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, today's
Wednesday, June 10th. Wait a second, wasn't last
week Wednesday, June 10th? Yes, we're in the
past. You're in the future. We just recorded
these episodes back to back. So if something
crazy happened in the last week, we missed it.
Wait for the following week and we'll catch up
on you. What could have crazy could have happened?
Waymo says that they're the greatest thing in
the world while they drive into a wall. I don't
know what happened. Police had to rescue a Zooks
from something. You know, I don't know. I don't
know. Elon fesses up. Yeah, Elon's now I'm a
trillionaire, man. My companies don't make a
profit, but you keep falling for it. Oh, you
know, you just inspired me, Michael. You inspired
me to start off with my gaslight. That's right.
Going right into it. Kathy. Late stage capitalism
would. For those of you don't know, Kathy Wood
is a investment manager. I don't know. She's
a salesperson. You have to understand, everybody
on Wall Street who stock analysts, they do sales.
They're not unbiased. They do sales. All these
companies, Merrill Lynch, when they're like,
hey, SpaceX is worth trillions of dollars. That's
fraud. That's bullshit sales. This is just lies.
They are used car salespeople with really nice
clothes. From this article in this video that
we're linking to from Benzinga. I can't even
say that with a straight face. Benzinga. Kathy
Wood. She rides around in a Waymo and talks about
how it's the greatest thing. No, I'm sorry. In
a Tesla. In a Tesla. In Austin. In Austin, yeah.
And the greatest thing in the world. And I don't
know. I really don't know if she's just naive,
stupid, or full of shit. Maybe that's the game
we should play instead of Gaslight. It's naive,
stupid, or just full of shit. Or all the above.
Yeah. So she's saying that Tesla, because they're
amazing and her entire financial stake is basically
invested in Tesla, says they're going to get
their costs for their robo taxi service down
to 25 cents per mile. Lie. Nope. There's no data
to back this up. I will actually point out where
Kathy would and. Her ARK Investments gets all
their data from when I finish my rant here. She
claims in this video, there are five parking
spaces per car in the US. That's fiction. That's
just made up. No one knows. No one has any clue.
Sorry, you can search for this and there's estimates
going from three parking spaces per car to 10
parking spaces per car. No one, this data is
not, no one's compiled it. Okay. She claims Waymo
has the data to prove that autonomous driving
is safer than human driving. Fred Perkins, what's
your thought on that? Yep. He has to clean off
his microphone now. And she says it will only
get better over time, that their safety will
get better over time. If anything, what we've
learned from Waymo is that it gets worse over
time. You know, they used to stop behind school
buses. They don't do that anymore. You know,
they regularly drive into puddles that are blood
zones. When the cell service goes out, they die.
They have not gotten better over time. And then
she, the piece de resistance, she says states
are putting their populations at risk by not
encouraging autonomy by this being autonomous
vehicles. She is a menace. This is the behavior
of a lunatic. This is a charlatan. Well, this
is the establishment of an urban myth. You know,
we talked about that, actually, how that Waymo
started that nonsense. And it's been picked up
by CNN. It's been picked up by The New York Times.
Now here it's going back again through the echo
chamber. It's unbelievable. She keeps saying
save lives, but she wraps it in air quotes. She
literally said save lives. And she's using like
little finger air quotes things. Why? Why would
you say that? That is like just kidding. Like,
I don't I don't get it. It's it's insane. She
says the reason that Tesla will succeed is they've
been training their vehicles for 10 years. So
they and there's a direct quote. They know all
the things that can go wrong. Oh, and she said
for the things that go wrong, they're called.
Corner cases. Lady, did you even read the fucking
cliff notes? Come on. How? How? How? Corner cases,
I love it. And I am going to wrap up on my guest
letter. She implies that most auto accidents
are caused by young people texting. Now, we know
distracted driving is a major problem. Unfortunately,
speeding and drunk driving are three to four
times as likely to cause a crash. Yeah. I mean,
again, this is lazy. lazy fraudulent bullshit
i hope for her to be locked up or just her mouth
duct tape people just stop listening to people
because you think they made she made an investment
in a con of a company called tesla people bought
into it because the s &p said let's put this
in an index fund all these index funds buy it
so the stock goes up and she's like aren't i
amazing i'm brilliant because i got in early
on the con she's like employee number two at
amway Like that's what this is. Anyway, my gas
under your skin. She upsets me as much as Waymo
harassing the police. Kathy Wood is in Anthony's
head. It's just it's more. It is not. I mean,
look, she she amongst others. She stands out
in the investment community as the person who
is most willing to kind of trumpet. the same
things that Elon's saying than to try to attract
more people to buy the stock so that her valuation
keeps going up, right? Absolute nonsense. That
is my gaslight of this week and a wonderful way
to start this episode. Does anyone else have
a gaslight? No, I'm out of gas. Oh, Michael,
did you have a gaslight you wanted to add? My
gaslight is you, Anthony, because you said we
weren't doing gaslights in this episode and then
you did one. Ah, well, I win. I can't argue with
your winnings this week. Yeah, it's hard. It's
hard to argue with that. I mean, even if you
guys had one, come on, this is a good one. I
did. It was you. Well, that's a good one. Let's
get into tires. And I've asked you guys about
tires before because I, you know, I haven't replaced
tires in my car yet. They don't need it. They
still got tread depth. I don't understand tires
as a consumer. There's a. plethora of choices
i don't get it i understand very basic things
i want a tire to stop my vehicle and keep me
on the road it's that is the scent of my the
extent of my knowledge uh there's an article
from jalopnik titled california's new tire regulations
could be a nightmare for enthusiasts it talks
about how the california energy commission has
proposed replacement tire efficiency program
it's saying i'm summarizing that replacement
tires that's Third -party tires that you buy
after you have your new car have to have the
same efficiency standards as the original equipment
manufacturers' tires. And now this is an issue.
