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, welcome
to another exciting episode of what's going on
with the reflecting pool. Wait, that's not the
show. Anyway, today is Wednesday, June 24th,
and we're going to start off with a little publication
called The New York Times. They they have this.
I'm very happy. They have this big article on
how SUVs in particular have gotten bigger and
there's. The problem with rear over and forward
over, which we've, I think, talked about since
episode one. The Center for No Savings has been
covering this for 20 plus years. But the New
York Times just discovered this. And their writers
are teenagers. Because I'm going to quote directly
from this. The surge in pedestrian deaths has
baffled researchers. You know. After analyzing
federal and industry records, including never
before examined data on vehicle dimensions, we
found that the rise of large pickups and SUVs
is an important factor. What? That's a little
over the top, right? They're trying to present
this as a novel idea, I guess, that they discovered.
But obviously, if you've been listening to us
for four years, we've talked about a lot. Yeah.
And so further quoting, our estimate is. Estimate
is that about 200 to 400 pedestrians a year would
not have died if vehicles had remained approximately
the same size over the past quarter century.
That represents about 10 % of the recent increase
in pedestrian deaths. Well, hey, New York Times,
round of applause for discovering the year 2000.
I mean, look, it's a great article. It is. I
mean, I really like a lot of these articles that
have been kind of coming out in the last two
to three or four years. Scroll through it and
they integrate video and explanation, visual
explanations other than text into the article.
I think those are super cool. I think they did
a good job showing the vision of the driver making
left turns when a pedestrian is there, you know,
kind of showing how this giant vehicle problem
that we're the growing vehicle problem that we're
experiencing in America is impacting both drivers
and pedestrians. So great article. Yeah, but
we also have to give the New York Times credit
for giving the interns from the Columbia School
of Journalism a chance to actually see their
work in print. I think that's too generous. No,
I OK. Enough sarcasm aside, Michael, you're absolutely
right. I think this is a great article. They
really highlight something that most people don't
think about. Unfortunately, the three of us are
not most people. Or kids in car safety, like,
you know, this is, you know, or Consumer Reports.
Wait a second. I was going to say Consumer Reports
wrote about this like 10 years, 15 years ago.
But anyway, hey, it's great. The New York Times
put this out there. I think one very positive
thing that came out of this is right after this,
a couple of Congress people are like, wait a
second, NHTSA, you should look into this, which
is great. Congressman Mary Gay Scanlon, Mike
Thompson, Laura Friedman. They introduced on
last week the Pedestrian Protection Act to address
the rapid rise of pedestrian fatalities. Yes.
They actually they reintroduced that. It was
introduced last year, two years ago, I believe.
But they reintroduced that actually before the
New York Times article. So it wasn't a response.
It was it preceded it. But the Pedestrian Protection
Act, you know, essentially makes NHTSA dive into
this issue. They've got to look at. visibility.
They've got to look at vehicle height, vehicle
weight. They've got to look at essentially everything
that is contributing to this problem and also
incorporate, you know, the larger vehicle testing
and all of this into NCAP. so that consumers
have that availability as a rating when they're
buying their vehicle. At least those consumers
who care about their impact on other folks on
the roads would pay attention to it, which is
great. But you see in the New York Times article
kind of why we're at where we're at, because
the industry is passing the buck, right? It's
nothing to see here, move along. So we've got,
and these would be great gas lights. I hope I'm
not stepping on any of y 'all's toes, but. We've
got Mike Levine or Mike Levin at Ford saying,
while vehicle safety is critical, blaming larger
vehicles for pedestrian deaths overlooks systemic
issues, including the design of roads. Yeah,
thanks, bud. You can address both at once, right?
I mean, you know, nothing to see here, Ford says.
We need better roads, not the ability for the
driver to actually see people out of the damn
car. Makes no sense. And then, you know, General
Motors came in and said, you know, and here's
part of the article, I'll just quote it. Automakers
say that new technology designed to detect and
avoid pedestrians, including systems that automatically
apply the brakes, would dramatically improve
safety. For example, Bill Grotz, a spokesman
for General Motors, pointed to a recent study
that found that GM vehicles with so -called front
pedestrian braking reduced the frequency of injuries
by 35 percent. Hey, Bill, General Motors is part
of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which
is suing it to stop the pedestrian automatic
emergency braking rule from progressing right
now. So I don't know what to tell you other than,
you know. you can't you can't tout a technology
while at the same time trying to tear it down
from a regulatory standpoint um so you know again
i guess the industry is backwards on this um
but when you look at these crashes i think i
guess one of the one of the big takes from the
new york times article and something that everyone
should get out of it is that When you see a pedestrian
in a collision with a vehicle with a lower hood,
a car, a sedan, or an older pickup or older SUV
model, the human body essentially tends to roll
over the hood and by doing so escapes the rest
of the force that the vehicle is potentially
transmitting to them. When you look at the higher
hooded vehicles, what they're essentially doing
is instead of the person rolling up onto the
hood and out of the path of the massive amount
of mass and momentum, I guess, that's there.
What the big vehicles do is they essentially,
and the article said it this way, I think it's
a good way to phrase it. It punts the human in
front of the vehicle, but the human remains in
the path of the truck. can then be run over by
the truck and subject to even more injuries and
potential death. So that's really a lot of what
we're looking at here beyond the visibility problem
where manufacturers are blaming roof crush standards
and the A -pillar, which I disagree with. I think
that manufacturers could design smaller A -pillars.
They're just doing it cheaply, which is why the
A -pillars are so large. But ultimately, I think
we really need to consider the height of hoods
striking humans here as a big part of the problem.
What I want to know is, so manufacturers will
put in, you know, we've got rear view cameras
and we've got things like that for pedestrian
thing. Does this make people complacent? Because
these systems, as we know, rear view cameras
fail all the time. I imagine the pedestrian forward
detection thing fails all the time. Does this
start making drivers complacent to not turn around
and actually look, and they don't use these tech
add -ons as a supplement to what they should
be doing as a driver? Are you trying to segue
into the Tesla stories this week? No, no, no,
no. That's the same process here, right? I mean,
people become so comfortable and entrust their
cars so much that when it does act up, they don't
have the ability to take over and correct the
problem, right? Right, because the example I'm
thinking of is last week, I was traveling in
a bunch of rental cars. And we're through some
tight passages where you're backing up and I'm
noticing the drivers, they're just relying on
the rear view camera. And I was having a blast
because rental car is not in my name. And they'd
ask questions like, wait, is the yellow line
or the red line? Should we be worried about?
