Automakers resist safety, Tesla resists common sense

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Transcript

note: this is a machine generated transcript and may not be completely accurate. This is provided for convience and should not be used for attribution.

[00:00:00] Anthony: 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.

Hello, my fellow Americans, welcome to the new world order regime. Everyone get in line! And I’m not really sure what this accent I’m doing is, but welcome to There Oughta Be A Law. Good morning. Glad to have you here while it’s still legal to do this.

[00:00:43] New Administration and NHTSA Leadership

[00:00:43] Anthony: Hey Michael, so there’s a new administration in. New administration means there’s new heads of every single department going, such as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Is there a new head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration?

[00:00:56] Michael: No, there’s not yet that, that, not that I’m aware of maybe they’ve got some, [00:01:00] some ideas in mind, but it typically takes a little bit after the inauguration before they start getting down to that. I’m sure they’ve got some people in mind.

They’ve obviously got a transportation. secretary pick that I believe is still awaiting confirmation at this point, but I expect that to go through and then we’ll see an acting NITS administrator take over.

[00:01:23] Anthony: Okay.

[00:01:24] Automakers Challenge AEB Regulations

[00:01:24] Anthony: Well the Biden administration ended theirs with trying to Put a bunch of things in place, and then now it looks like automakers are seeking to repeal a bunch of stuff Biden did.

Specifically around automatic emergency braking. That’s right, auto manufacturers are like, this is too hard, man. Like, we gotta do stuff that we’re more than capable of doing right now. I don’t wanna do it. Why are, I mean, it’s a more or less, I can’t say it’s a solved problem, but they know how to do this.

They had until 2009?

[00:01:56] Michael: Yeah, so the, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation [00:02:00] started a they filed a petition to try to repeal the automatic emergency braking rule that was released last year that they disagree with some parts of it. of it, you know, they disagree with, they don’t believe that it should require them to stop the vehicles before collision, which makes a lot of sense, you know, from a common sense perspective, if you’re trying to avoid injuries and property damage, you wouldn’t want to avoid the collision completely.

And at the higher speeds that we’ve talked about that are really where the benefits of this technology are coming into play, they functionally don’t believe they can meet that by 2029. Even though there’s already a Toyota vehicle on the road today that can meet those those things. They don’t think five years is, is long enough for them to be able to get that technology on the road.

Now, if you read between the lines. I, I, I think what they’re saying is, you know, it’s going to be more expensive than we want it to be. That’s the line I hear from the industry. We know [00:03:00] we can do it, but it’s going to cost more than we want to. And you know, my, my reaction to that is. tough cookies.

You know, you’ve been putting this stuff into cars for 10 years, calling it automatic emergency braking. In fact, when it, when it typically will only work at lower speeds and even at those speeds, it’s protecting Americans, but it is far past time to increase the speeds. It works out to make sure that it works at night and in adverse conditions.

And to make it actually avoid collisions versus simply slowing cars through traffic. down somewhat. I mean, there’s a lot of really good things in the NHTSA rule. Industry simply doesn’t want to meet it because they think it’s going to leave them with less money every quarter to report to their shareholders.

But if they don’t meet this by 2029, we’re going to see more people dying and being injured on the roads. And it’s, it’s, You know, it’s a the way that, that they’re, they’re [00:04:00] talking about the rule saying it’s impossible to meet with available technology. That’s not true. You know, there have been many factors that show they can meet this.

You know, and it’s this data itself in the rulemaking shows that one vehicle met the stopping distance in the final rule. So I don’t know how practically impossible jives with there’s a vehicle that’s already meeting this five years before you need to meet the standard there’s there’s some serious contradictions what they’re doing.

I I You know, the cynical part of me doesn’t believe this is a lawsuit that ever would have been filed where we’re not looking at a change in administration that is far less favorable to agency actions like this. And ultimately, you know, I, I don’t expect their challenge to succeed, although I don’t, I certainly don’t think it should succeed.

But you really never know what to expect coming out of the courts these days. So this is going to be. Something that is probably litigated over a [00:05:00] significant amount of time. We may not have an answer to whether the AAB rule is going to be in place for another year or two.

[00:05:08] Gaslight Illumination: Industry Resistance

[00:05:08] Fred: Well, previous, Oh astute listeners will notice that we have slid into the portion of the broadcast called gaslight illumination, cause I was reserving this.

Michael, this is a real process failure. I got to say.

[00:05:27] Michael: Alright. But anyway, so I, I’m, we need to, we need to install a gaslight illumination protocol. We do, we, we gotta

[00:05:34] Fred: get on that. So, anyway, I’m gonna, I’m gonna dive into the same thing here. So the quoting from there, announcement of the Alliance for automotive innovation.

It says Alliance for automotive innovation today initiated litigation in the U. S. Court of appeals about the Biden administration’s Department of transportation. The complaint seeks a repeal of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration automatic emergency breaking [00:06:00] rule from last April.

And continuing the quote, Alliance for Automotive Innovation President and CEO, John Bozzella wrote NHTSA’s new standard is, quote, Practically impossible with available technology. NASA’s own data shows only one tested vehicle met the stopping distance requirements in the final rule. Now, I’ve got to say that for Gaslight Illumination, I love it when people publish tautologies.

It’s great. So, you know, if so, again, going back to his quote, if it’s practically impossible, how is it that someone’s already doing it number one? And also, I went took the trouble of looking up the definition of the word innovation and according to Webster innovation is quote a new idea method or device close quote.

