
Waymo piece. So, again, the greatest group of
people, the most talented group of people on
planet Earth at this current moment in time are
Waymo's PR team. Hands down. No one can disagree
with that. They are. I mean, look at the story
they get. They get placed immediately after all
these problems. Right. So they have to shut down
freeway travel. They have problems with school
buses, a problem with flooding. And so they.
Post a piece in the New York Times. I'm not saying
there's a journalist who wrote this because it's
not. It's PR flack, 100 percent saying we're
helping the blind. We're doing this for the blind.
The blind love us so much. And so I'm going to
quote specifically from one little section of
this article. And this is a this sums up all
of the problems of everything, not just self
-driving cars, but everything with tech brawl
culture here. Quoting, I don't have to talk to
another human being. Said Sarah Funes, a South
San Francisco resident who is partially blind.
I get in a car and I'm just alone. Anytime you
think about any technology and any of these weirdos
talking about stuff, that's what they want. They
want to live in an underground bunker. They don't
want to be subjected. taxes they want to live
off on in some seasteading island you think you're
going a little too far there this is just a blind
person that wants a little independence right
no independence is one thing but this this i
think this captured it perfectly i don't have
to talk to another human being I thought that
was kind of sad when I read that. I guess as
a closet introvert, I can kind of sympathize
with that understanding. What I can't sympathize
with here is the fact that you're willing to
trade this. particular independence that you
find in being in a car without another human,
you're willing to trade that for the safety risk
that comes with turning these things loose on
the roads across America, right? Well, it's a
lot like jumping out of an airplane with a parachute,
right? I mean, you are intentionally exposing
yourself to danger just for the thrill of finding
that you can survive that danger. It's an odd
approach to life, but, you know. Bless him if
that's the way he wants to run his life. Just
hope that the car never breaks down in between
your embarkation and your destination. What's
not new here are AV companies using the disabled
as an emotional crutch to support scaling of
unsafe autonomous vehicles, right? That's something
they've been doing for about a decade now. Yeah,
now they've actually got a live person. Right.
So that's good. But, you know, this person should
really consider their participation in a Waymo
C trial and see if that still fits their safety
profile. Well, I mean, keep in mind that they
got people from the American Council for the
Blind, which is heavily funded by Waymo. Do you
know that? A hundred percent. I don't. I do know
that Waymo has worked by partnering with several
organizations. It says it right in the article
by partnering, partnering, you know, what does
that mean? We have a, we, we give them a t -shirt.
You don't know. So you can't say they're funding
them. I'll dig into that. Fine. All right. I
would, I would, I would go out. I would go, you
know, I've, I've speculated about this many times
in the past. We just don't have any real evidence
of it. I mean, I don't even know if you went
into their nine nineties and that sort of thing.
If you could figure out who was donating to them,
whether that's public record, but, um, I have
been very suspicious of a, you know, some type
of financial connection or motivation between
some of the disabled groups and some of the larger
autonomous vehicle companies for many years now.
Because invariably in NHTSA comments and in NHTSA
meetings and public meetings and in all sorts
of PR related activities. These AV companies
will trot out members of the disabled community,
particularly the blind community, over the past
few years to, you know, essentially serve as
an emotional crutch for the idea that these should
be expanding or these vehicles should be deployed
and expanded as quickly as possible to save these
disabled people without considering the fact
that they're also creating safety hazards to
everyone, including the disabled folks around.
It's a real just it's a real I don't know. I
find the whole operation somewhat seedy. But
forgetting that, stepping away from that, I have
a couple of blind friends and they use ride share
apps. And we've seen this with Waymo or sometimes
Waymo just stops in the middle of it and says,
yeah, the ride's over. We're done. Get out of
the car. They do that to a blind person. You
don't know where you are. You're in the middle
of nowhere. You're screwed. But specifically,
a friend of mine, she had, you know, put in the
address. The driver drives her to a location.
She gets out and realizes, wait a second, this
is not where I'm supposed to be. And so she can
then have an interaction with the driver. We're
like, hey, is this the address I'm supposed to
be at? The person go, oh, you didn't know. The
app says it is, but you're right. We're not at
the correct address. Whereas if you're dropped
off without a driver, you're just dropped off.
That car drives away. What do you do then? I
mean, this is. This really isn't an edge case
because we've seen enough of Waymo's just, hey,
we're going to drop you off here. You're done.
Well, clearly that can never happen because the
maps are infallible. And why are you making this
up, Anthony, out of the whole class? I'm not
making this up. Not at all. I mean, it's fun.