And I'm like, how about the stone wall you're
aiming towards? Yeah, you're probably screwing
up if you're just looking at the indicators that
the technology puts on your screen and not at
the actual objects. Yeah, I think that's something
that all drivers have to realize that it doesn't
matter what the tech is and how amazing and great
it is. The best technology you have is the Mark
I eyeball. Just look around. Mark one eyeball.
Is that a brand name? I don't know. That's what
a sailing instructor told me. He turned off all
the electronics on the boat. All right. So you
said it, Michael. You said the T word. It's time
for us to jump into the world of Tesla. We have
a couple of links to these stories. This is from
the New York Times. And on the New York Times
article, you can see the doorbell camera. What
happens is a driver said they were using some
sort of. They said they were an autopilot. They
said they were using an autopilot, but autopilot
doesn't exist anymore. It's renamed to full self
-driving, supervised self -drive. Whatever the
thing is, they were using Tesla nonsense. And
the car accelerated to, I think they said like
73 miles per hour residential area. And it went
flying through a brick wall and unfortunately
killed a woman inside. You can see the doorbell
camera footage of this. And it's like nothing,
nothing, nothing, nothing. Is this what? Nothing.
And then, wow, a car come flying at it. The driver's
not drunk, totally sober and saying, hey, what's
going, you know, completely cooperative. Quoting
from New York Times articles, the autopilot function,
again, the exact name, don't know. Tesla's driver
assistance technology is a popular feature among
drivers, but it's had its issues over the years.
That's playing a little mildly with it, that
it's had its issues over the years. From an article
in Electric, I'm going to quote, says, On Monday,
CEO Elon Musk pushed back on the idea that the
car was driving itself at all, posting that FSD
drives slowly through neighborhood streets and
this was a high -speed crash. Now Tesla's own
account places its driver assistance software
in the loop at the moment of the crash, with
the driver's pedal input as the override. So
Tesla's making the claim is that, hey, the driver
overrode our software. Now, a question I have,
and maybe this is my gaslight, sure, is that
if Tesla or any company can create software that
can do object detection in front of them, why
would it allow the driver to override a clear
inherent danger? Was this vehicle on Kool -Aid
mode? Oh, yeah. I know that was lame, but you're
all. Well, I mean, I guess there's a simple answer
to that, right? If it's a supervised automation
with the driver supervision, you've got to give
the driver the ability to override vehicle commands,
right? But in such a dangerous way. Well, that's
what that's see, that's kind of the crux here.
What happened there? Like, you know, Musk has
come out and, you know, done the usual Twitter
blame the human game. You know, yes, you know,
admitted, at least in this case, which is not
always the case that the vehicle is on full self
-drive or autopilot, whatever the full self -driving
system that's working here is. But, you know,
they don't address at all what happens when these,
you know, these situations occur. You know, they
say there was pedal misapplication. There's still
some questions around that and Tesla's data.
Are the pedal misapplications they're seeing
on their end real? Are they actually, you know,
what's going on there? We never get to see the
data. And so we're never really going to know
that. And it's a very similar. excuse that they've
given, you know, in, in, in the NHTSA investigation
around, you know, sudden acceleration, you know,
it's, you know, a hundred percent pedal misapplication.
We've seen it in the data. Well, have we, you
know, we're going to, we're going to be talking
about this in the towel coming up. Can we, can
we trust what's actually going on there? Should
I leap into that now? Yeah, why don't you, well,
give us a few minutes and we'll jump to your
towel. But essentially, you know, it goes back
to what we were talking about with the other
vehicles, right? Are they kind of breeding or
creating the situation that the human, that requires
a human to essentially possess? super human capabilities
to overcome the safety problem that the vehicle
has created? And are they creating situations
that, you know, the human can't recover the vehicle
from? In this case, you know, it's a neighborhood
with low speeds and somehow, you know, we know
it tells us it can accelerate incredibly fast,
right? That's a big part of their marketing.
So, you know, a vehicle leaping from, you know,
35 miles per hour to 70 miles per hour. takes,
you know, a split, you know, half a second maybe.
So we're not talking about it, you know, yeah,
we're not really talking about, you know, the
driver holding their foot down the pedal for
30 seconds and flying to the neighborhood here.
I mean, this certainly is something that could
have occurred in, you know, a matter of a second
or two, right? So that is well within the timing
that we think is problematic for humans to recover
or to, you know. take back attention and take
back control of the vehicle. How long do you
think it'll be before Tesla uses this as a testament
to the structural integrity of their car? I mean,
you know, pretty soon I'm sure we'll see advertising
that says Tesla's such a strong car that it protected
the driver when it penetrated the wall of a house.
Yeah, that woman should have been sitting in
her living room inside of a Tesla. I get it.
Absolutely. Yeah, it was her fault for not having
bought a Tesla that she could bring into her
living room. Well, fortunately for them, they've
got a, you know, I think another Tesla went off
a cliff recently and people survived. So they've
got at least two, you know, 200 foot, 300 foot
cliff drops in their favor. Over a house that,
you know, that kind of brings I don't know. I
don't think the situation is one they want to
highlight. No, but so related to my initial question
is like, OK, why would you allow someone to override
so dramatically? And also, since you're in a
residential neighborhood again, why would you
allow the driver to override to such a speed?
It seems to me that, hey, if you guys are the
most software, the best software engineers and
hardware engineers in all time. wouldn't you
at least be like, hey, driver, are you sure you
want to go this fast in this neighborhood? I
think there's that gap missing there. I understand,
Michael, your point of saying, yes, at times,
if it's supervised by humans, you want to be
able to override this. But there should be warnings
presented to users because there's no scenario
where you're in a residential street where you're
doing 30 and you're like, I'm going to do 75
all of a sudden. Yeah, you know what? It should
even be, I don't know, every time that kind of
subject comes up, if the vehicle... is capable
of seeing that the driver is exceeding the speed
limit in a neighborhood, why is the vehicle slowing
itself down in the first place? That's my problem.