So why is it that your regression to a technological competency below the current state of the art innovative [00:07:00] how is it that that’s innovative? And how is it that the name of the organization is exactly counter to the objective they’re trying to achieve? So, inquiring minds wonder if the real reason for AAI’s resistance is that the NHTSA AEB rule highlights the failure of voluntary safety standards to protect the public with proven demonstrably safe technology, reminding our listeners that the current AEB systems have no standards.

They can be as bad or as good as the manufacturer wants them to be. There is no public standard that says this one’s good enough for public use. And I think that that’s really the heart of what is trying to stop this whole idea that voluntary safety standards. Don’t work. They delay life saving technology and we don’t want to do it.

And as Michael said, tough cookies.

[00:07:58] Anthony: I don’t know why you guys keep [00:08:00] insulting cookies. I’m a big fan of cookies. They’re delicious in all forms. But also Fred, I think the problem you went to is you went to Webster for a definition. I mean, The sitcom with Emanuel Lewis was adorable, but that’s not where you define innovation.

Innovation is not even, it’s more of an amorphous sound. It’s just a mouth feel. It doesn’t, you know, it just means whatever you, you’ve, you sense. Innovation. So we need a new

[00:08:26] Fred: dictionary with current terminology. I think. Isn’t Musk working on that? Probably.

[00:08:33] Michael: Yeah. And there’s, there’s a couple other things here that probably are worth being mentioned.

And number one in the petition they note that they have spent. After a decade of shared and substantive work on the AAB and a billion dollars invested by the industry they’re referring to they’re saying that’s a changed course and issued a rule that automakers indicated was not feasible with widely used braking technologies.

[00:09:00] Now, for our listeners, I think we’ve covered before just how much is being invested in autonomous vehicles, right? And it is for sure. far more than a billion dollars. I mean, by at least a factor of 10, I mean, it may be a factor of 100. We’ve seen an endless amount of money thrown at autonomous vehicles under the promise of safety.

While there is automatic emergency vehicles. breaking, which if it actually worked correctly, and they were actually investing in it to the levels that they were investing into autonomous technology, which so far has been a pretty big bust in terms of safety they could actually be accomplishing something here.

Use the money. That is coming into your organization for true innovation of real safety invested in a be forget this autonomous junk that you’ve already blown billions of dollars on and actually put your money where your mouth is on safety instead of [00:10:00] trying to attract more venture capital for your, you know, autonomous vehicle companies that are barely able to get off the ground.

That’s, that’s an important part of this. And, and along with that, you know, you’re telling America that you’re ready to put autonomous vehicles out across the country and scale them up. And yet you can’t put proper braking into vehicles that are already on the road. It doesn’t jive. How are you going to stop these autonomous vehicles you’re putting on the road if you can’t if you can’t stop regular cars that people are driving in a supervised manner, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

This, this challenge doesn’t make a lot of sense. And it leads me to believe that it is once again, all about the money for the industry and not about safety for consumers. How do you really feel, Michael? Well, that that’s pretty much it.

[00:10:52] Anthony: I think it’s simpler than that. It really comes down to, cause we all know for AVs.

They need to do automatic emergency braking. This is more [00:11:00] of being told they have to do something. It’s like a little kid. You need to eat your vegetables. No, I don’t want fiber in my diet. I’ll, you know, that’s really what it comes down to is they’re being told to do something that they already know they have to do.

Wash behind your ears.

[00:11:17] Fred: I don’t know. Yeah. I also want to point out that the push towards electric vehicles runs counter to this because if your vehicle is twice as heavy as it used to be that’s a much bigger problem for automatic emergency braking. Yeah. Then for a conventional vehicle. So there’s a lot of knock on characteristics here that are really underrepresented.

[00:11:40] Anthony: That’s why I drive a tank. That’s right. Take your big electric vehicle and try to run into my F1 Abrams. Oh, nonsense. So the last administration wraps up and they’re like, Hey, we gotta try and get some stuff in here, like, you know, make the world safer for people.

[00:11:54] Ford’s Blue Cruise Under Investigation

[00:11:54] Anthony: And one of the things they started opening, or expanding, or opening, their investigation into Ford’s Blue [00:12:00] Cruise.

Ford’s Blue Cruise, for you not playing the home game, is their hands off steering assistant. product, I guess, where on pre mapped, pre defined highways you could take your hands off, you still have to pay attention, but the car would steer itself on pre mapped, pre defined highways. And General Motors has something similar.

So Michael, what’s happening here as NHTSA digs into this, or hopes to?

[00:12:26] Michael: So NHTSA’s upgrading the investigation they opened in April on this issue. So far, they are aware of four crashes with Three fatalities and two injuries involving the blue cruise operations. This is a similar, similar to some of the autopilot stuff we’ve talked about.

You know, the, these, these vehicles are equipped with a driver monitoring system and then one that supposedly is better than the one Tesla has in order to evaluate the driver’s attentiveness on the roadway, which essentially making sure that the driver’s [00:13:00] paying attention to the road at all times. It looks like they’ve, they’ve seen some problems in the system.

It’s, it doesn’t seem to have, it has limitations in detecting stationary vehicles in certain conditions. And as you know, I think we, we, we covered a blue cruise crash a few months ago where there was a vehicle that was stalled in the middle of the roadway and the Ford vehicle did not. Did not see it and crashed into it causing a fatality.

And there are also some concerns about the performance of the system when there’s poor visibility, lack of illumination, some of the issues that we’ve covered that most vehicles that are, that are relying on cameras to, to gather information about the road. It’s. We’re seeing failures there. So NHTSA is going to upgrade this investigation.

Presumably they’re going to, to keep looking into this with as much fervor as they have over the past year. We’ll see what [00:14:00] happens. The crashes that have occurred so far, you know, higher speed collisions. Around 70 miles per hour. So, and, and, you know, it’s ultimately, it’s really important that manufacturers get these systems correct before everyone has them in their cars in a few years.