Why? This is a problem that a lot of people don't
know about. In fact, we got a complaint from
a consumer last month who was saying, you know,
my OEM tires are running out with like, you know,
after 25 ,000 miles. You know, why aren't they're
not typically going to be covered under your
warranty. So you're going to be responsible for
replacing them. And her question was, you know,
why are OEM tires only getting, you know, only
lasting this long, whereas the aftermarket tires
are warranted for, you know, 60, 70 ,000 miles
in some cases. And the truth behind all that
is that the tires that come with your vehicle.
are typically designed specifically to produce
the greatest efficiency in that vehicle. They
might be a little softer. They might have lots
of characteristics that make them work great
with that vehicle during your test drive and
during your first couple of years of ownership.
A lot of people will experience... you know early
failures well before you know the 50 or 60 000
miles you'd like to get out of your tires on
the oem tires because they are not the same as
the aftermarket tires and part of the problem
with this proposal is that it is seeking to make
the aftermarket tires you buy as efficient as
the ones that come with the vehicle which arguably
is going to make them not last as long, which
can, you know, even though this is a rule that's
geared towards greater fuel economy and efficiency,
it could result in more tires being bought and
used and thrown out over time. And tire pollution
is not, you know, not a joke. It is a significant
concern. And so there have been a lot of, you
know, I don't think industry and the tire industry
is all that happy with these regulations. I don't
know. They would ultimately end up selling more
tires, it seems like. But I just don't know.
You know, this is a proposal right now. It's
still being vetted in California. And so it may
not come to pass because there are some problems
here. But it's certainly something that we'll
keep an eye on as it moves forward. But I guess
the point I want consumers to understand out
of all this is that the tires that come on your
vehicle when you buy a new car. are most likely
not going to last as long as the tires that come
after. They're essentially designed to give those
cars the greatest initial fuel economy that they
can get. When they say that they could create
a problem and could possibly result in more tires
being manufactured, that's true. But it could
also mean that the tire companies will step up
and get tires that... both provide good efficiency
and also last a long time. So that's another
possibility. And the competition could drive
them in that direction, which I suspect it will.
You know, previously the tire companies had no
reason to develop the tires that, you know, did
both things, right? And so now they do. So it
could go both ways. It could be bad, could be
good. I guess the future is full of surprises,
isn't it? We'll find out. So what terms of efficiency
drop off are we talking about? Is it one mile
a gallon? Is it 10? Like, do we have any idea?
Well, it depends on the tire, right? I mean,
if you're taking your factory tires on your pickup
and replacing them with big mud tires, it could
significantly impact your fuel economy. Or if
you're switching to snow tires for the winter.
or something like that, you're going to have
an impact. And it could be small, it could be
large, depending on how different those tires
are in function and quality to the OEM ones.
Is that still a thing? Because I remember as
a kid, we'd have like an extra set of tires in
our garage and they'd be like, oh, I got to put
on the snow tires and then the winter tire. And
I thought it was just all season now is what
everybody had. I think all -season tires, they
have their place. But if you're in areas of heavy
snow and ice, they're not going to do what you
really want them to do. You need dedicated snow
tires. Well, the other thing that's happened
is front -wheel drive and all -wheel drive has
come into play since you were a child more than
it was before. So there's just less emphasis
on snow tires. That's a good point. When I was
first trying to drive, I was told certain things
that made sense in a rear wheel driven car versus
a front wheel. It's like, oh, when you go into
a curve, you want to hit the accelerator more
so your back end doesn't kick out. I'm not sure
if that was a good advice with rear wheel drive
anyway. No. Where I grew up, you would want to
have the rear wheels kick out because it's more
fun. In response to these concerns that both
Jalopnik and Car and Driver have put out, the
California Energy Commission issued the following
statement. In partnership with Smithers, this
is not a lie. In partnership with Smithers, a
leading independent tire testing laboratory,
the CEC tested tires that are sold for the most
popular cars and light trucks in California as
measured by the California DMV license registrations.
