Cruise runs out of juice and car jackers need to check the backseat

[00:00:00] Introduction and Podcast Overview

[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.

Hey everybody. Thanks for tuning in. So doing this kind of work where you’re doing consumer safety or any sort of advocacy, It’s generally like it takes decades before you make an impact on the world. It’s a long, hard struggle and we do it because one, it needed to be done. And two, because you’re supporting us, you’re helping us out.

Before I jump in, you’ve gone to autosafety. org, click on donate, right?

[00:00:47] Celebrating GM’s Cruise Division Shutdown

[00:00:47] Anthony: But this is, today is a rare moment where we can celebrate an early victory. And for me, I take this very personally because I personally think it’s me that made this, the world slightly better today. [00:01:00] That’s right, General Motors has shut down their cruise division.

Their cruise division was their autonomous BS generation nonsense where they spent over ten billion dollars to drive over a woman, drag her, and then lie about it. This was available in San Francisco. It was run by this lovely guy named Kyle who basically, He liked remote controlled cars as a kid, and for whatever, GM said, Here you go, run our autonomous vehicle division with no history at all in the automotive world, no history in the safety world, no history in traffic and whatnot, because GM said, Hey, we’re afraid maybe we’re not that impressive, let’s give it to some kid in Silicon Valley and let him do it.

And well, ten billion dollars later, They came to their senses, and I think it’s because they’ve listened to this show, and they’ve listened to me reiterate the math repeatedly, that self driving taxi [00:02:00] business is a loser. Is a loser. Waymo will eventually come to this conclusion too, but their pockets are much deeper, so they’ve got a longer period of time if they burn out enough cash, and Google says, wait a second, aren’t we an advertising company?

But yeah, that’s,

[00:02:17] Michael: I will give you all the credit, Anthony.

[00:02:20] The Future of Autonomous Vehicles

[00:02:20] Michael: And in addition to that, Waymo to talk about what happened there. Waymo is, it seems to me to be playing the long game and that’s where Cruz failed. They were trying to move.

too quick. They were trying to scale the operation up too quick. As you will hear repeated many times by many people, driverless cars are 99 percent there. It’s just that last 1 percent that might take another 40 years or more. And so it’s. It’s not something that can be scaled up in a way that pleases investors.

It’s not something that’s going to allow GM to show great quarterly reports. And it, it was all, we were always a little mystified at [00:03:00] GM’s attempts to move into this area, given the, we, we’re still looking for that magic use case that, that brings all these profits into this area that, Uber seems to have captured so far and there’s not a lot there, honestly.

So we’re still, it’s, cruise is gone now and it’s probably for the best because safety really was not their number one commitment. And that was made clear by the actions around the crash in San Francisco over a year ago now. And their willingness to, cover things up, hide things from investigators, lie about it to investigators and do the kind of things that, that essentially show you that from the top down, they’re not.

They don’t have a proper safety culture in that operation. So we are not sad to see crews go by any stretch of the imagination. But they’re clearly not the only questionable actor in this space. So we’ll be keeping an eye on the rest of them [00:04:00] as well.

[00:04:00] Anthony: Yeah. Sadly, I think it means that the CEO of GM, Mary Barry will probably won’t be long for GM.

Really? How do you justify, hey we set 10 billion on fire?

[00:04:12] Michael: She came in after, she came in right after when the ignition switch issue was going with GM and they were coming out of bankruptcy and all sorts of problems. And she Steadied the ship and they have, done pretty well under her leadership.

So I don’t know that, i, I guess I would disagree that this is, that Cruz is somehow gonna be the downfall of Mary Barr, who seems to be doing a pretty good job there.

[00:04:37] Anthony: I want a job where I can, set $10 billion on fire,

No? Just me? All right. I’m going to go I’d take a job

[00:04:46] Fred: where I could just set two billion dollars on fire. Most of them are a threshold for me.

[00:04:51] Anthony: You’re not very ambitious.

[00:04:53] Fred: No, I’m not. I’m

[00:04:53] Anthony: not. I’m an older person. I’m not

[00:04:55] Michael: setting any money on fire. I don’t know what y’all are talking about.

[00:04:59] Anthony: Actually, Michael has [00:05:00] his retirement plan set up.

He was one of the few people who bought a GM Cruise model car. It’s hilarious. If he only kept it in the box, we could have all retired to the Caymans. But he’s been playing it on his desk. If anyone wants to make an offer for it, I think his opening bid is 1 million.

[00:05:19] Michael: Yeah. And it’s the poppy model.

[00:05:21] Anthony: They go for collectors out there of defunct companies.