And before we see a, you know, a long term trend of, of people who are not paying attention or using these systems without proper care, start really creating carnage all over the place.

[00:14:30] Anthony: Alright. I’m gonna, since we’re just doing free range gaslight, I’m gonna jump into my gaslight, and my gaslight’s gonna be doggy.

[00:14:38] Elon Musk’s Government Efficiency Initiative

[00:14:38] Anthony: No, Doge, Doge, Doge, Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency. That doesn’t sound remotely Orwellian. Haha, welcome to the future! So the Department of Government Efficiency is Elon Musk’s little toy where he’s like, I’m gonna cut two trillion dollars from the government spending. I don’t know what government, but not affecting Tesla or SpaceX or, [00:15:00] or any of my other companies.

And I’m not gonna give you a timeline for when it’s gonna happen it could be cumulative, like this year I cut a dollar, and over the next trillion years we’re just gonna cut another dollar, and so I’ve reached my goal, next two trillion years, anyway, it’s it’s nonsense, it’s made up, and to give us even more insight on my gaslight, I’m gonna hand my homework assignment over to Mr.

Michael Brooks.

[00:15:23] Michael: So Doge was, you know, advertised as a way to cut the entire government’s budget. You know, Elon Musk was out there saying, you know, we’re going to cut 2 trillion from the budget. He sent back down on that and said, well, I was saying 2 trillion because ultimately we want 1 trillion and, you know, we have to oversell, you know, blah, blah, blah.

It’s, it’s actually, when you look at what happened yesterday, you know, yesterday Trump was inaugurated. We joined a number, a number of groups and filing suit against the office of management [00:16:00] budget doge to basically prevent it for moving forward without. Transparency and without complying with the Federal Advisory Committees Act.

Now that’s an act that that basically doesn’t allow outside influence with to outside influence of the government, the administrative branch without. transparency and some type of balance on the, on the, in, in the organizations, you know, you know, opposing voices. Someone like the Center for Auto Safety would be, should be advising these groups on, or at least playing a role in advising these groups if, you know, they were going to approach something like vehicle safety policy.

That’s essentially what the, what the Federal Advisory Committee Act sets up. Well, when, ultimately, when the executive order, as. Doge came out yesterday. It really doesn’t, it really doesn’t comport with what they’ve said. It’s going to be we’re not sure if this is just a [00:17:00] facade that they’re creating, you know, they’re going to establish a, an in house group and then meanwhile, continue to do things in secret outside of, of, of doge.

But it’s it’s it’s somewhat confusing. That’s gonna take some time to sort through. We’re really not sure what ultimately it’s really going to look like. Not everything that comes out of this administration happens in the way they say it’s going to. But for now, at least the executive order says that that doge is essentially a Software modernization initiative, and it’s going to focus on improving the quality and efficient efficiency of government wide software network and IT systems, which according to my calculation, only amount to about 75 billion of the total United States budget.

So, you know, Doge seems to have gone from a 2 trillion federal budget cutting exercise to 1 trillion and now to max. You know, 75 billion [00:18:00] is how much the government already spends on, on, on IT, so you can’t cut all of that out. So how many billions are you actually going to cut here? You know, and we’re still left sitting here going, what is Doge?

What is it actually going to do? You know, I, I don’t know if any, any, any of us really know, maybe even the guys in the building at this point. At this point, really know what’s going to ultimately happen here. But if they are an executive, you know, working out of as an executive temporary committee, as they’re calling it, then they, you know, they’re subject to the Freedom of Information Act and some, some other ways of finding out what they’re up to.

We do know that they have been using encrypted messaging apps. apps to form the this the general structure of Doge. That is a huge problem. You know, if we want government transparency, people working in government shouldn’t be using encrypted messaging apps that can’t be the, you know, [00:19:00] the messaging can’t be traced.

You can’t access it under Folia. It’s been deleted forever. And it’s encrypted. So that’s a huge problem. We don’t want anyone in government using encrypted messaging. So we’re going to continue to monitor this and see what happens with Doge. But for now, it’s looking like, you know, it’s not, it’s, it’s not nearly the movement that was, that was advertised by Musk and the, the other guy whose name I can’t pronounce, who apparently is leaving to try to become the governor of Ohio.

[00:19:32] Fred: Mr. Ramaswamy.

[00:19:35] Michael: I’ve

[00:19:35] Fred: got an idea, and folks, you heard it here first. Why doesn’t Elon Musk buy Cuba? I mean, think of all the problems that would solve. He, you know, he has enough money to give 20, 000 to every single person in Cuba, and you still have 200 billion left over. I, you know, They really need

[00:19:55] Michael: new cars down there.

Well, yeah,

[00:19:57] Fred: I mean, it would open up [00:20:00] a great new market for him. He could do his, you know, his fascist salute. Nobody would mind. And it would, you know, it’d be a nice hobby and they’d probably stop bothering us. So I’m, I’m going to put it out there.

[00:20:13] Anthony: I think the Cubans would mind the fascist salute. I mean, you know, just because they live there doesn’t mean they’re supporting fascism.

They just, yeah.

[00:20:22] Fred: Well, you know, if they get 20, 000 bucks a piece, that’s kind of a big bump for a lot of the people in Cuba, right? Hey, 20, 000 bucks, I’ll become a fascist. Wait, no, I’m

[00:20:31] Anthony: just kidding.

[00:20:33] Fred: 30, 000. Oh, yeah. You got to go a little higher. Anyway, I won’t dwell on that.