We've talked about this before. Why are people
using a list technology to warn not only the
driver, but also the people in the neighborhood
of the car that something dangerous is happening?
You know, if somebody's speeding this badly,
there should be lights that's going off and lights
flashing and klaxons klaxing. I mean, in this
case, you know, granted that this may have only
taken a second or two. So warnings are not going
to help maybe as much as, you know, as you might
think. But I don't know. It's definitely something
that I think we should consider with vehicles
that are being robots being supervised by humans.
It makes me wonder if we if we need to put put
in some type of warning signs or at least. You
know, the manufacturer of these vehicles, that's
the last thing they want because they think that's
a beacon saying this car isn't safe. Right. It's
like, hey, why? I don't have to put in seatbelts.
My car is safe. So but out of this. So Senators
Markey and Blumenthal, they wrote a letter to
NHTSA saying, hey, you got to give us some answers.
What's going on with Tesla's FSD? And they told
NHTSA you have July 7th to respond. And who knows
what will happen there? Their it's essentially
was their response to that Reuters article. I
think we talked about a couple of weeks ago that
was taking a look at Tesla's bullshit data that
they're submitting to the European authorities
and that they're advertising on their website
and that no one else on Earth has been able to
independently review and verify. So Tesla's data
is supremely problematic. And with that, Mr.
Perkins, you were eager. And excited to jump
into your towel. I hear it's been peer reviewed
this week. It's been peer reviewed. Yes, this
is a peer reviewed study, which, as we all know
from Waymo's experiences, really important to
get people to publicly accept or to get the public
to accept the results. So maybe we'll get into
the New York Times, too. Who knows? But anyway,
you know, we hear a lot about edge cases. So
I started to wonder whether an edge case is a
bug or a feature of the AI -controlled car. So
ran a few numbers on this. And so a couple of
assumptions that basically there's 100 safety
-critical features that you can identify in the
car that are potentially failure modes, but only
100. In fact, the car's got many more. There
might be several hundred electronic control units.
There's sensors. Sensors can fail in different
ways. But to make the numbers easy, I just selected,
you know, assumed that there were a hundred different
things that are safety critical that can fail.
Can you give me an example of what one of these
would be? Oh, sure. A camera. That would be used
in the cars. So, you know, Tesla says they've
got 23 cameras. Excuse me, Waymo says they have
23 cameras. Or excuse me, 13 cameras. They have
four lidars and six radars. And they've got at
least one CPU. Each of the cameras has got at
least one perception module associated with it.
So you get the raw data. Then the data flows
through a perception module to say, okay, what
is this object that I'm looking at? Is it a cow
or is it a house? And then there's the main computer.
You've got engine control units. You've got units
that are electronically controlling the steering
and the brakes. So all of these things, if they
fail, they have safety consequences. Right. And
so that's what we're looking at. So there's hundreds
in any vehicle. But again, to just make the arithmetic
a little easier, I said, let's assume there's
100. And let's further assume that the car is
designed to be two -fault tolerant. So in other
words, if you've got one failure, the car will
be safe. It will safely come to a halt or something.
it could potentially cause injury to the occupants
or somebody around it. So two -fault tolerant
would mean you can fail two and you'll still
be safe or you'll still be able to preserve the
safety of the occupant. If you do that, what
you find is that there are at least 5 ,000 combinations,
100 features, two failures. There's at least
5 ,000 combinations. That can result in injury
to the occupants or to the people, vulnerable
users around the vehicle. Now, in order to assure
that your vehicle is going to be safe, you'd
have to validate all of those combinations. It's
not within anybody's range of dollars or time
who's developing a vehicle to do that. Just there
isn't enough time and money in the world to do
that. And that's, again, assuming that you've
only got 100 features. If you've got many more
features, of course, you've got many more combinations
and a lot more to do. So in practice, what the
developers do is they look at, as best they understand,
the risk profile associated with each of the
potential failures and say, well, we're going
to look at a couple of the really high risk features.
High probability and high consequence, for example,
or very high probability and medium consequence.
So there's a way of managing the risk. And what
they do is they pick a few. But notably, they
do not pick all of them. So if you look at a
couple of the leading risk factors, like is this
car possibly going to run into a house automatically?
That's something you might want to address. That
leaves 5 ,048 potential combinations that are
risky that you have not looked at. And each of
these has got a certain probability of happening.
But if you combine the certain probability of
it happening with the huge number of potential
consequences, you end up saying, you know, this
is inevitable that something's going to happen.
risk the lives of the occupants of the car. But
another factor is that if you're using AI to
run your car, you have no idea even how to develop
a really reliable way of figuring out whether
or not this is going to happen, what the risk
profile is, because we know that AI will inject
false results into any analysis that it's doing.
And you've got AI sprinkled throughout the car.
You've got it in the perception module, right?
How is it going to figure out what is in front
of the car based upon the inputs from the cameras?
You've got it involved in the driving itself.
How do you interpret the speed of the car, the
location of the car, the acceleration of the
car? How do you know that what you've been training
the car on is actually going to provide a reasonable
result? out of the computer, because we know
that the AI just sprinkles false results into
whatever it's doing. So I've come to the conclusion,
and I'm sure a lot of people may not come to
the same conclusion, that what people call edge
cases are in fact intrinsic to the architecture
you've built the car around. So they're not bugs,
they're features. They're going to happen. You
know they're going to happen. And they will not
happen repeatedly. They'll not happen reliably.
But they're sure going to happen. This is just
a feature of the AI architecture that's driving
the vehicle. And it's inevitable. And so I think
that when people talk about edge cases, and I
know a lot of people are going to beat me up
over this, but they're really just providing
cover for the industry to say, well, no, we never
bothered to. properly evaluate and properly validate
all of the things that can happen in the car.
Because this is just an edge case. It's not something
that's plausibly ever going to happen. My argument
is that it has to happen because you've built
an architecture that makes it inevitable that
something really bad is going to happen. And
you've never put the proper amount of time and
energy into validating all of the... safety results
as you need to to make sure that well for example
that the car is not going to run into a house
in a residential neighborhood so that's that
makes sense is that clear i think i'm wandering
a little bit yeah but you started wandering into
english um so i i get you so fred you've spent
you know a quite a bit of time doing software
development hardware development what's the worst
part of both of those things that no one wants
to do Well, the worst part is the uncertainty.