But I have to jump right into my gaslight of the week because GM Cruise shut down. Kyle, their former CEO, was he got to resign after dragging a woman, lying about it. And so when GM Cruise shut down Let’s be clear,

[00:05:38] Michael: the car did that, not Kyle. Yes

[00:05:39] Anthony: the car did it, and yes, but, he oversaw the people who were like, let’s not tell the investigators.

[00:05:45] Michael: Our internet was bad. We couldn’t show you the whole video.

[00:05:48] Anthony: Exactly. Our car didn’t drive into wet cement. So anyway, after this happens, Kyle, who now, what does he do? He works on microwaves or something? I don’t know. He does some nonsense. [00:06:00] And I

[00:06:01] Michael: think it’s

[00:06:01] Anthony: smaller

[00:06:01] Michael: robots that aren’t capable of hurting people.

[00:06:04] Anthony: Oh that’s good. He went on Twitter and he posted in case it was on clear before it is clear. Now GM are a bunch of dummies. Did he say that? He did! He posted that on the internet for the world to see. Oh, there’s gotta be

[00:06:22] Fred: a non disparagement clause in his separation agreement. I think that’s gonna come back to haunt him.

Oh, I mean,

[00:06:28] Michael: I think it’s pretty clear to everyone following this thing. entire situation that the dummy is the one who lies to investigators at the federal and state level, but I’ll leave it at that, Kyle.

[00:06:40] Anthony: Yeah, I think Kyle did it. He wins my gaslight because I think he’s gaslighting himself. Yeah, I think he’s hoisting his own petard.

Anyway that’s it. And and related to this Mary Barra, am I saying Barra? Is that how you say your name? Mary Barra. Barra. Okay, Mary Barra. She said on a conference call with Wall Street Analysts you have to understand the [00:07:00] cost of running a robo taxi fleet, which is not our car business, and is very expensive.

Yeah. It took you 10 billion to figure that out. I sat down one afternoon for an hour and just did basic math.

[00:07:13] Michael: When you look at the world they were entering when they started Cruz and it’s not an absurd proposition that a major automaker should get into it. You have Tesla claiming autonomy, even though that’s another lie.

You’ve got a Waymo doing it. You’ve got Zooks, Amazon doing it. You’ve got Trucking, Aurora, Kodiak, some of these other trucking companies that are really about to do it. Aurora is going to, I think in April, going to start having semis run between Houston and Dallas with they’ve delayed it recently, but they’re going to have semis running between Houston and Dallas without a safety driver.

So people are doing it in, in some certain use cases, but, and I don’t think it’s outrageous to think that GM could have been involved at some point or that they, Could get back into the game at some point and be involved, but the [00:08:00] way they went about it, I think was they were moving too fast and they, safety was not their ultimate concern here.

[00:08:07] Fred: GM builds stuff. They don’t run taxis. It’s a fundamental flaw when you try to get into a business about which, nothing. And the only thing you bring to the party is a pile of cash.

[00:08:21] Anthony: Yeah, they sat at the poker table and didn’t realize they were the sucker. It’s something, I think you’re right Michael, I think they could get into this.

This is not an industry you want to be first mover advantage. Most industries you don’t really want to be first mover.

[00:08:34] Michael: I think they’re saying that they’re going to continue to develop autonomous vehicle technology, but it sounds like they’re looking more at autonomy from the driver assistance area, they’re certainly joining the pack of automobile companies who are trying to turn your driver’s seat into a couch and your living room and, putting out systems that are.

Going to be telling people that they can take their attention away from the road [00:09:00] at certain points. I wouldn’t take that advice quite yet, no matter how much the car costs.

[00:09:05] Anthony: And that’s a great segue for our first non GM cruise story.

[00:09:10] AAA’s Traffic Safety Culture Index

[00:09:10] Anthony: AAA has come out with a report about it is the Traffic Safety Culture Index Driver Profiles.

And it talks about, I guess this is, People self reported their risky behaviors and from the breakdown it was like safe drivers were like 34. 9%, speeding drivers 32. 6%, distracted 19%, distracted and aggressive 11%, and most dangerous 2. 5%. And the distracted drivers were all, like, when we had the sheriff on from nearby, Fred’s point of view, and I asked him, who’s more dangerous, drunk drivers or teenagers?

He said, people texting. They’re the most dangerous drivers. They’re distracted drivers. And so this report, this is all based off of people’s self reporting, which is fascinating. Who put down that they’re distracted and [00:10:00] aggressive? I, kudos for having that self awareness, but If you have that self awareness, pull the car over!

Get out!

[00:10:10] Fred: I don’t think there’s a checkbox for distracted. I think what they did is they had a questionnaire that said, have you done X within the last 30 days? Or have you done Y within the last 45 days from that questionnaire, AAA extracted these categories. So I don’t think people had to condemn themselves and there was probably a lot of hedging going on as well.