[00:20:39] Anthony: So Fred, as our resident math expert so 75 billion out of 2 trillion, would that be considered significant or a rounding error?

[00:20:48] Fred: Rounding error. Absolutely. Oh,

[00:20:50] Anthony: right. So this is just more and more nonsense. Hey listeners, if you like the idea of bitin the man and takin on the doji, And the dogey [00:21:00] dogey, it’s so dummy. Go to autosafety. org, click on donate, and we’ll help stick it to the man! Or the powers that be and just continue with lawsuits like this that help make the world a safer place?

That sounds about right. Okay, let’s talk about making the world a safer place.

[00:21:20] Voluntary Guidelines for Self-Driving Vehicles

[00:21:20] Anthony: We’re going to jump to Okay, continuing with the Biden administration, the U. S., from AP, U. S. proposes voluntary guidelines for self driving vehicles in the waning days of the Biden administration. I hate this already because it’s voluntary guidelines.

Why are we so kind with it? It’s not like, there’s not voluntary guidelines for like, road markings. Is there? You’re like, eh. The speed limit is not a voluntary guideline. That’s right, residents of Connecticut, it is not a voluntary guideline, you maniacs. So what, why,

[00:21:55] Michael: why behind this is, is, you know, [00:22:00] for quite some time now many, I mean, manufacturers of autonomous vehicles won’t to be able to put out their future.

Perfect cars that don’t have steering wheels, don’t have brake pedals, don’t have all of the warning lights. That are, you know, in front on the dashboard directed towards a driver. They want to, you know, when you see Musk advertising, a robo taxii, it doesn’t have a steering wheel. You know, we’ve seen Zoox try to basically ignore federal safety standards and, and put a vehicle on the road that doesn’t have a lot of the things that are required by Federal Motor Vehicle safety standards.

And their argument is basically, well. We’re doing everything we can to comply with the safety standards or the intent of these standards, even though we’re not complying with them. And, and so this has been discussed in this for, you know, a few years now, how. [00:23:00] Is the agency going to create a framework that can allow vehicles like that, that don’t fully comply with federal motor vehicle safety standards to operate legally on the nation’s road.

And so they’ve come up with, you know, this is a notice of proposed rulemaking. This is not the law right now. This is just, you know, essentially a proposal by the Biden administration. We’re not sure what the Trump administration is going to do with it. It allows, you know, It allows manufacturers to send in an application to NHTSA and say, here’s what we’re going to do.

And here’s how, even though we don’t meet federal motor vehicle safety standards, we’re going to here’s how we’re safely going to operate these vehicles on public roads. And Ultimately, you know, the proposal has some good things, has some bad things, you know, I think, you know, Fred probably wants to talk about one of the good things that we see in there, which is the requirement that [00:24:00] when you submit this application, you know, you’re going to have to show that, You’ve had an independent expert or independent confirmation of the safety of these vehicles.

You know, that’s, that’s something that we have proposed in the past and we feel is very important so that, you know, people can’t put crap on the road that hasn’t been certified. And there’s, there’s at least one other independent party out there that has looked at these vehicles and said, okay, they can operate safely on the roads.

It’s okay to go ahead and put them out there into whatever, you know, operating area or domain they’re, they’re going, they’re intended for. Does this break self

[00:24:39] Anthony: certification then?

[00:24:42] Michael: No, there’s, you know, there’s still self certification for all the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. So you would apply.

You would apply as an AV manufacturer for a certain amount, an exemption for the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards that you’re not going to be able to meet. And at that [00:25:00] point, you know, NHTSA has, essentially would have the authority to determine how, you know, they’re going to design the program for you, essentially.

How many vehicles can you deploy, you know, where you can deploy them and, and, and, and, And in return for, for giving them permission to operate on the road, NHTSA also is demanding a, you know, a significant amount of reporting and data from the operations so that the agency can independently verify any claims that the manufacturers are making.

So we, you know, we are not. A hundred percent opposed to such a system. We’re skeptical about it. We’re not sure how it’s going to work. When the new administration takes a look at this, we’re concerned that some things might be removed from it that are good, like the great data that the agency could receive, the independent assessment by, you know, non someone who’s not involved in the manufacturing process or doesn’t stand to make a lot of money from these [00:26:00] vehicles, a truly independent assessment of these vehicles, safety and we’re hoping that that, you know This, this, this notice of proposed rulemaking isn’t simply modified into a final rule and taking out all of the all some of the consumer friendly features that are in in the proposal.

And that’s something that we’re probably again, going to be waiting some time to see us as rulemaking at the Department of Transportation move slowly and a good day. And as we saw in the last Trump administration, it moves at a glacial pace. when it comes to actual safety proposals.

[00:26:39] Anthony: All right.

[00:26:40] Marijuana and Driving: A Growing Concern

[00:26:40] Anthony: Let’s talk about the elephant in the room, everybody.

Marijuana. The New York Times has a very long article. It’s a good one, talking about how basically law enforcement can’t do what they do for drunk driving. They can’t figure out, how are you really high while you’re [00:27:00] driving? Cause there’s no set standards. And I’m going to jump right into the middle of the article and quote from it.

Beth Everett, a novelist and real estate agent in Oregon, said she had come to see her near daily use of cannabis as something that enhanced rather than impaired her driving. And to Miss Everett, I’m going to say, no, no, it does not. Okay. Do not. Do not smoke a doobie, do not pop an edible, and start driving a car, okay?

Don’t, no, no, it does not enhance, that is literally like a drunk saying, I drive better when I’m drunk, man, come on. You do not.