That's surprising. The research showed there's
no relationship between efficiency and tire lifespan
within the California market. In fact, the proposal
is specifically designed to encourage manufacturers
to produce longer -lasting tires, which save
consumers money and reduce tire waste. So that's
to your point, Fred, to your hope that they could
make something even better. The thing that surprised
me is the measure by California DMV license registrations.
I live in California. I had a car. I don't remember
telling the DMV what kind of tires were on my
car. Like, how would they? I mean, when you buy
tires, they're not sending that information to
the DMV unless something changed in the last
26 years. But I don't know. That was a. That
was an odd one. Well, I mean, that you would,
you know, if the tire, if it was an OEM tire,
the registrations you would pick up, you would
know the car, know the tire, but you wouldn't
be able to determine anything about a replacement.
Right. And even then, like, I mean, I imagine
manufacturers, they'll change the vehicles. Are
they telling like, hey, my Saturn SL1 is now
using Goodyear instead of Michelin? Yeah, I'm
sure they change, switch up from time to time.
Anyway, California, you're a strange place. Oh,
here's a, here's a, let's see. I'm going to find
a good one here. This is just a one -liner. That's
it. Okay. We have an article from, I believe
it was Automotive News, right? Yeah, Automotive
News titled, and unfortunately we can't link
to this, Ford has no regrets about quitting sedans,
even if it considers bringing them back. And
it's a long interview, blah, blah, blah. And
the only thing, my takeaway from it was from
the VP they're interviewing at Ford. He has this
line. Where'd it go? We have a really great Mustang
that people consider a car. I love it. He said
that. That's the only takeaway I had from that
entire interview. They're talking more and more
about bringing back sedans. You know, we've talked
a lot about Farley and him, you know, admiring
some of the Chinese sedans and acknowledging
that. the market doesn't offer probably as many
sedans as it should and definitely not at low
enough cost for a lot of them to afford us so
i drive a sedan i i i like the idea of bringing
back more of them but you know you also have
to wonder if the market is there to you know
i don't know if we'll ever reach numbers again
like we used to when 50 of the vehicles on the
road were sedans You know, now I think it's only
around 15 % or so of vehicles sold are sedans.
And even though they make a lot more sense for
fuel economy and other things, a lot of Americans
have chosen to go with larger SUVs and that kind
of thing. You know, it's hard to say whether,
you know, can a company just start building sedans
and expect Americans to buy them? Or is this
kind of a culture shift we need away from SUVs
and back towards more sensible, smaller vehicles?
I don't know. I went to a Toyota dealer just
out of curiosity to see how much the CJ5s cost.
I think that's what they're called. Anyway, it's
their fancy. Four -wheel drive. It used to be
called the Land Rover. Oh, yeah. Like a Land
Cruiser. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, CJ, I guess, something
like that. No idea. That's a Jeep CJ. Sicker
price was $72 ,000. Yep. So you bought two of
them? Holy crap. So, you know, that was the end
of my interest. But if the companies can make
as much money on one SUV that they're selling
as for... two sedans that they're selling, man,
as long as they can keep pushing people into
SUVs, that's where they're going to go. And that's
what they like. The bigger vehicles have bigger
profit margins. And that's why we have, you know,
the average vehicle costs $50 ,000. Yeah. And
if people are willing to spend $1 ,000 a month
on car payments, plus insurance, plus, you know,
basically if it adds up to $2 ,000 a month to
support your car habit, a company is more than
willing to. Have people do that, but boy, I'm
not going that way. But Fred, when you're going
to Costco and you're buying a pallet of toilet
paper and a half a cow, you can't fit that into
a sedan. That's true. That's a good point. And
when you buy a half a cow, you do need all that
toilet paper. I think that's what sunroofs are
for. I've never been to a Costco. I just, I don't
have a membership. I don't know what it's like.
I just imagine. I imagine you can buy half a
cow. Don't have them up here. But continuing
with China and autos, there's an article from
Ars Technica talking about how Michigan politicians
want to ban Chinese -badged cars from even visiting
the U .S. And a quote from the article, this
is some politician type, says they can certainly
come across the border. Just talking to Chinese
vehicles or vehicles with Chinese technology
in it. They can certainly come across the border,
drive up to Selfridge Air Force Base, take some
video with the car. The car is traveling. The
car is a traveling surveillance package. And
all that data that the car is collecting is being
sent straight back to Beijing. This is lazy fear
monitoring. That's a little crazy. Like, right?
Can't you just hop in your car with a video camera
and do the same thing? Can't you just show up
with your iPhone that's designed by an American
company but made in China? This is dumb. This
is yeah, this is just pure fear mongering. And
this is just very protectionist behavior against
Detroit auto manufacturers who. Well, I mean,
this really made me wonder about, you know, the
CEO of Ford, Jim Farley, who applied and I think
got an exemption to bring a Chinese. Was it one
of the BYDs or another Chinese vehicle into America
for his own use about a year ago? You know. Is
this bill going to ban that kind of activity
as well? No, no, no, no, no. Because Jim Farley
is wealthy. The laws don't apply to wealthy people.