Yeah,

[00:10:35] Michael: that really helps in surveys and, just directly ask the respondents the question you’re trying to get at. But, the thing that, besides the really scary percentages that Anthony read out, I, they make sense and they sound about right. But, around a third of the vehicle, the drivers on the road are.

trying to be safe and rarely engage in risky behaviors. But, the rest of the people on the road with [00:11:00] you, two thirds of the people are either distracted, speeding, distractive and aggressive, or very dangerous drivers. So what this, what a lot of the surveys show to me is that there is a huge amount of cognitive dissonance between what people, what kind of behaviors we know are unsafe.

Safe versus what behaviors will then be willing to go on and engage in when we’re in our car. So you see 93 percent of the response to the survey saying, I, I recognize the dangers of texting, emailing, or reading while driver, but 27 percent of drivers send a text or an email, 37 percent read a text or email and 36 percent held a phone and talked on it in the past 30 days while driving, out of that.

93 percent that, say they know it’s dangerous. We’re still seeing a very large amount of people ignoring what they know and, behaving in a [00:12:00] way. And I, and it’s this, it’s a constant struggle. I think we all struggle with it to some extent I’ve resorted to, absolutely turning off my phone in the vehicle, which is difficult to do if you want to use ways.

So I have to turn off my. Notifications. And I just don’t want to be bothered. I didn’t even want to have the temptation to get a text or something while I’m driving. Cause the temptation is going to be there every time the notification pops up and you have to, if you’re going to walk around and say, Hey, I don’t text a driver.

I don’t retext a driver talking drive. You have to resist every single one of those. It’s not easy for people to do if they have, a loved one calling or texting, if they are, and, heavy traffic and moving along at slow rates. They might think it’s more okay to check a phone or something like that during those time periods.

That’s the thing I point to here most is despite the fact that, it seems that everyone, pretty much understands that. Being distracted is a bad thing or that driving fast or being aggressive or driving [00:13:00] drowsily, we all recognize that those are dangerous behaviors. A large percentage of us are still willing to engage in those behaviors and take that risk.

And that seems to be where what these study points to is that there’s a dissonance there that we really need to work on as individuals and as, a country.

[00:13:19] Fred: Hey, Anthony, I’ve got a math problem for you. I read somewhere that 80 percent of drivers think that they’re better than average.

So my question to you is, why does this mean that 30 percent of drivers are delusional?

[00:13:37] Anthony: Well, 90 percent of the people know that 50 percent of the time that most people are wrong.

[00:13:44] Fred: So you’re passing on that. Yeah.

[00:13:46] Anthony: Exactly. You just throw out some numbers, percentages, and you both look dumb on your face.

[00:13:51] Fred: That’s because Maybe I look dumb. By definition, an average driver is anything more than 50%, or is 50%, right? So if 80 percent of the [00:14:00] people think that they’re better than average, that means 30 percent of the people are delusional, because it’s impossible for Anybody, the average is 50%.

So I could,

[00:14:10] Michael: I could go with that, Fred, just generally 30 percent of the population is delusional.

[00:14:14] Fred: I think so. Yeah. My dating history, indicates that there are very few wanted to go out with me. So you were delusional 30 percent of the time? No, those who agreed to were delusional.

[00:14:24] Anthony: Yes. Yes. They confused. They were optimistic. They weren’t delusional. They were optimistic. Okay. Okay.

[00:14:32] Fred: There’s a fine line between them, but Anyway, I digress. Delusion

[00:14:35] Anthony: in the optimism.

[00:14:36] Michael: There, there is, it’s called, Tesla full self-driving Bears that out.

[00:14:40] Anthony: So I, I think one of the, what we’re talking about with the distracted drivers, one of the greatest things that’s happened in the last, I don’t know, say 30 years, is, I remember back in the nineties, you’d print out MapQuest directions and I would be You would hold them.

Yeah. Printed paper on my steering wheel. Driving, looking, driving and looking and driving and looking. I’m amazed. I never hit anything. Whereas now, you just plug in your [00:15:00] phone, and you say where it’s gonna go, and it will talk to you, and say, In 300 feet, turn left. And then you’re like, Okay, but I’m still looking at the road, I’m not looking down at the screen, which is better.

And the software keeps getting better, so I appreciate that, quite a bit. Hopefully that will reduce things, cause I don’t know who’s picking up their Who’s physically picking up a phone? Can you, like for the last decade, can you put all phones into cars? No? At least the last five years.

[00:15:28] Michael: Yeah, you can.