[00:27:36] Michael: Yeah, you know, I mean, she’s even quoted as saying she can outsmoke Willie Nelson. Right. She drives, she says she drives the slow lane and she never drives impaired. So, you know, one of my concerns around some of the the, the state laws on marijuana are people that marijuana stays in your bloodstream for a certain amount of time, it, it, it can [00:28:00] be detected through some of the detection methods for a longer period of time.

Right. And so there’s, there, there hasn’t been a proper, the way we have with alcohol where there’s a fairly rigorous understanding of how alcohol impacts. the human performance, we don’t really have the same thing with marijuana. Marijuana seems to affect people in many different ways. Although it, it appears that while you’re, you know, immediately under the influence of marijuana, it can degrade your driving skills.

There’s really nothing showing that. You know, hours after someone has used marijuana or days after that.

[00:28:39] Legal Implications of Marijuana and Driving

[00:28:39] Michael: It’s inhibiting their driving. And it also opens the door for some really draconian policies that could put a lot of innocent people in jail. Someone who’s smoked marijuana the day before drives the next day.

They test positive. And a lot of states that can get you thrown in jail. And that’s a an outcome that I don’t think anybody wants. I mean, we, we [00:29:00] certainly don’t want people getting stoned and driving. We don’t want people to be anywhere. You know, we don’t want them to be drunk. We don’t want to be, we don’t want to have them taking prescription painkillers.

We don’t want people with medical conditions. That are, that prevent them from driving responsibly on the road. I mean, anything that prevents someone from being a hundred percent focused and at the, at the top of their skills on the road is a bad thing.

[00:29:22] Challenges in Marijuana Impairment Detection

[00:29:22] Michael: But at the same time, there’s some real, real legal concerns here.

And I, you know, we’re, you know, as, as I, AAA was quoted in the article and I think that, you know, it was a good quote, you know, we’re kind of, we’re kind of, Pain. I think they said we’re kind of painting the plane as we go on this because marijuana is becoming legal recreationally across the country. But, you know, state laws to to ensure safe driving are having a difficult time catching up because the science behind marijuana impairment detection simply isn’t there yet.

So it’s we’ve discussed this before. It’s it’s it’s it’s a tough, tough issue [00:30:00] that that is going to require better science. The

[00:30:04] Colorado’s Cannabis Research and Its Implications

[00:30:04] Anthony: article starts off, it’s a, it’s a good one saying that in Colorado, they’ve been paying regular cannabis users to get stoned. Another reason to move to Colorado. This unconventional line of research, which includes vans outfitted with hippie tapestries.

Like, this is where it just got scary. It’s cartoonish. Like, oh, right. How do we get the, how do we get the stoners in there? Oh, they like, they like freedom rock. Let’s put them in a van, put some tapestries up. It’s, it’s it’s kind of funny. But also further down the article, just like you were saying, Michael, even when blood samples are analyzed, tests cannot reliably establish whether a person last used marijuana hours before the accident.

Several days prior. The article mentions how in Colorado I think from 2020 to 2022 accident rates had increased. But they have no way to gauge if marijuana had an impact on that accident. And [00:31:00] also that’s the same timeline. Correct me if I’m wrong, where accidents tend to ’cause people are driving like lunatics during covid.

So I think it’s going to take another decade of research, maybe there’s a lot of,

[00:31:14] Fundamentals of Safe Driving

[00:31:14] Fred: but wait, wait a minute, let’s draw this back to the fundamentals, right? The fundamental is that people who are impaired should not be driving and should not be allowed to drive. The problem really is that the.

Authorities have used the presence of alcohol as the only indicator of compromised driving ability that they track, right? There should be research that assesses your ability to drive a car independently of whatever private things may be going on with you, whether you’re using marijuana or heroin or I don’t know, Ozempic, whatever, whatever the hell it is, [00:32:00] if you’re, you know, if you’re not able to drive safely, there should be a test developed, really allows law enforcement to objectively determine whether or not you can drive.

You know, maybe there’s a simulator, maybe it’s a car seat, I don’t know what it is, But I think people should look beyond marijuana. because it’s such a loaded discussion, and say, okay, what’s really fundamental here? What’s fundamental is, can you drive the car safely? And do we have a test that will determine, you know, objectively, regardless of whatever my prejudice about law enforcement might be, whatever my prejudice about the person I’ve pulled over might be, that this person is safe to drive.

I think that’s a, I think that’s the real gap that we’re talking about here. Michael. I don’t think it’s, I don’t think it’s developing a blood test. I don’t think it’s developing a sniff test. I think it’s really about [00:33:00] determining the fundamental, which is, can you drive safely?

[00:33:04] Technological Solutions for Safe Driving

[00:33:04] Michael: Yeah, I mean, along those lines, you know, I think all of us.

Every time we drive, probably see someone who’s completely sober and is driving like they just did every drug on the planet, you know, and, and ultimately, I’m hoping that, you know, vehicles will be able to track individual driver behavior while you’re driving and prevent people from speeding, prevent people from zooming in and out of lanes around every car on the beltway, prevent people from driving 96 miles per hour down city streets, the car itself as a regulator in some respects versus relying on and taking the resources of our police to do so, you know, their, their police have to spend a lot of time babysitting.

And, you know, emergency services have to spend a lot of time doing the same thing if our cars are able to [00:34:00] look, you know, if your car can detect, hey, this guy’s leaving his lane all the time. This guy’s speeding, you know, cars could be set up differently. Not without too much, you know, incredible technology.

We have almost everything we need now to do some of these things, but to detect cars could detect bad driving. Your car could be testing you as you drive every day to make sure that you’re not inebriated, that you’re not in the middle of a medical event, that you’re not too tired. Why aren’t we getting that kind of stuff into cars where it’s an automatic versus having to rely on, you know, tests for inebriation, developing all these new things.