That's got a good point. And, you know, we've
had the, you know, this is, there's been, you
know, I think the Biden administration's kicked
this off. They put an import tariff on Chinese
-made cars, 100 % import tariff, which functionally
is a ban. And then the Department of Commerce
started rulemaking. That was implemented during
this administration that banned the imported
connected cars from China starting next year.
So functionally, this has already been done.
I'm not really sure what Michigan is hoping to
do with state legislation that the federal government
isn't already doing. And I also wonder if they
have the authority to ban certain vehicles from
entering the country. state law i don't know
it's it's it sounds odd yeah it just seems like
a lot of fear -mongering i love the fact that
they bring in it's oh it's china china's the
big concern i mean really i'm more concerned
of just you know i mean we have the example already
of gm you know selling their customers data but
yeah china is going to take a picture of a fence
at an air force base it's a you know maybe the
chinese should invent satellites you know Get
a better view. Or balloons. Or balloons and say
we lost track of it. I don't know. Just flying
over your country. Nonsense. But our friends
in Europe, the EU have something called the European
Union AI Act. And we have a link to this from
automotive -iq .com. And I'm going to lean on
you guys because I didn't really fully understand
it. I'm going to quote from this piece. The regulation
places particular focus on AI systems that could
pose serious risks to health, safety, or fundamental
rights. In practical terms, automotive companies
will need to understand whether an AI -enabled
vehicle function is a low risk, limited risk,
or high risk, and what obligations follow from
that classification. That sounds like something
we all love, right? Yeah. Yeah. There's some
things in cars that use AI that might be classified
as limited risk, maybe low risk. That could be
like you're, you know, interfacing with an LLM
or air conditioning or whatever you're doing
with it. I don't know how. you know, AI -enabled
air conditioning. I don't know if that's a thing
yet. But as far as infotainment and that kind
of thing, you know, maybe there's low risk there.
But when you're talking about vehicle performance,
vehicle safety systems, clearly those vehicles
should be regulated as, you know, high risk artificial
intelligence. components of the vehicle because
you know there's there's a lot of ai that could
be used the vehicles coming up right and that
is being used now you know we've got you know
driver monitoring you've got um that any all
sorts of assisted driving across the industry
that's being loaded into cars now you've got
autonomous driving um And there are a lot of
other areas where cybersecurity comes into play
a lot here. So this is something that we do not
have in the United States, right? We do not have
a legal framework to ensure that AI is safe.
In fact, we've come perilously close in the past
year to passing laws that would exempt. the AI
industry from a lot of state laws that could
do something similar here in the absence of federal
AI regulation. There has been a little movement
in the executive branch around AI regulation
in the past week or so, but it's hard to tell
whether that's really safety concerns or Trump
trying to enrich his family once again somehow.
There's even been talk of the United States taking
a stake in some of the AI companies that are
operating here. So there's a lot going on in
this area. But I think one thing we can certainly
say is that we're a little jealous of the EU
for actually having a legal framework here to
look out for its citizens versus what's going
in the United States right now, where I would
argue that the people who are supporting and
pushing to. put AI into everything the United
States are doing so at a speed that's not good
for safety. I haven't read the regulation yet.
I only read the personal issues associated with
it. My opinion may change, but I didn't notice
and I didn't see any emphasis on inspection and
validation of the AI performance itself. Because
inherent in AI operation is ambiguity in the
output. You never know what you're going to get
out of it. It's like, you know, a box of chocolates
in the hands of Forrest Gump. You never know.
This applies to both large decisions that it's
going to make and small decisions that it's going
to make. I'm looking for, when I read this regulation,
I'm looking for some evidence that there's a
third -party way or some validation method. For
the AI operations itself, the conclusions you
draw from one or two observations will in fact
pertain to the overall AI operation. We've talked
about this before and the need to have inspectable
features that are safety critical on computer
-driven vehicles. There's no emphasis on that
in the public and there's no... evidence of that
and what I've seen so far in this AI regulation.
I think that's critical to any application for
vehicles. You've got to be able to do a safety
inspection to make sure that the vehicle is operating
in conformance with the performance limits that
have been placed on it by the manufacturer, right?
Even, I mean, something like adaptive cruise
control. You want to verify that the car, in
fact, is... following other vehicles at the appropriate
distance. How do you do that? Unless it's built
in by the manufacturer, how in the world can
a state that's concerned about the safety of
its residents verify that, in fact, the adaptive
cruise control or any other feature you want
to name is doing what it's supposed to do? I
think this is a huge gap. I haven't yet seen
evidence that this European regulation is addressing
that. The closest I see to that is they have
a section called more documentation and traceability.