You ever been on a sailboat with two blind people
fighting over the tiller? It's amazing. Anyway,
that's it. I have. It's amazing. They're really
good at sailing because they can feel the wind
on their faces. Anyway, Fred, do you have some
towel time? I do. But I think I already went
through that, actually. Did you already do the
towel? Are we done? I did. I think my towel bled
over into one of my comments, which was really
about that extra dimension of the safety discussion
associated with. the ability of the passenger
to be the final authority on whether or not the
transportation was safe. It was a secret towel.
Ooh, secret towel. Yeah, I slipped that right
in over the threshold. So I don't need to repeat
that, but it's been a perennial theme. I think
that that's a big gap in the permitting process
associated with these vehicles. People need to
be able to defend themselves against the vehicles
because Folks, they're not perfect. Anybody who's
ever used a computer knows that these things
can screw up. And when you give them control
over your life, you damn well better have a backup
strategy to preserve yourself and defend yourself
against the technological flaws that can occur.
No, it will never screw up. Go to autosafety
.org and click on Donate. In terms of conditions
applied, it might screw up. Anthony, where are
you going to put the towel? Intro music this
week. You haven't listened to this show in over
two years, have you? Because that intro music
disappeared a couple of years ago. I like that.
He turned into a slacker. I liked it, too. Anyway,
before we go to recalls, let's go to my favorite
subject. One of my favorite subjects. Wiggly
Wiggly? No, he's pretty good. From a friend of
the show, Jonathan Gitlin, has an article in
Ars. titled, These Clever Active Beam Headlights
Are Finally Coming to America. I'm going to quote
directly from the article. Despite America's
reputation as an innovation powerhouse, we have
lagged behind Europe and Japan in automotive
lighting technology for decades. Thanks to 1960s
era regulations allowed only low and high beam
headlights, nothing else. For years, OEMs like
Audi, BMW, Mercedes -Benz, Toyota, and Volvo
lobbied NHTSA to allow them to bring more modern
technology to these shores to no avail. At first,
it was laser high beams, which could project
their beams much further down the road than conventional
halogen or xenon lights. Lasers are cool, but
adaptive driving beam technology is even cooler.
Each headlight is actually a multiplex LED, and
by turning some of those pixels off, the headlight
beam can be shaped to mask the light to selectively
dim oncoming vehicles instead of switching to
low beams. Oh my god, I want every vehicle on
the road to have this now. This is... Super cool.
I think we all do. And we've wanted it for a
number of years. And NHTSA not doing anything.
You know, I think Europe allowed these in 2006.
NHTSA's final rule allowing the tech was put
out in 2022. Didn't follow directly what automakers
were already doing in Europe and added some additional
restrictions around glare, which were probably
needed. I don't know that everyone agrees with
that. I do. And so, you know, here we are four
years later and Audi is now the first manufacturer
that I think it looks like that has successfully
been able to design and test systems that can
comply with the NHTSA rules. And those are going
to be coming out, what is it, next year's? Is
it the 2027? No, 2026, I think is what they said.
2028. Alley goes on sale later this year. Right.
So it looks like it'll be, I think that'll be
a 2027 vehicle. Okay, so. Which is great. You
know, did you see the light carpet? It looks
so cool. Check this article out. So, Michael,
how many crashes do we know occur at night? Or
can we make a guess? How many of these are potentially
related to people being blinded by people running
fog lights that are trying to blind me? There's
no evidence that, you know, any of them are directly
caused by that. So I think we've dealt with that
before. I just looked at it and, you know, there's
just not, whether it's a, you know, there could
be a failing crash reporting, police reporting
that, you know, where drivers report this condition.
Also. I think it's really difficult to prove
in a lot of circumstances, because if you know,
unless the two vehicles collide, the one that's
got the blinding lights and the other vehicle,
you don't even you're not even going to get a
statement or have evidence that the vehicle was
driving by with its headlights on bright. Right.
Or you just don't have that proof. So there's
a lot of data problems there. But ultimately,
I don't think we've. You know, we just haven't
been able to find a large sustained connection
between headlight glare and crashes. Right. We
see a lot of people that are annoyed by it. But
so far, the data simply doesn't bear out a safety
risk that can be addressed. But in this case,
you know, this is one of the reasons why I mentioned
that's in the glare and in the adaptive driving
being rule they put out. They added additional.
protections on top of what the EU does or the
EU did when it allowed them in 2006 to address
the glare problem. So NHTSA has, you know, made
a step at least towards addressing any concerns
there might be around the glare, around LED and
that kind of thing. Well, so given the time frame
for technology like this to go through the entire
fleet of all the cars on the road, we're talking
about 30 years. Yeah, I would say 30 years on
average there for any type of technology to fully
penetrate the fleet. I mean, and that's just
because, you know, some people are going to keep
their cars for 30 years, right? I get it. I'm
just wondering when I can finally feel comfortable
driving. So when I'm 80 years old, I'll be good.