You know, there are probably ways to do this simpler if only the industry was more open to spending the money to get safety in their cars, which as we discussed with AEB can be an issue.

[00:34:46] Fred: Yeah, I agree. I, you know, a very simple thing to do would be to turn on the emergency flashers whenever the car is exceeding the speed limit.

I mean, simple things like that could be very easily programmed and it would at least alert other [00:35:00] people to the fact that there’s a car. Exceeding the speed limit, driving on safely, about to go out of control. A lot of simple things could be done, along with developing competent automatic emergency braking.

So, you know, our friends in the automotive industry might want to take a little detour from all the money they’re squandering on AV technology and try to get into a little life saving technology. Patents are still available, folks.

[00:35:30] Anthony: My my car hasn’t done this to me in years maybe become a better driver, but every now and then it used to throw up a coffee cup icon on my dash and be like, Hey, Maybe you need a break.

And I’d respond like, all good Americans, Hey, maybe you need a break. You don’t tell me how to drive. I’m gonna do what I want. Dammit.

[00:35:48] Michael: Yeah. That’s the, the Toyota approach to, to sleepy driving is to give you a I think it’s what, every three, four hours or something. I’ve seen it as well where it pops up and asks you if, if you need a, if you need a [00:36:00] cup of coffee.

[00:36:00] Anthony: Yeah. It wasn’t related to time. I think it was, I remember it was a trip I was driving from New York to Maine. And I had a number of vehicles at some point kind of veer in and out of my lane. So I was like, ah, I’m not going to hit them. And I, so I had to like move in and out of lanes and would have the lane departure warning.

I’m not sure. I haven’t had it since. Who knows? Toyota, can you tell me? Maybe they’ve downgraded that software.

[00:36:24] Tesla’s Emergency Escape Issues

[00:36:24] Anthony: Speaking of something that’s a giant downgrade, Tesla’s Cybertruck. That’s right, Fox 2 KTVU has an article detailing more information about a fiery Cybertruck crash we covered, I don’t know, a couple episodes ago maybe?

Where this is another one of these horrific incidents where somebody crashes their Tesla, in this case a, a, a Tesla. Cyber truck fire starts in there, and the electrical systems shut off, and they have no way to open the doors and get out, because they’re all electrical powered. In this article, they quote from some charming, dashing young [00:37:00] man named Michael Brooks, and talks about how Tesla’s hiding the emergency release vehicles on their door.

The emergency door handle releases. So if you’re in a crash, that that door handle, that door button, then you use normally every day you’ve owned this vehicle. Now you gotta remove a speaker grill. You’ve gotta go underneath this handle. You’ve gotta send Elon Musk 20 doji coins. It’s it’s horrible.

So, but Mr. Brooks.

[00:37:30] Michael: It’s, it’s, it’s a really bad way to design emergency escapes for vehicles, period. You know, we, we, we, in other electric vehicles the GM electric vehicles, for instance, the, what happens is when, when you’re in an emergency situation like that, the human mind is typically going to revert to its training.

What you’re going to do is. Pull your door handle and the General Motors approach is to it on that second door [00:38:00] handle pull that triggers the emergency release of the, of the electronic door. That’s the problem here is that the electronic door latches when power is lost during a collision, you no longer have the electronic door latch operational.

So you have to use a manual release to get out of the door. And in the GM vehicles, you pull the door handle twice and the door opens. In a Tesla, there are different systems in almost every model they make. There’s a, in the front seat, it’s typically a little more accessible. There’s an emergency release that is built into your arm rest.

on your door handle, but it’s, it’s not marked and you literally, you have to know it’s there before you’re in a collision that requires you to escape the vehicle to know how to operate. It’s something that I would advise. I would advise everyone in America who is operating a Tesla to review this with care.

With your family to make sure that everyone in your family knows how to escape these vehicles, because it’s hard, even if you’re in the front seat and [00:39:00] there’s a manual release located pretty close to you and very accessible. It’s hard to know exactly what it does. It’s built kind of seamlessly into the styling of the vehicle.

In the rear of these vehicles, you know, there’s, I, I believe the model S Tesla doesn’t have an emergency escape for the back door. So you’re just screwed. If you’re in one of those the cyber truck has. It’s the release under a rubber cover in the map pocket by the side of each passenger, which no one is, unless they have studied up on it, is ever going to find when a battery is catching fire and is very quickly going to burn you to a crisp in the vehicle.

So it’s, it’s just terrible human factors. Engineering and, and it’s something that Tesla needs to correct period. I, I, I, they are lucky that fires are so rare and, you know, it’s really difficult to determine in a lot of the fires that there have been that have [00:40:00] occurred in Tesla. When you, you know, when investigators are looking at the crash afterwards, it’s hard to figure out if, first of all, if the person was capable of, of exiting the vehicle if they weren’t injured so badly in the crash that they couldn’t, but it’s also very difficult to determine if they even tried to escape because of the condition of the vehicles and the heat generated by battery fire.

So it’s, it’s, it’s definitely a safety issue. It’s, it’s a, it’s critical to, to, you know, safe egress. from a crashed vehicle, particularly one that’s submerged or on fire. And it’s something that Tesla desperately needs to build into their engineering.

[00:40:42] Fred: So John Bozella, who is the president of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation.

I’d like to suggest that why don’t you look on getting people out of burning cars safely, rather than trying to get the industry to regress to a Unacceptable level of [00:41:00] automatic emergency breaking there are innovations that you could be doing John that would really help people out and it wouldn’t cost the industry a lot of money.