I'm going to quote, high -risk AI systems require
detailed technical documentation. For automotive
companies, this could mean stronger traceability
between AI requirements, training data sets,
model versions, validation results, software
releases, and post -market monitoring. I mean,
that's kind of in the right direction, but you're
right, Fred. We need, what are the actual specific
details? Maybe that is in the specific regulation.
I don't know. Maybe what they could do is they
could go to autosafety .org and check out the
AV checklist, get inspired from that, because
that's a great way to start. That's a fantastic
idea. I agree. And, hey, EU regulators, while
you're there, just click on Donate. We don't
care if you live overseas. It's fine, right?
We can take it. We'll take your S. Yeah. They
have sovereign investment funds. Shouldn't they
have sovereign safety funds, too? Use that to
invest in people like us. Finland, I know you
got burned by donut. You know, we're no donut.
We do believe it was Finland, right? Or was it
Norway? It was Finland. I don't know. It was
so long ago. Go ahead and make up a country.
Why not? Yeah. Funore. Oh, Funore. Their food
is amazing, I bet. Oh, I love a good Funore.
Yeah, it's a nice food. Samoristan, yeah. Yeah,
that's great. Well, where did the Marx Brothers
fight in Animal Crackers? What was that country?
Anybody? Before my time. Ah. Well, with that,
I think it's time for a deep dive on the world
of GNSS, brought to you by Fred Boom Boom Perkins.
Oh, this is actually a very important subject,
which very few people have really thought about.
Last week, we talked about Zoox and how they
said there are no single -point failures in Zoox.
Every AV company is busily mapping. cities so
that their cars know where they are. But think
of, you know, what does it really take to do
that? If you know where a landmark is and you
know where you are relative to the landmark,
then you can know where you are, right? If you're
next to a street sign that says My Town USA,
you know pretty much where you are. That's how
GPS works and all the similar systems. So the
formal names is Global Navigation Satellite System.
There are several different systems, one by the
U .S., one by Europe, one by China, that provide
essentially parallel capabilities. So here's
how it works. GPS satellites, and I'm going to
call them all GPS satellites just because GNS.
I'm sorry? I just called you a dirty American
by calling it GPS. GPS is the brand name of the
U .S. version. Actually, it's not. It's called
Global Navigate something. I don't know. The
international never star or whatever, blah, blah,
blah. Anyway, this is how they work. The satellites
are up there. The satellites know where they
are. When you receive the radio signal that comes
from the satellite, it comes into your device,
whatever it is. And it decodes the information
in that message. That includes the time at which
the message was launched and the location of
somewhere in space that it was launched from.
And since you know what the time is where you
are, if you compare your time to its time, since
what did you say, Michael? Three things in life
are constant. Death taxes and the speed of light
in a vacuum or something like that. Well, I would
say taxes aren't so sure anymore. Yeah, well,
that's true. It depends on how rich you are,
too. But anyway, radio waves are light, so their
speed is well known. There's a lot of research
that goes on to that. So if you know the two
ends, of the communication and the time associated
with the delay between them, you can compare
that to the speed of light and you know where
you are, right? You drive 10 miles an hour for
one hour, you're 10 miles apart. So if you drive
or if you are so far apart in time and you know
what the speed is, that's what the distance is.
So the GPS satellites know where they are relative
to Earth. And since they do, They broadcast that
information and it's freely available for you
to listen to. But how do you get that information?
It comes through a radio signal. And that radio
signal is very faint because they picked a part
of the spectrum where there's very little background
noise from anything in the universe. So the transmission
power from the satellite is only about 50 watts.
And since that satellite is tens of thousands
of miles away from you, You can imagine that
it's a very small signal. 50 watts, by the way,
is about the power that's radiated by the high
beam of your LED headlights. So if you think
of the problem of seeing your headlights from
12 ,000 miles away, you can have some appreciation.
How far are satellites actually away from us?
12 ,000 sounds like a lot, but they were only
like in the, you know, like hundreds of miles
into the atmosphere versus... The satellites
are about 12 ,000 to 13 ,000 miles from the Earth
-bound listener. So the orbits are up 12 ,500
feet or so, but of course you've got the distance
on the Earth that varies because it's in orbit.
So it's like 12 ,000 to 13 ,000 miles. So they're
all over the place out there. Yeah, but broadcast
power is 50 watts, so it's just not much power.
So what has happened, though, is that the bad
guys... And maybe the good guys, who knows? We
don't talk about the good guys as much. But the
bad guys have figured out that if you screw with
a radio signal that's coming from the satellite
to the Earth, you can cause it to provide bad
information on the Earth. Like you can change
the indicated location from the actual location.
You guys probably saw Die Hard 2, didn't you?