Because if you look at AI, right, it's not like
an input is going to give you a certain output.
You have an input that you're giving it, an image,
for example, of a human being dressed in a cow
costume. And somehow the AI is going to interpret
that one way or another, and the odds that it's
going to interpret it wrong. are reasonably high.
But you as a human being have no way of figuring
out what the AI is going to do. So the only way
you can responsibly validate its results is to
run a huge number of tests to see where the boundaries
are, to see if this has a one in a million chance
of happening, or if it has a one in 10 chance
of misinterpreting the results. That's very expensive
to do, right? And in fact, what the AI companies
are doing is ignoring all that. They have never
set up test apparatus that allow them to go and
look at the things that have occurred that are
either lethal or very hazardous from the AI control
system to say, okay, the minimum we should do
is have a test system that looks at Events that
have already happened that have either killed
people or threatened the lives of people and
put our AI through the paces to make sure, as
a minimum, that it will have a very low probability
of repeating that lethal consequence because
I've now fixed the software. What is, I mean,
it's just from that point, what, what is it?
Do you have any guarantee, even if you perform
those tests, that the AI isn't going to change
its mind and start behaving differently the next
day? No. No, I have no guarantee. So what's the
point? Is AI just not ever going to be trustworthy
in this area? Well, it depends on what you mean
by trustworthy. If you say trustworthy means
there's a 1 ,000 chance it's going to come up
with the wrong result, you've got to run several
thousand tests to verify that, yeah, it's probably
not going to happen. When an AI company releases
a software update two days after a lethal event
and says, well, now it's fixed, it is pure bullshit.
There's no way in the world you can validate
that with real hardware and a real system in
two days. That's just not going to happen. So
really, this is all based upon people's... really
anthropomorphizing, is that a word? The computer
itself to say, well, it's a human being and we
slapped it and now it's going to behave properly.
But when you've got AI in the mix, it's never
going to be deterministic and you as a human
being will never be able to understand what the
computer is going to do to interpret this new
input or this new rule that you put in place.
This ain't going to happen. There's no time.
The point of doing this, Michael, is to try and
get that error rate down as small as possible.
But even that's not reliable if the AI is changing.
Well, OK, so that's how you do a testing. Yeah,
there's a bunch of weird things here. Yeah, those
are like the way we understand testing completely
change for AI. I think, yes, right? Well, that's
the problem. The way we understand testing has
not changed, but the way we should have interpreted
it has changed significantly. Okay, so there
really should be a completely different approach.
Now, the companies understand this. That's why
they say, well, we need to drive a jillion miles
to validate this. This is why we need to threaten
the public with untested vehicles to make sure
that, you know, it doesn't kill too many people.
That's because that's the best they can do. Or
they could say, well, we're going to put it on
a test track. We know certain things are very
hazardous and very difficult to live through.
So that's what we're going to put in place on
the test track. Not the easy stuff, the hard
stuff. And nobody's doing that. Well, I mean,
they make the absurd claim that we don't know
what the hard stuff is. These are edge cases.
And then they claim like, you know. Flooded streets
are an edge case. It's not. Or school buses with
their stop arm extended. It's an edge case. It's
not. But breaking away from this, so it's separate
from AI. Just programming in itself is never
perfect. It never will be. Or if it's, you know,
you're doing object -oriented or functional or
AI, whatever, you'll never get to perfection.
I don't care what you claim. So the example I
think of, again, is like Airbus and Boeing. So
they have these mission -critical systems that
can fail. But they have and there's no way they
will ever claim that everything in their systems
are perfect. There are complex systems. And every
time there's a crash, they use that as a learning
experience to get things better. I remember there
was an Airbus incident in in in Russia where
one of the pilots let their kids sit it there.
And like, you know, it was an autopilot and he
just, you know, play with the wheel and nothing
happened. But they didn't know that he threw
the wheel all the way to port. And that set some
flag inside Airbus' systems, like autopilot is
now disabled. And the pilots had no clue what
was going on. They didn't know how to recover
from this. And that was not programmed that way.
That was not some intentional thing. It was just
a weird glitch. Or maybe it wasn't. It was never
explained to people. But either way, these are...
That's an edge case. You let a teenager sit behind
a $1 million jet. You let a non -trained pilot
in the cockpit behind the joystick. It's the
yoke. That's no different than putting your car
out, an autonomous vehicle out in a flash flood,
right? See, that's the difference. So the airline
industry. recognize this shit's going to happen
so they've got a process through which when this
shit happens everybody gets together and discusses
what happened and they put you know and they
get to the root cause and then they do their
best to address the root cause and and they're
pretty damn good at doing that okay the automobile
industry doesn't do that they assume that every
safety architecture is proprietary They're not
going to share it with anybody, much less the
public. They're certainly not going to share
it with their competitors. So this is a structural
failure of the way the automobile industry is
set up and the way that they handle information
that is never going to result in rapid identification
and correction of the failures they've got. And
they're stuck with this AI and they're stuck
with their... PR that says it's perfect. It's
better than human. It never sleeps. It never
shits. It never does any of this stuff that distracts
you from the driving. I also think there's a
cultural shift, too, in terms of software engineers.
So the engineers that I've spoken to that are
10 years younger than me that work for these
large multinational corporations, I've asked
them basic questions like, oh, who does your
testing process? Some of them at very large corporations
that we all use are like, no one. A friend of
mine at a large financial institution that we've
all used, she said she gets to test her own code.
I'm like, no, no, no, no. That's not a no. No,
you can't. No, that's that's. Wait, is this peer
review? You're your own peer. And so I I mean,
I remember when I was, you know, coming up in
this in the late 90s, that was not a situation
like. You're absolutely like, and I was specialized
in a specific thing where people didn't have
these skills. I couldn't review my own stuff.