Perfect. Maybe. That happens faster than you
expect, Anthony, by the way. Okay, well, I'll
race you to it. Let's see what happens. Hey,
let's jump into recalls. All right. First up,
Toyota. 43 ,566 vehicles. The 2024 Toyota Tundra.
There's problems with their engines. The subject
vehicle is equipped with a specific B35A engine
that contains crankshaft main bearings, which
allow the crankshaft to rotate within the engine
assembly while running. During a specific production
period possibility, there was machining debris
inside this. Oh, they got some metal shavings
in there. The pressure. Presumably. Yeah. Oh,
so what's going to happen here? Essentially,
I think you're essentially your engine's going
to fail. You're going to stall. You're going
to lose motive power. And this is a stalling
recall. You know, I'm assuming that what's going
to have to happen here is they're going to have
to. take a look inside of these engines to determine
whether or not there's any debris there. If so,
they're going to replace the engine, possibly,
if there's damage. But definitely, I don't know,
clean out the engine. We don't really know yet
because no information has been provided on the
remedy yet. So it looks like they're going to
be sending out a notification to owners later
this summer in July. you know, at least tell
you what to expect. But for right now, we're
all kind of in the dark. Up next, Hyundai, 421
,078 vehicles, the 2025, 2026 Santa Cruz, same
year's Tucson hybrid and the Tucson plug -in
hybrid. The forward collision avoidance system
in the subject vehicles may exhibit increased
sensitivity to forward object proximity in certain
driving scenarios due to the front camera software.
This can dull... Condition can result in forward
collision and avoidance engagement earlier than
the operator's expectation, potentially leading
to sudden braking. Ooh, so they've got sudden
braking and they can explain why it happens.
That's a first. I like it. It looks like, you
know, this is essentially a phantom braking condition.
something that we're highly concerned with in
a lot of automatic emergency braking and other
systems. You know, we've seen this in autonomous
vehicles stopping short and causing crashes.
We already discussed that a little today. They're
autonomous adjacent vehicles? Yeah, it looks
like four crashes have been reported here where,
you know, these Hyundai vehicles were rear -ended
by vehicles that were probably following them
too closely in the first place and four injuries.
Essentially, you know, they're going to revise
the software for the system. And it looks like
owners will get a remedy in mid -July 17th is
when Hyundai is saying it's going to come. So
be on the lookout for that. And also, be careful
driving around your vehicle with, you know, defective
software until then. You know, it seems like
it's something they should be getting together
a little quicker. Two months, three months is,
you know, a typical run, I think, for a recall
repair. In some cases, owners would be happy
with three months. In this scenario, I would
like to point out to the people following too
closely. When you come to a stop sign or a traffic
light, you should stop far enough behind the
vehicle in front of you that you can see their
rear tires completely on the road as a general
rule of thumb. Why? There's all this space there.
Why don't I take up all that space? Because when
the moron behind you hits you, you don't hit
the car in front of you. This safety message
brought to you by me. Yeah, yeah. I mean, riding
too closely is a huge problem. Arguably, phantom
braking would not be an issue if following drivers
were observing, you know, the time and distance
recommendations for following vehicles. As all
of us who have driven know that there's a significant
number of people who don't observe those recommendations.
Looking at you, state of Connecticut. One of
my favorite driving games is when somebody passes
me who is a maniac, for example, and they're
speeding down the road. Sorry about that. What
I like to do is to kind of track them and see
how much time they're actually saving when they
perform this crazy maneuver. Yeah. And typically
I catch up to them at the next red light. So
they haven't saved any time, but it's never more
than about 10 seconds before I lose track of
them. I mean, I had someone pass me in the middle
of a, on a double yellow line, like in the middle
of town, double pass me and the car in front
of me. That was going a little slow, but, and
then pull in, you know, less than a quarter mile
down the road, pull into the same supermarket
as I did. And I beat them into the grocery store.
So there. What did you beat them with? You know,
the shopping cart. So the Piggly Wiggly, Michael?
No, no. Unfortunately, they don't have those
here yet. Oh, man. Next up, Hyundai. That's two
Piggly Wigglies today. That's a third now. Okay.
Hyundai, 54 ,337 vehicles, 2024, 2026. Hyundai
Elantra Hybrid. And what is happening here? Hybrid
power control unit. Oh, the overheating of the
hybrid power control unit. Yeah, these are hybrids.