Loved it. And so in Die Hard 2, there's a scene
in which the bad guys... take over the communication
system to the navigation system to the airlines
and cause the airlines to think that they are
someplace they're not. And so they cause an airline
to dive into the earth and crash rather than
land safely on the runway. It turns out that's
actually a possibility. For cars, what it means
is that the map that the car is reading is also
based upon GPS. The car's instant location is
based upon GPS to some extent. So if either the
map or the car is wrong, then the car doesn't
know where it is. And if there's no human supervising
where the car is going, it's relying on GPS information
to some extent to know where it is. So if that's
faulty, it can be crashing into things because
the map is no good or their location is no good.
I don't think the cars are absolutely relying
on this information because they also have sensors
that look for obstacles near them. And they could
be mapping based upon some other location information
associated with the topography. But that's very
complicated. So I don't think that they're doing
that. But if you postulate that the cars are
navigating based upon a GPS signal and you perturb
the GPS signal, let's say that causing the car
to think it's, 30 feet to the left of where it
actually is, then it's going to crash into things
that are in the area that it thought was free
of obstacles. Does that make sense? Yeah, it
makes sense. I mean, we were talking about this
because of the Veritasium video that came out
last week that suggested that Russia has deployed
at least one and maybe a number of satellites.
That can interfere with so far they've noticed
the European GNSS system. We don't have any evidence
that that can happen in the United States, but
it looked it appeared. I don't know. I don't
know if you can get full confirmation of this.
It appeared that the Russian satellite that the
video was talking about was operating in a spectrum
that was kind of adjacent to the GPS spectrum
and caused some brief interference, but that
it. looked like they may be testing the technology
as a way to essentially jam all GPS or GNSS systems
in Europe all at once. It looked like that it
had the capability to do that. But Russia simply
hasn't used it yet. We're not sure if Russia
has other satellites that could target the United
States or other continents. But it made me wonder,
like. Is there a redundancy that can be put in
place here? Are there land -based GPS solutions?
Are there ways that, you know, we can ensure
that, you know, one flip of the switch in, you
know, Leningrad or wherever they're operating
from in Russia can't kill people in cars in America?
Well, number one, if they can do it in Europe,
they can do it anywhere, okay? If they can create
a European -wide disruption. Number two, they
do this every day. It happens every day in the
Ukraine war where they're interrupting the GPS
signals for the flying objects that are competing
with each other, right? All the drones that are
out there. Yes, there are ways of correcting
the information in the vehicle. You can do a
couple of things. One is you can abandon the
use of radio. And that's why there are so many
fiber optic drones. crisscrossing Ukraine right
now because they were previously using GPS for
navigation. And they can't do that now because
of all the radio interference that the Russians
and presumably the Ukrainians are also putting
up locally in that area. The consequence for
the vehicles and for self -driving vehicles is
that if you are reliant on GPS, then there are
already mechanisms in place. or interrupting
the GPS signals. So when somebody like Zouk says
there are no single point failures that are in
our control system, you got to wonder if that's
really true. Because if they have engineered
solutions that can navigate the vehicles in the
absence of GPS, they certainly have not advertised
that widely. Now, can that be done? Yes, it can.
Think of a nuclear submarine, okay? A nuclear
submarine does not... Or I should have said,
yeah, a nuclear submarine. They navigate underwater
for weeks or months at a time. They cannot get
the GPS signals when they're underwater. So what
they have is they have an inertial navigation
system, which tells them where they are. And
then if they know where they're supposed to be
and they know where they are, they can navigate
to that other point. But those are very expensive.
Those are very high precision. And they allow
them to navigate for a long time, but all navigation
systems are going to drift after a while. So
the truth of where you are from your inertial
navigation system always has to be qualified
by within certain limits. Now, GPS is the same
way. If you have a GPS signal, you can know where
you are, but only within certain limits of a
few feet. That's the best you can really do.
That's good enough to know whether or not you're
in a highway or you're on the wrong way in a
one -way street, those kinds of things. But it
can't tell you if you are six inches to the right
of a traffic signal, for example, or six inches
to the right of a highway painted line. It just
doesn't have that kind of resolution. I ran into
a problem the other day with GPS. We were driving
along this road and... Google Maps is saying,
oh, keep going straight here. And we're driving
underneath an underpass. And the elevated highway
above us is probably 75 feet above us. And it's
telling us to keep going down on the lower pass,
we'll say, the street level. And all of us in
the car are like, I don't think this is right.
Unless something changed. We haven't been around
here in a while. What's going on? And, of course,
it drives us into a dead end. And it's trying
to tell us to go somewhere else. And we realize,
oh, it thinks we're 75 feet in the air. Like
it thought like it got that resolution was just
off by that's a pretty significant amount. I
mean, cause consumer level, um, GPS is what we
have in our phones that that should be accurate
within like two meters. I think it's only accurate
from the, I guess the top down. Right. Not, I
mean, no, it gets your altitude. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Cause that think, think of the, the radio
signal it's, it's tracking from satellite down
to where your receiver is. And my receivers,
you know, at, at. close to street level, whereas
it would get the signal a couple of nanoseconds
quicker if I was 75 feet in the air. Is that
correct, Mr. Perkins? Yeah! It does give three
-dimensional data. Yes, it absolutely does. I
always assumed GPS was two -dimensional. No.