Like still other people had to review it and
say, hey, is this input and output correct? Is
this what we expect? And if it wasn't, they'd
tell me to fix it. Like you can't test your own
thing. And I think there's been a winnowing away
of that in the software. From what is anecdotal,
but in the software engineering field is, oh,
we have these automated tools that do some sort
of testing. We have this automated release pipeline
that does things. But there's no QA teams anymore,
as best I can tell. You don't need QA because
you've got AI. Yeah, but even prior to AI tools
doing this stuff, they just kind of gave up on
that because that's expensive and the managers,
they don't understand this shit. Well, I mean,
I guess in the financial arena, you'd stand to
lose a lot of money if you screw some of that
up, right? Oh, yeah. I mean, and then but if
you're so that doesn't make sense that they wouldn't
want to test it there. But even more so when
you've got a life on the line, a car. Yeah. So
I think that's part of the issue. And I would
love to hear from anybody at these, you know,
at the GM or Ford or Waymo and whatnot. We're
not going to talk about your name or anything
like that. I just want some engineers there and
say, no, no, no, no. We have this is our detailed
process. We're not going to reveal any of your
your secret sauce. But I make me. And our listeners
feel slightly more comfortable that it's not
just, oh, they're just automated testing. It's,
you know, we just release things and, you know,
there's a test case. Because that's my impression
from talking to people that that's been going
on for at least the last 10, 15 years, which
is. Well, to be fair to Waymo, they have published
a lot of information about how they do their
safety releases. Okay. And you can go to their
website and it talks all about the structures
that they've got. And they've got review teams
and they have three levels or whatever of people
reviewing it. What they do not have is independence.
And what they do not have is some way of a person
to stand up and say, this is wrong. This is just
not the right way to go. What instead they have
are all Waymo employees reviewing the Waymo work
and objectives, which is a lot like what you
said. I would like to point out that they do
have a way. It's the NHTSA whistleblower regulations
that, you know, if they come forward and provide
that information, they can actually get a percentage
of any penalties that are that are, you know,
assessed against Waymo for violations of the
Safety Act. So there is one one thing they can
do there. Right. Well, how would that be implemented?
Well, I mean, what would a person do? Who do
they call? They call NHTSA's chief counsel. And
they start the process there. Okay. Isn't it
legally bound to provide them with protection?
Yeah. That's as legally bound to keep their information
confidential. And after you do that whistleblower,
go to autosafety .org and click on donate. Bam.
Do we have that whistleblower phone number on
our website? Yep. Yep. And you can look at it.
We have a little more information, too, on the
new whistleblower act that was passed in 2021.
I think that was part of the IJA. You can go
to autosave .org and type in whistleblowers and
you'll find it. Yeah. And that expanded the classification
of people that can actually be whistleblowers
to the extent that it covers, you know, the type
of, you know, maybe not even employees, but contractors
that are involved in some of these vehicle manufacturers,
but definitely employees. All right. With that,
I think that was an excellent towel. As somebody
who peer -reviewed the paper you sent to Michael
and I, I didn't understand it, but I'm glad I
got the opportunity to peer -review it. Thank
you. No problem. Thank you for the review. Sure.
Let's jump into gaslights. I mean, I kind of
vaguely threw one in there, but I'm going to
start off. It's not really a gaslight. Maybe
vaguely, it's a complaint against all auto manufacturers.
And this past week, I was in a car called – it
was made in Malaysia called a Proton. And I did
what every smart person does in this situation.
I texted Michael Brooks and said, Michael Brooks,
I'm in a Malaysian -made car. Should I get out?
And his response was, it's safer than being on
a motorcycle. And he was right. So this Malaysian
-made Proton – I've never heard of this before.
Where were you? I was in Barbados. Okay. So it
had a – It had a couple of two fascinating features
that I think every auto manufacturer should have.
One, you could put the car in drive, but it would
not move unless every occupant's seatbelt was
clicked. All right. Which was awesome. Two, you
could not open the doors unless the car was stopped
and in park. These are very simple things. Oh,
you don't wait. Michael's making a face like
he doesn't like that one. Well, that second one
gives me serious concerns about post -crash escape.
Okay, but I... You're not shifting into park
after a crash to open your door, right? So presumably...
Yeah, presumably that would have to be deactivated
if a crash pulse was sensed. But even then, that
didn't give me a whole lot of hope, right? Well,
who knows? That may have been implemented. Because
you didn't crash. No, but I liked it because
one of the occupants of the car, my wife, was
very excited by a fruit stand. And tried to jump
out of the vehicle. I mean, the movie was like
moving a mile per hour. And our friend who was
driving, it was like, she's like, why can't I
open the door? Why can't I open the door? That's
great for some things. Like it's an automatic
child lock. But, you know, just like some of
the, one of the major problems with the. electric
door latch problem that we've seen recently that
there's some um movement on congress hopefully
to fix problem that we've generally seen with
teslas and some other electric vehicles and battery
fires and escape is that there's a there's a
kind of a conflict when it comes to the child
safety locks right you're essentially When you
turn on a child lock on a rear door, you're essentially
disabling the ability of that person, that child,
or anyone else who happens to sit in the back
while your child locks are on to escape during
a crash. And so there's an inherent conflict
in any regulation that comes out of that process
because you're going to have to figure out how
to make child locks stay operable, protecting
children in the rear while also being able to
unlatch in case of a crash. Well, but, but you
like the first one where it wouldn't, the car
wouldn't drive unless all the seatbelts were
clicked. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think I, you
know, one of the, one of the areas I think where
autonomous vehicles are beating humans for sure
is that many of them require all occupants to
be latched before they can proceed. Okay. Unlike,
unlike our cars. So my, my simple gas light is,
I don't know why any auto manufacturer is not
doing this in their, you know. How much do you
think that car actually cost? I don't know. Okay,
so the rest of the car sucked, let's be honest.
Like, yeah, we were stopped at a speed hump,
like to pay airport parking, and you had to literally
gun it to get over the speed hump, or else it
just would not make it. It was a weird vehicle,
but those two features I like, but now I only
like one of those features. So that's my vague,
not real gaslight. I'll let one of you guys win
this week. Michael Brooks, would you like to
do your gaslight? Yeah, I mean, I would love
to just go ahead and say that those two quotes
from the New York Times article from Ford and
General Motors are gaslights. But this week,
I'm going to venture into Fred territory and
just do an easy one and give a gaslight to Waymo's.