And as a public relations event, it’d be a lot better. If you say something positive, instead of something negative, when you’re trying to espouse the virtues of your organization. So, you know, John, why don’t you get on that? And thank you so much for your position on regressive technology.

[00:41:28] Anthony: So I’ve spoken to a, a spokesperson for John Mozilla and what they’ve proposed was working on a near distance teleportation in these events.

So if you crash your car, the auto industry is investing billions and billions into the ability to teleport yourself out of the, from inside the car to outside of the car. The problem is the auto industry is against this because they’re like, hey, wait, if we do that, they’ll make it longer.

[00:41:51] Michael: Well, no, no, no.

It’s because if they, if they figure out how to do that, you won’t need cars anymore.

[00:41:55] Anthony: Exactly. And we can’t have that because if you don’t have the cars [00:42:00] anymore, then what’s the point of auto safety? The center for auto safety. Wait, what? I don’t know what I’m talking about anymore. This KTVU article has some interesting videos embedded in it.

Embedded in it where firefighters are practicing breaking the glass windows of a Cybertruck. And I do not know if this is unique to a Cybertruck. I mean, I know Elon and whatnot is like, Hey man, our cars are bulletproof. They’re not. But you have a firefighter there with an ax and it takes them about 20 swings to crack open the glass to remove it.

So they can actually reach their hand in and pop the, the door handle to open the door handle. I don’t think that’s a good use of firefighters time.

[00:42:39] Fred: No, and also that door handle may be hidden behind a rubber panel that’s inside of the mat pocket. So, you know, this is a compounding complexity.

[00:42:51] Michael: Yeah. And there’s also, you know, there’s, there’s, you know, Tesla’s also have those super cool outside handles on that aren’t an handle.

You have to [00:43:00] push some kind of other button to let in order for the handle to come out. That’s not immediately recognizable or intuitive for the average person. So it’s, you know, Tesla really needs to do some work on, on, you know, egress period.

[00:43:16] Fred: Have they fixed that rearview mirror problem yet where the owners always see people laughing at them when they look in the rearview mirror?

[00:43:25] Anthony: They’re laughing at the jokes that you’re telling yourself in your head. They’re not laughing at you. They’re laughing at how cool you are. So I guess the upgrades to the fireman’s fire person’s test will be you know, dead lift, 150 pounds have extra long arms to reach through these cars and find it.

And to memorize every Tesla manual for their releases.

[00:43:47] Michael: Oh, I would, I would go ahead and suggest to anyone that’s thinking about purchasing or driving a Tesla that you can’t expect emergency responders to be at your crash location in time to save you. If there’s a battery fire [00:44:00] involved, it’s going to be too fast.

If you can’t save yourself, the likelihood is, or there aren’t bystanders around to help somehow. The likelihood is you’re, you’re going to be stuck in the vehicle unless you’re, you’re keenly aware of. The manual door releases.

[00:44:15] Fred: Oh, and one more, the one other fundamental problem is that Tesla recommends that you flood the vehicle with 3000 gallons of water to manage the battery fire.

And of course, a fire truck only has 300 gallons of water. So if your car is going to have a battery fire, Please make sure that you’re next to a fire hydrant when that happens. Otherwise, you’re, you’re gonna be in a very, very bad spot.

[00:44:43] Anthony: I want to jump to an article from the Wall Street Journal here about, right, wait for it, self driving cars don’t do snow.

Goodyear says the solution is smarter tires, and I believe everything Goodyear tells me. Basically it’s talking about how with Autonomous [00:45:00] vehicles, automatic or even not autonomous vehicles, automatic emergency braking takes longer in snow or icy conditions. Who knew this? Who had any idea? And autonomous vehicles struggle with realizing that, hey, I’m in snow or icy conditions and not in Phoenix.

So Goodyear thinks, hey, we have smarter tires, man. This would be great.

[00:45:22] Michael: It sounds like they’re all, you know, it’s, it doesn’t sound extremely, you know, complex what they’re doing here. It looks like they’re just putting on a press release

[00:45:30] Anthony: for the consumer and electronic show.

[00:45:33] Michael: Yeah. I mean, it looks like they’re using vehicle cameras to determine what the weather is.

Right. So I guess if it’s raining or snowy or icy and combining that with. You know, information about which tire is on the car to determine how long it’s going to take to break in, in those conditions and feeding that back into the vehicle’s braking system. So there’s nothing [00:46:00] super innovative there and there’s really nothing that, you know, I don’t think there’s anything there that other companies aren’t already trying to, trying to do.

So yeah. CES.

[00:46:12] Fred: What’s another layer of artificial intelligence in between the real world and the control of the vehicle? So, the technologists seem to have an infinite faith in the ability of AI to do everything instantly. My experience with it is that It’s less than perfect, and it’s not instantaneous, and folks, you know, you’ve got to remember that you live in an analog world, and the digital representations of that, and the attempts to turn it into something like analog world are very limited, so I don’t think that there’s much prospect really for technologists going down this road or smart tires.

[00:46:53] Anthony: Hmm, well I’m old enough to remember when Elon Musk said that his cars do this already. Back, I think it was like [00:47:00] 2016 he was saying that yeah the cameras on our car will identify the road conditions and will automatically adjust the torque to each tire. Oh, I wonder what happened to that nice young man.

Anyway, let’s jump into some recalls. How’s that sound guys? Yeah! Wait, wait, wait. We got a Tau of Fred here. Okay, I’ll give you five minutes for your Tau. Sorry, it wasn’t in my

[00:47:21] Fred: notes. Come on. Come on, Anthony. It’s a blank spot.