But where are some of the problems with that?
Well, there's ionospheric activity that can perturb
the signal, so that's the source of uncertainty.
There are tidal motions of the actual Earth's
surface. That's not just the water in the ocean
that moves. It's the entire Earth's surface that
moves in response to tidal motion. So there's
a lot of things going on, as well as electrical
disturbances, the sun, solar flares. Who knows?
There's just a lot of stuff going on. The GPS
is only known within certain limits. It may be
completely accurate, but that would be an accident
and you would never know that it was completely
accurate because you only can be certain within
some limits of where you are. The consequence
for cars, though, is that if your self -driving
vehicle has no way of a human correcting an error
that's associated with GPS navigation. And there
are many sources of errors, both natural and
artificial, that can affect the location, the
actual location of the vehicle relative to whatever
you might have mapped or perceive using GPS.
If your car is driving itself based on that information,
you've got a lot of vulnerability there, both
for malicious action as well as natural phenomenon
that can affect the location of the car. So there's
a lot at risk. Anyway, that's the consequence,
purpose, the point I was trying to get across,
is that the GPS is really good for some things,
but it's not really good for everything. And
it's not constantly available with high accuracy.
And it can be perturbed by either malicious actors
or natural events to cause safety consequences
and fatal consequences for the self -driving
car. I've never seen this addressed by anybody
from the AV industry, and I think it's something
that should really be borne in mind by people
who are regulating or attempting to regulate
these vehicles. Yeah, I wonder how an AV would
have handled it. I think everyone's experienced
that thing of using whatever map program in their
car, and all of a sudden it just thinks you're
in the wrong location, and it glitches, and it
does that whole thing. I wonder how an AV would
have handled the situation that I was in the
other day, like I said, where I thought I was
75 feet in the air, where I clearly wasn't. I
mean, because it was sending me down a dead end
and it was telling me keep going straight. If
I kept going straight, I would have hit a wall.
So, you know, I made a turn around. And when
I was doing that, the entire system was just
like, no, go back, go back to where you were
and go left. And I'm like, there's no left. There's
no left here at all. What are you talking about?
I think it would have been a fun loop. You sound
like a human being, Anthony, which is somewhat
encouraging. So we know you're not an AI bot,
so that's good. We do know that the Teslas and
ride shares are dropping people off at the wrong
location because they are relying on their GPS
sensors rather than their eyes. And this is one
of the vulnerabilities unique for blind people
who are trying to rely on self -driving vehicles.
Because you don't know if they're actually going
to give you delivery at the location where you're
expecting to be dropped off. We've already seen
this happen. So I think that this vulnerability
is really underrated and underappreciated by
the AV industry. So that's today's tile. That's
a good one because it makes everybody... hopefully
second guess their gps system i mean because
again everybody's run into a glitch with it at
some point and you realize oh right what happens
when there's no one driving well we'll see um
with that go to auto safety click on uh donate
and now i have to uh transition to a more serious
story not that wasn't serious this is uh from
friends of the show kids in car safety This is
an article linking to from WBIW. Why does that
seem weird to me? Anyway, WBIW .com. It's titled
10 Children Killed in Driveway and Parking Lot
Tragedies in Just 18 Days. This is surprising.
We've talked about this before with forward over
and rear over. where people are in their SUVs,
typically, or trucks, and in their driveway,
they don't see that there's a child behind them
or in front of them because of height differences,
and they unfortunately run over the kids. According
to data released by Kids and Car Safety, there's
been 10 children left dead across the U .S. in
just the span of 18 days. The recent cluster
of fatalities highlights a largely hidden safety
crisis back over and front over incidents. These
tragedies occur when a driver, frequently a parent,
guardian, or close relative unknowingly strikes
a child who is positioned in the massive blind
zone of a moving vehicle. You know, this is probably
a problem that can be fixed. Instead, you know,
they want to spend stuff on Waymos and whatnot.
I mean, it's a problem that is occurring because
vehicles are getting much larger. without corresponding
regulations to ensure that driver visibility
is preserved. And also because these incidents
are happening in parking lots, driveways, and
in places where the federal crash data and fatality
collection doesn't happen. You know, the FAR
system, fatality analysis reporting system that
NHTSA uses. to gather data on a lot of its decision
-making, only takes data from crashes that occurred
while vehicles were in transit, which means not
on private property, on public roads. There is
a not -in -transport surveillance system that
does a little data gathering on these type of
incidents, but we're in the middle of trying
to make some efforts to get that. you know, put
into law better data collection around this problem,
just so that we can know how often it's happening.