Waymo's recall remedies that are just, you know,
they're continuing to do things on the school
buses. They're continuing to do things on the
problem with running into water. They're continuing
to do things on the speeding. What was it? The
freeway issue. Right. And they're putting out
recalls and, you know, the recalls inevitably
are failing down the road. And so, you know.
We're being gaslit by this pretend world that
Waymo's created where the recall remedies are
going to do anything to change the safety characteristics
of these vehicles. And, you know, it's concerning.
And a lot of this has to do with what we were
talking about earlier with AI and training. How
do you ensure that consistent performance over
time? And I just think that needs to be acknowledged
more in this case. I feel like Waymo, when they
experience a big problem like this, instead of
pushing forward and saying, we're going to continue
operating, pulls back, says, we're going to stop
this until we have at least some certainty that
this problem isn't going to continue. Issuing
a recall that's destined to fail, as they've
done in a lot of cases recently, is not going
to work. Pretty good. All right, Mr. Perkins,
it's your time to shine. I'm going with Tesla's
homepage because interesting things on there.
One of the assertions they make is there's seven
times fewer collisions. They don't say relative
to what, but there's no references or analysis
or caveats provided. But what they show there
are six drivers who are shown using FSD underway.
And one of them is making espresso in the console
while looking away from the road. One of them
is butt dancing while looking away from the road
and talking to the videographer. Wait, what is
butt dancing? I would assume they're shifting
cheeks, right? You know, it's what you do when
Jumpin' Jack Flash comes on the radio. Okay.
I'm more of a steering wheel drummer, but you
know. One is an elderly woman who's shown looking
from left to right away from the direction of
travel. Another is looking away from the direction
of travel. And all of them are distracted by
communicating with the videographer while underway.
One of their other video shows a Tesla passing
at a relatively high speed, passing another car
at a relatively high speed during rain that certainly
degrades the sensors and makes it difficult to
look out of the windshield. So that was... Pure
gaslight, I think, on top of the claim of 7x
fewer collisions, which is meaningless. But they
go on to say that they don't share any of your
data and they don't keep any of your data. And
then if you dive in a little deeper, it says
how to obtain a copy of the data associated with
your Tesla account. There should just be an asterisk
about everything Tesla puts out. Just kidding.
Then it says the data associated with your Tesla
account includes, Order details, account information,
customer support, activity, service history,
vehicle usage information, safety events, infotainment
system settings, mobile app, supercharging history.
So this is all part of the data that they say
they don't collect. It's very interesting. And
then they say, you know, in their consumer privacy
notice, information we may collect. We may collect
three main types. You use the product's information
from or about you, information from or about
your Tesla vehicle. So I give Tesla my nomination
for complete doublespeak and complete internal
contradiction of their safety and state of privacy
standards. Fred, you won because you made Michael
and I laugh. So that's how you win. But I'm surprised
neither of you did. a different Waymo take. So
we're going to jump into this, whereas we've
talked about in the past, Fred in particular
has talked in the past about Waymo citing their
data about how this is how we're safer than a
human. We paid our employees to tell us that
we're safer than a human, or we paid these researchers
to tell us the world that we're safer than a
human, and we're going to use our data from 2020
to back this up, even though it's 2026. So while
Waymo is, I guess maybe they've heard the complaints
of Fred and... And now Waymo has come up with
a new model to decide if how to show the world
how they're safer than a human. According from
a tech crunch piece, the new model, Waymo said,
evolves this concept serving as a behavioral
benchmark for autonomous driving systems able
to realistically represent reasonable expectations
on how a careful and competent human driver responds
to traffic conflicts. What first year law student
wrote that? Like, this is just, I mean. There
are so many caveats on here to realistically
represent reasonable expectations. A lot of weasel
words. Yeah, 100%. So Waymo is saying, wait,
people are catching on that we're talking bullshit.
So instead, we're going to invent a fictitious
person and compare our driver to this fictitious
person in a reasonable kind of way, sort of,
depending if it's Tuesday. And again, I want
to repeat, this is the company that hit a child
and said, we hit it at a lower speed than a human
would have. Instead of saying, fuck, we hit a
child. You know, like that's the correct response.
So that would have been the greatest gaslight.
I mean, I'm interested in this to the extent
that... You need another gaslight? No, to the
extent that they're comparing the performance
of Waymo vehicles to the performance of... good
human drivers, right? All we hear about from
the autonomous vehicle industry is about the
drunks and the distracted people and how they're
better than them. Well, of course they are. We're
all better. I mean, a lot of us. A vast majority
of drivers are better than those people, right?
So comparing your autonomous vehicle to a shitty
driver doesn't prove anything to us, right? So
maybe here they're comparing to a good driver
and we'll get to see what happens. I'm not sure
that this is all going to be an exercise we can
rely on, but it's. It's the progress, I think,
from what has been going on in the autonomous
vehicle industry, going back to Kyle and Cruz,
where they are insistent that the autonomous
vehicles are better than humans, but they're
only looking at the worst of us. All right. From
a technical perspective, it's a simulation, right?
And every simulation is doomed to failure or
doomed to success, I should say, in every circumstance.
what's key here is that they haven't talked about
how they validated this, what test sequences
they used, what situations they use, and why
should anybody believe that? It's just another
computer model. So, yeah. I look forward to this
reasonable driver to change over time to help
their numbers. I think it's hilarious. But Michael
mentioned Kyle and Cruz, which jumps us to General
Motors. From an article from thenextweb .com,
I'm going to quote, GM is rehiring its cruise
employees. Quoting, the rehiring is a reversal
from a painful exit. GM acquired Cruise in 2016
for $581 million and spent more than $10 billion
on the division before pulling the plug. This
is when, you know, it hit somebody, dragged a
person, lied about it, and California regulators
suspended the company's driver's license. So
the person running this new autonomous section
of GM has said, hey, you know, RoboTax is probably
going to be in our future. Why not? That's not
how we're going to start. And the person who
runs this used to run a company called Aurora.
And we've talked about Aurora, Aurora Trucking,
and he's getting paid, what was it, $30 million,
something like that, $40 million. He was hired
last in May 2025 with a $40 million compensation
package. And he ran Aurora, and Aurora, as best
anyone can tell, has two customers and still
just operating in Texas. Now they have a route
to Oklahoma as well, a very limited area. But
GM is like, hey, he's different than Kyle. Is
he? I don't know. GM, like. Well, he also, you
know, let's let's you know, I don't know if I
can't. I may have missed it if you mentioned
this, but he also, you know, ran Tesla's autopilot.