Yes, overheating could increase the risk of fire.
Oh, I don't like that. Yeah, I think there's
both a fire and a potential loss of propulsion
here. That's never good. Again, it's going to
be a software fix that improves. MOSFET cooling.
Yeah, whatever MOSFET cooling is. Fred Perkins,
what is MOSFET? Metal oxide semiconductor field
effect transistor. I've got some in this little
cabinet next to me. You probably remember what
a relay is from your primitive exposure to electronics,
but MOSFETs are solid state replacements for
relays, mechanical relays. And so that's basically
what switches the heavy power off and on that's
going to your motors. Remedy is going to be out
in mid -July again for the Hyundai owners. The
only reason I do these recalls is just to hear
you say July. July. It makes me want to drink
a mint julep. All right. Hyundai again. Third
entry Hyundai. Hyundai, who do you think you
are? Ford? 3 ,493 vehicles. The 2016 Hyundai
Elantra GT. 2015, 2016 Hyundai Elantra. Oh. An
airbag inflator rupture increases the risk of
severe injury. The subject dual stage hybrid
airbag inflators provided in specific production
lots may contain propellant outside of density
specifications. This is the scary, scary, scary.
Why did it take them a decade to find this? Well,
this one's weird. Like this is so NHTSA has been
looking at ARC airbags for about 10 years now.
I think their 10th year anniversary of this investigation
comes up this year. That's a name. incredibly
long engineering analysis, maybe the longest
engineering analysis in the history of the agency.
I don't have the data to back that up, but I'm
pretty sure. But as part of the ARC airbagging
investigation, you know, the original defect
that. um was cited was that there was some type
of slag from welding process that was left in
the airbags that was getting caught or blocking
the um pores or the holes that allow the gas
to escape in the airbag inflator um and thus
resulting in explosive rupture of those airbags
um you know nizza We tried to go through the
recall process to have these vehicles recalled.
You know, there weren't a lot of incidents. This
wasn't the same as Takata airbags, where these
airbags are going to get more dangerous over
time due to humidity levels. There's, you know,
the agency essentially. I think it was in late
2024, said, you know, we don't have enough information
to move forward at this point, even after they
had filed an initial defect determination. And
they said, we're going to continue investigating
this for now. So presumably we're still in that
stage in regards to this larger investigation
of these 50 million or more ARC airbags that
are out there still riding around in vehicles
all over America. In this case, Hyundai. And
pursuant to that investigation, Hyundai had been
collecting its airbag inflators, giving them
to, I think it was Northrop Grumman to do some
testing on them. And Northrop Grumman came back
to Hyundai and was like, well, you know, we're
not seeing. The problem that is alleged as the
defect in our airbags, which is the weld slag
blocking the gas ports in the inflators. But
we've done these CT scans of your airbags, and
we're seeing that the propellant wafer that you're
using that essentially contains the explosive
that deploys the airbag, they're lower density.
They're not quite right. They're not what we're
expecting here. And Hyundai took that, you know,
I guess to their credit and did its own testing
and said, you know. You know, they went back
to ARC, actually, and ARC said, ah, don't worry
about it. You know, the performance isn't impacted.
They're a little lower density on these propellant
wafers, but no problem. Hyundai did some tank
testing of these inflators and turns around and
says, okay, we're doing a recall. So they saw
something there that was very concerning that
ARC is maintaining is not a problem. It doesn't
appear to be related to the original defect.
However, you know. There is a possibility that
there could be, you know, a problem with ARC's
manufacturing process and its propellant wafer
process that might extend to other manufacturers.
We have no information to support that yet, but
this perhaps could be an alternative defect theory
to what NHTSA has been looking at for over a
decade or almost a decade now. Getting to the
point, Hyundai is going to conduct a recall on
these inflators and replace them for customers
who are affected. And I believe they say they've
isolated this to a specific batch. I think it's
around 3 ,000 vehicles that are going to be covered.
So owners can expect to hear about that. I think
it's in a couple of months. Yes, definitely get
that one fixed. If you have one of these vehicles,
you get that recall notice in the email, in the
snail mail, anywhere. Do not delay on this, please.
And with that, that is our show, ladies and gentlemen.
We'd like to thank you for joining us. Thanks,
everybody. I want to talk in a very slow and
PR -type voice. So I'll talk a little faster.
Thank you, and goodbye. I don't think snarky
people can pull off a PR case. I don't know what
you're talking about. All right, goodbye, people.
Bye -bye. For more information, visit www .autosafety
.org.