We see here, you know, there have been 10 deaths
in 18 days. So that can give you an idea if you
expand that across a year, just how often this
is happening. And these are situations where
vehicles are, you know, not going fast. They're
in a driveway backing out or in a driveway pulling
forward or, you know. driving in a parking lot
at lower speeds and children and other people
are being caught in the crossfire, essentially.
So we think there are automatic systems, you
know, similar to automatic emergency braking.
Why isn't, you know, automatic emergency braking
doesn't work under, I think it's 6 .2 miles per
hour or something like that, which, you know,
a car running over a child, even at a low speed,
poses a significant threat of severe injury or
death. These are areas where we think NHTSA needs
to put a little more pressure on automakers to
do things. And they are doing some things. They
recently released a study or a rule that they're
preparing around rear automatic emergency braking.
It's actually for NCAP. They're going to start
evaluating the performance of rear automatic
emergency braking, which plays into the backover
events. There's still not a. front over definition
in federal law. There's some other issues there,
and there's some legislation that we think is
going to be coming up in the next month or so
that's going to address that. So it's worth keeping
an eye on this space because this is a problem
that has continued for many, many years. It's
only getting worse due to the larger vehicles
involved. And, you know, it's something that
I think needs to be addressed, even though it's
not happening on public roads. It's happening
in driveways and in private space. which makes
the collecting the data difficult just means
that there's still some work to be done here.
Yeah, I'd like to remind people that these are
not necessarily, you know, negligent people or,
you know, people with bad motives. They just
had the worst day of their life. And it's this
can literally happen to anybody. You know, take
a couple, you know, take a minute and walk around
your vehicle beforehand because this is just.
It's a problem that can be solved, and it's horrible
if it happens to you. With that, I want to try
and change the mood a little bit before we end.
Let's switch and go into a deep cleansing breath.
In, out. Fred Perkins, what state has the most
aggressive drivers, the most road rage? Oh, man,
that's a tough one. I do not know. I'm going
to guess it's Oklahoma. Oh, that's a pretty good
guess. Michael Brooks, you already know the answer.
Hold on. Before you knew the answer, what would
be your guess? You know, I think I might have
guessed Florida just because it's a little wild
down there. I would have guessed Connecticut.
But the answer is, according to Consumer Affairs,
Arkansas. I was right next door. We were so close.
I very, very close. Did you know they have lots
of piggly wigglies in Arkansas? I did. Do they?
Show is over. Yeah. According to this article,
traffic incidents involving gun violence, point
three, six per one hundred thousand people. Holy
crap. That's that's not that high. And that's
not that high. It was one point six nine. That's
the highest. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's why. stop
carrying a gun well really what are you doing
okay look there's surgeries you can get done
to enhance your yourself in a way there's hair
clinics in turkey there's you know there's there's
all sorts of things you can do to feel more like
a go buy a cyber truck if that makes you feel
this is anthony's second career is advising advising
on masculinity his life coach yeah yeah it's
i'm life coaching okay you don't need a pistol
you need a Uh, Hey, a different show. Uh, you
know, fatal accidents involving aggressive or
careless driving 8 .3 per 100 ,000 people. That
is the highest in the U S they accounted for
47 % of all fatal crashes in the state. Now I,
uh, I've never been to Arkansas. Uh, so I can't
speak on its behalf, but shame, shame on you,
Arkansas. Come on. I've driven across Arkansas
exactly once. And my big takeaway from it was
the existence of a town called Toad Lick. That's
pretty good. So I'm going to go down this list
to find where we think our suspects were. So,
Fred, yours was what? What state did you choose
again? Oklahoma. No, Oklahoma. Oklahoma does
not make the top 10. No, they're 37. Yeah, Florida
does not make the top 10. Florida is, where's
Florida? 12th. 12th, ah, so close. I chose Connecticut,
13th. Ah, pretty good. But the top 10, Arkansas,
New Mexico, Louisiana, Colorado, New Jersey comes
in at number five. Sounds about right. Nevada,
Montana, which is surprising because my experience
there were very conscientious drivers. Wisconsin,
Hawaii. Also, surprising. I thought their roads
were great. And 10, North Carolina. Ooh, I have
to go to North Carolina in a few weeks. Uh -oh.
I'm not driving, though. Washington, D .C. only
made 18th. Washington, D .C. should honestly
be much higher, considering that the road layout
was designed by somebody who hates people. Again,
I'd like to point out, I lived on D Street. It
was parallel to itself. Not for the entire thing,
just for random segments. Like, very strange
place. And the safest one coming in at number
51, Maine. Love Maine. Anyway, with that, ladies
and gentlemen, I think that concludes our show
for this week. Hopefully we didn't miss any amazing
stories. Sure, Ford probably recalled everything.
We missed that. Waymo started, you know, stopping.
Next to school buses and they say this is a improvement
and we're working and safety is our number one
priority. Kathy Wood said something stupid. Elon
Musk, you know, had another child. And with that,
that concludes our show. Thanks so much. Bye
bye. Bye bye. For more information, visit www
.autosafety .org.