So just a little background. His resume is nicer
looking than Kyle. But, you know, and it's just
I don't understand what GM is doing here. Yeah,
I will say that Aurora is. At least from my perspective,
a whole hell of a lot more careful than Tesla.
So I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. But again, as far
as I can tell, I was doing looking into this
before saying, like, what's going on with Aurora?
And like, there's not really any news out of
that company. It's still doing that, mainly that
same short run in Texas. Were they the company
that their customer said put human drivers back
in the cab? Was that Aurora? Yeah, I had to put
it back in because I think it was Packer, Packer,
one of those companies wouldn't essentially said
the liabilities too much for us. They didn't
come out public and say that, but it was pretty
clear that's what they were concerned about.
So anyway, we'll keep you in touch as GM shows
how they can set billions of dollars on. Yeah.
And GM is saying a lot of weird stuff like, you
know, at least. Sterling Anderson is, you know,
after years of saying that these autonomous vehicle
companies saying, you know, you can't build,
you know, level two, level three, you can't build
upwards. These are separate technologies, autonomy
and advanced driver assistance systems. Here's,
you know, Sterling Anderson saying, ultimately
the two converge, right? There's just so much
nonsense out there. It's bizarre. With that,
we got to run into recalls because we have a
massive, massive list of recalls. We're not doing
all of them. What do you mean? I want to do all
of them. You want to do all 11 Ford recalls?
Don't ruin it for the public. First, we're going
to start off with Waymo because they've got a
recall of 3 ,871 vehicles, the fifth generation
ADS. Under certain circumstances, the AV may
enter and drive at speed in freeway construction
zones due to inappropriately prioritizing the
avoidance of other freeway hazard and or failing
to recognize the construction zone. Safer than
a human. Waymo. Yeah. I mean, the remedy will
enhance Waymo's AV performance in and around
freeway construction zones. How do you know?
We don't. It's again, they had the simple solution
of saying, hey, let's take things off the freeway
for a while. Hey, let's stop. They're still off
the freeways, right? I mean, that's a geofence
essentially, right? That works because you're
not going to be putting yourself in this scenario
anymore. But now they're saying, you know, we've
got a software improvement and a remedy. So we're
going to be able to perform on the freeway. So
presumably they're going to. put their vehicles
back into operation on 3As, and then we're going
to get to see if this recall works, right? Right.
And then the next recalls, as Michael alluded,
so he sent an article to us from USA Today, and
that Ford has more recalls than any other automaker
by far, as we know this. They have 51 recalls.
I think that's pre these new 11 ones, right?
And Michael Brooks. Oh, that's with them. And
Michael Brooks is quoted in this article. And
Michael, what's the reason that Ford is leading
the recall bunch? So in late 2024, NHTSA, I'm
sure we've discussed this before, but NHTSA basically
cracked down on Ford for a lot of different violations
of the Safety Act. And they fined them or. set
up a consent agreement where Ford could be fined.
I think it was about $165 million. And they made
Ford essentially go under Ford's recall and safety.
programs are having to run through an independent
monitor type situation for three or four years.
And that runs until 2027. You know, virtually
ever since we've seen that consent order go into
place, Ford has been pumping out recalls left
and right. They've been going back and fixing
a lot of bad recall remedies that came out. And
they've also been going forward and fixing, you
know, new recall, new safety issues on their
vehicles. And so since 2024, they have been I
mean, crushing the competition, I guess you could
say, on the recall charts. They've significantly
more recalls than any other manufacturer. And,
you know, this is the latest story on how they're
leading this year, but they're leading, you know,
for the past three years, essentially. And I
don't see that stopping at least. through 2027,
which is the year where they're finally going
to be released, maybe, from the NHTSA consent
agreement, they have to show that they haven't
committed any more Safety Act violations during
that period, which is why I think we're seeing
Ford do so many recalls and be so involved in
this area, because if they don't get released
from that consent order, they're going to lose,
I think it's another $50 million or so. So that's
hanging in the balance, and Ford doesn't want
to lose that money. But why would they on June
9th of this year release 11 recalls all at once?
And this is a Tuesday. It's not like a late Friday
afternoon. No one will see a thing. Yeah, that's
I mean, that's that's odd that you see a manufacturer.
You know, some manufacturers you'll see they'll
have their quarterly recall meeting or their
monthly recall safety meeting. And you'll see,
you know, two, two recalls, three recalls come
out of that. Eleven is. A very large number is
all at once. Okay, so let's run through some
of these or maybe all of these. Unexpected downshift
can cause loss of control. 44 ,963 vehicles.
Their transmission output shaft speed sensor
and powertrain control module can cause the vehicle
to unexpectedly shift to first gear. Oh, God.
Yeah, well, you're just driving along and all
of a sudden you shifted to first gear. Can't
be good, right? This is a recall of a recall.
So they've already done a recall on this in 2024.
Not a good recall under the order with NHTSA.
They've got to make sure they're going back and
fixing bad recalls from the past. So here we
go. They're going to put out another program.
It looks like it's going to be another software
update of the power control module software that
owners should hear about. In the next two weeks.
Okay, I'm going to jump into another one. Transmission
clutch may fracture and leak fluid. 5 ,252 vehicles.
And this one's an obvious to me because it's
focused on the Ford Focus and Fusion vehicles.
You know, these were not the best made vehicles
of all time. And the clutch may fracture, resulting
in damage to the transmission assembly and possibly
transmission fluid leak. In this case, I'm sorry.
There have been massive problems with the fusions
from those model years and their transmission.
So it's, you know, some of the vehicles being
serviced under this have been on the road for
about 14 years. So clearly they're continuing
to see some significant problems with those transmissions.
And I'm glad they're taking action there because
that's an issue that has been out there for about
a decade or more now. Right. Next up, unintended
vehicle movement. This is 10 ,742 vehicles. The
2018 F -150 previously repaired incorrectly under
another recall. Yep. Oh, no. Quickly moving the
shift lever from park to drive may cause a loss
of gear indication on the instrument cluster
and a momentary selection of an unintended gear
such as reverse or neutral. Yikes. So they had
a recall on this, and their recall was a failure.