[00:47:25] Ant Behavior and Traffic Flow

[00:47:25] Fred: Well, but this is Michael’s suggestion apparently Marco Guerreri I’m not sure, and Niccolo Pugno professors of engineering at the University of Trento in Italy have studied ant behavior as an analog for bidirectional traffic flows.

Quoting from the article, according to Guerreri. Ants are one of the few species capable of managing bi directional traffic flows similar to our roads, yet they navigate seamlessly without congestion. He further notes that ants follow pheromone trails marked by a leader ant. [00:48:00] moving in platoons with small gaps and without overtaking.

Well, that sounds pretty good, I guess. But how do they do this? Basically, they do this by sticking their heads as close as possible to the butts of the, of their leaders, and they substitute conformity for individualism. Blindly, mindlessly follow their leaders without questioning and in acquiring minds, note, the modern political analogs of this behavior.

But you know, they’ve studied this and they used AI to study it. So it must be, must be correct. I also think it’s interesting to note that the first thing the AV developers incorporate into their own algorithms. is automatic overtaking to avoid following their immediate leaders. So, the, the, what the developers are doing runs exactly contrary to what these investigators have found is the best approach towards mass transit of small vehicles.

Also the AVs avoid platooning [00:49:00] except in urban areas where they congregate to block traffic. So, apparently the AI hasn’t yet reached the intellectual capability of ants. And I will leave it there. Thank you.

[00:49:13] Anthony: That was the perfect how. I loved it. It was nice. It was, it was friendly. It involved the word pheromone.

Okay. It also sounds a lot like driving Connecticut where they’re just getting their car as close as possible to the car, the car in front of its rear end. Any, any input, Michael? I know you were a big fan of this article.

[00:49:32] Michael: I really liked that article just because the ants aren’t passing, you know, but when you look at the, you know, kind of the ideal world that the ants live in and the human world that we’re in, this is only, this kind of thing is only going to work Every vehicle on the road is operated by, is autonomous, right?

In platooning and all of that go out the window. As soon as you’ve got one, one human on the road, screwing it all up. And [00:50:00] we know that will happen. So this is one of those for the, for the distant future, maybe we’ll be mimicking ants on our roads, but as long as humans have control of the vehicles it’s, it’s not going to happen.

[00:50:12] Anthony: Huh? That sounded like a vote for AVs. Well, you know, it’s a vote for ants. I think,

[00:50:19] Fred: I think our friends in the South would say if they’ve ever stepped on a fire ant that the fire ants are a little bit more chaotic. So I, this may be a species dependent behavior.

[00:50:31] Anthony: Well, if you want us to talk about other insects, write into contact at autosafety.

org. Please don’t on this subject. I don’t want to talk about other insects.

[00:50:41] Kia Recall and Software Issues

[00:50:41] Anthony: Recalls Kia, 74, 469 vehicles. The 2024 to 2025 Kia Sorento and the 2025 Kia Sorento hybrid and the plug in hybrid. Due to a software logic error within the body domain control unit, under certain [00:51:00] circumstances, mom and monetary mom say a low beam headlamp and tail lamp illumination may not occur while

[00:51:08] Michael: driving.

There you go. Yeah. And basically you’re driving down the road and your Kia and your headlights and your taillights. can go out, you know, momentary loss. I’m not sure how long that moment is. If it’s a tenth of a second or 10 seconds, they’re not specific about that and the recall notice. But it is a software problem and basically they’re going to upgrade your software.

You should be hearing about this in about a month later late ish February and take that vehicle in for a software update. And that is our only recall this week. week because things have slowed down a little recently and we hope that’s not a sign about the future.

[00:51:48] Anthony: Oh, no.

[00:51:49] NHTSA Investigation on Cruise LLC

[00:51:49] Anthony: So instead, we’re going to wrap up with NHTSA closing an investigation in some company.

It sounds vaguely familiar. It’s called Cruise LLC. Huh? [00:52:00] Yeah. The problem description is cruise automated driving system equipped vehicles may not be exercising appropriate caution around pedestrians in the roadway. Holy shit. I can’t believe that’s exactly what the problem. Yeah. Yeah, they ran over him and dragged her.

Yeah, probably. Probably not good. But anyway. No, that’s not a,

[00:52:17] Michael: not appropriate caution.

[00:52:19] Anthony: So, but NHTSA’s closing this investigation. Why would they do that? Yeah.

[00:52:23] Michael: Well, they’re doing that. Well, crews did, did recall the vehicles. They took some sort of action to supposedly program their vehicles so that it wouldn’t, this type of situation wouldn’t happen again.

I’m not sure if they, they really did. I’m not sure what exactly, if the recall was completely effective, but we’ll never know because Cruz is no longer and Cruz will not no longer be responding to NHTSA. And so, just like the Fisker investigation that NHTSA has opened, NHTSA has closed this investigation because there’s no company there anymore to [00:53:00] to, to put out a recall and there’s no cars on the road anymore from that company.

[00:53:05] Anthony: I’m gonna pause it. So since they close these in, in investigations, the government’s saving money. They would have been spending more wasteful taxpayer dollars on these. They would have

[00:53:17] Michael: been wasting a lot of money sending letters to Cruz and to Fisker and expecting a response. Ah,

[00:53:23] Anthony: go doggy coin! The stamps are

[00:53:26] Fred: really, really out of control, the price of a postage stamp, really out of control.

[00:53:31] Anthony: Yeah, my buddy Franking thinks the same. What? Anyway, that’s it.

[00:53:36] Conclusion and Sign Off

[00:53:36] Anthony: That’s all we have for today’s show. We’ll be back next week and then the week after that. And then the week after that, I know you’re excited. Bye.

[00:53:47] Fred: For more information, visit www. autosafety. org.