Is that what I just read? Yeah. And essentially
they're saying, quoting from Ford, you know,
the underlying safety risks specified in the
2017 recall still exists on this vehicle. So
apparently the fix that they put into play in
2017 did not work. So they're going back and
doing another fix here. Okay. I want to point
out that computers will not make everything better.
Engineering is hard. Next up window automatic
reversal system malfunction. This is 18 ,124
vehicles, certain 2017 escape vehicles repaired
incorrectly under another recall. Oh my God.
And this is like, if you have your arm or your
neck in the way, it just, it doesn't reverse
automatically the window. Right. Right. And they're
not. So there's, there's kind of a weird. Federal
Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 118 essentially
prevents, the main goal of this is to prevent
children from getting entrapped in windows while
screwing around with the buttons in the car,
that type of thing. That's why you no longer
see the rocker switches to control your windows,
and you're typically having to pull up on a button
because it prevents actuation of the switch by
a child's knee or an unintentional actuation.
And so in this situation, when they upgraded
that standard in the early 2000s, they provided
a pathway that essentially let manufacturers
do one thing and avoid – do one thing to pass
or install automatic reversing. A lot of vehicles
have had this technology. I think my 2003 Volkswagen
Jetta had auto -reverse in it. We used it as
a prop in one of our press conferences around
this in the early 2000s. Auto reverse technology
is old and it's cheap and it should probably
be going into every vehicle, even though it's
not explicitly required. All right. I'm going
to jump to someone related to instrument cluster,
instrument cluster failures. 4 ,445 vehicles,
2017 F -150s, they are repaired incorrectly again.
Yeah. So you're seeing, and this is something
that I've been trying to point out to a lot of
reporters when they call about Ford, because
there's a lot of questions coming in on Ford
recalls, because the numbers, you know, number
of recalls they're putting out is crazy. But
a lot of these recalls they're doing are actually
fixes of previous recall repairs. They did a
really bad job on some recalls. If you look through
all this, you can pick out dozens of recalls
over the past three years since the NHTSA consent
order where Ford's going back and saying, oh,
we screwed this one up. So I think that's reflective
of just how poorly they were doing and how necessary
that action by NHTSA was. So what's the bottom
line here for our listeners? Bought a Ford with
it, or if their Ford is less than, what, 10 years
old, they should make sure that they check in
with their dealer. Yeah, I would stay on top
of, you know, I would be plugging my vehicle's
VIN number or my license plate in the NHTSA website
a lot more because, you know. If you own a Ford,
frankly, you're going to have more recalls coming
out on your vehicle than any other manufacturer
on average, right? So you're going to need to
stay on top of those because an issue you thought
might have been fixed in 2017 wasn't fixed. And
that's got to be confusing for consumers. They
say they get a recall notice. Oh, my instrument
cluster. No, no, no. They fixed that two years
ago. This must be a repeat of the same thing.
Like when they do a recall of a recall. You just
need to understand anytime you get a new recall
on your vehicle that it's going to require a
remedy, right? Just because you had something
fixed once doesn't mean that fix was proper or
appropriate or worked. And so anytime you get
a new recall notice, you need to do due diligence.
You know, you can't poo -poo a recall notice.
So where do people find the VIN for their vehicle?
Well, there's I mean, there's a lot of places
you can look on your on your registration. You
can look on the driver's side windshield. There's
usually a bar there, which will have your VIN
on it. And I believe it's on the placard on the
inside of your driver's door as well. So what
people should do is. Take the registration. You
don't even need that. You can go to the NHTSA
website, put your license plate number in it.
They've made it so easy to look up active recalls
on vehicles now without having to dig up your
VIN number in all 17 digits. Just put your license
plate number in and it'll look it up for you.
And the NHTSA website is what? NHTSA .gov. Yep.
Even simpler. If you discover you have a Ford
vehicle, sell it off to somebody you don't like.
You know, give them a deal. And another one,
another instrument cluster may go blank on startup
2349 vehicles, the 2019 Mustang Nautilus Navigator.
And yeah, this is the dealership program, the
instrument cluster cluster panel cluster assembly.
This is just come on, guys. Yeah, I mean, we
continue to see instrument panel failures. I
there's some. I think between all these instrument
cluster failures and all of the backup camera
failures that we're seeing too. All right. So
I'm just going to do two more of these. And these
are the ones with big numbers. Engine stall from
canister purge valve malfunction. This is 255
,404 vehicles, 2012 to 2018 Focus vehicles. that
were previously repaired incorrectly under a
recall. What is a canister purge valve? I have
no idea. Oh, no. Well, you know, if Fred has
no idea, probably just throw it out. You don't
need it. Yeah, it's got something to do. It's
got, I think it, I think it. Something to do
with the power. This is similar to, I think some
of the, I think it was a Hyundai and Kia recalls
that we saw where the, the gas tank. The canister
purge valve has something to do with the evaporative
emissions in the gas in the fuel tank and preventing
pressures from building up in the fuel tank.
So when the CPV sticks open, they're saying it
can cause excess vacuum in the fuel system, which
can deform the fuel tank. I think we talked about
Hyundai and Kia. Right. We had a guest on about
that years ago. Yeah. I get you. Last one. Center
console may peel, causing sharp edges. 548 ,463
vehicles. 2018 to 2024 expedition. The chrome
plating on the center console may bubble and
peel resulting in sharp edges. I mean, these
are one of these things where people are like,
you know, software will fix everything. These
guys can't get chrome plating correct. What makes
you think that autonomy will be solved? Like,
come on. This is like a technology. Look, chrome
plating's been around since what, the early 1900s?
Like, this is... I'm going to walk everywhere.
Hey, if we mention Piggly Wiggly... I'll walk
to a Piggly Wiggly. Yeah, and owners on this
one, you know, good luck getting a remedy anytime
soon. It looks like that Ford is not going to
have anything ready on this until late January
of 2027. With that, ladies and gentlemen, thank
you for listening. I hope this has been educational
or entertaining. And go to autosafety .org and
click on Donate. Until next week, bye -bye. Bye
-bye. For more information, visit www .autosafety
.org.