A lot of people don’t. I I have a 2019 Volkswagen and the Android auto interface. It works okay, but it’s a little clunky, the USB connection to it doesn’t always pick up, it’s not great. I’ve I resort, I have a cell phone holder that sticks into the air conditioning vent and basically, so I will have a map right there within my line of sight and I’m not having to look all around the car for it when I need to look at the map.

But find that a little [00:16:00] easier to use than the touch screen interface. And actually the touch screen is a little more out of my view than the cell phone is where I’ve placed it. So that works for me. I, I don’t know. I didn’t really enjoy, my touch screen is, a kindergarten version compared to what you’re seeing in more modern vehicles that have just multiple, very large touch screens.

Mine is. About four by six, very, a very small screen. So it’s not going to help with distraction. I’m not sure if some of the larger screens have better, interfaces or UIs that, I’m sure some of them do, although I’m sure at the same time that there are large screens that present lots of distractions at the moment because there’s not a lot of, there’s no regulation or there’s very little to prevent manufacturers from putting distracting things and all sorts of stuff on those touch screens at this point.

It’s the Wild West there.

[00:16:53] Anthony: For those people who describe themselves as driving aggressive when you find yourself in this situation do [00:17:00] everybody a favor, pull over. Just take a breath. Realize this is not a competition, you’re not in the middle of a war, this is not a battlefield.

Cuz I might Yeah, I,

[00:17:10] Michael: I found recently that just leaving really early and a lot and arriving early is great for safety and blood pressure. , I advise. I advise proper planning. .

[00:17:19] Anthony: What I find perfect is the other day I was picking up my wife and I guess I had too much coffee that morning and she’s just before we even leave, she’s I’m driving, get out.

And I was like, ah. So everybody needs a driving buddy, but the thing is, you have a tail. Yeah, exactly. But the thing is, she drives so close to other vehicles.

[00:17:37] Vehicle Height and Pedestrian Safety

[00:17:37] Anthony: But anyway moving on the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety had a, has a great article we’re linking to called Vehicle Height Compounds Dangers of Speed for Pedestrians.

This is something we’ve talked about a lot. The higher the vehicle, the worse the injury. So from the article itself, regardless of vehicle height, higher speeds were associated with increased risk of injury at all severities. [00:18:00] Pedestrians struck at 20 miles per hour had a 46th chance of sustaining at least a moderate injury, such as a broken bone or concussion.

At 35 miles per hour, the risk of moderate injury climbed to 86 percent, and serious injury rose to 67 percent. In general, higher vehicle front ends increased the likelihood of both moderate and serious pedestrian injuries. At 27 miles per hour, The average speed of all the Kardashians in their study the median car had a 60 percent chance of causing moderate injuries and a 30 percent chance of causing serious.

In a median height pickup with a front end 13 inches higher than that of a median car, had an 83 percent chance of causing moderate and 62 percent chance of causing serious injuries. Which is that’s like double. For the serious injuries anyway, and I didn’t realize the pickup trucks were 13 inches higher the front ends.

That’s significant

[00:18:53] Michael: Yeah, I mean you’re moving up on the body There and in doing so you’re going to get closer to [00:19:00] Organs, you’re going to some pickup trucks are you know up near the head neck area? They’ve gotten so high in many cases. So at what might consider to be low speeds, 20 to 25 miles per hour.

There, there are significant problems with the pickup trucks compared to the average sedan. And they even did a comparison, which is interesting between adding German vehicles. into the list and found that the European standard that applies to German vehicles at does a better job of preventing injuries to pedestrians than, the sedans or the median normal cars that were studied from America.

Once again, Europe seems to be leading the way here.

[00:19:47] Anthony: Is that the. European standard, does it require lower hood heights?

[00:19:52] Michael: The European standard had, they had already put in place what NHTSA started to put in place this fall, which is some [00:20:00] protections to to pedestrians that go over the hood to protect the head area.

So those standards were already in place. They were already building cars with those standards in place. A lot of European manufacturers had put in kind of the the hoods that can pop up when there’s a collision to reduce the risk of injury to pedestrians or mitigate the injury. So a lot more was being done earlier in Europe.

On this issue, which is why they’re showing up a little better in the stats.

[00:20:28] Fred: The Euro NCAP includes credit for pedestrian protection. The US NCAP does not. That’s really that was driving Europe to be safer. NCAP take a note here. Just put pedestrian protection in your

[00:20:43] Michael: new test. And it’s, in its last update, that’s what, that’s a lot, some of that is coming into NCAP.

That’s what their update from two, three weeks ago that they came out with was, it applied both to automatic emergency braking, blind spot [00:21:00] warnings, lane keeping, but also had some tests for pedestrian risks. Now. I think we still have some issues with the way they’re going to be comparing and contrasting the winners and losers there, but it’s good that they got them in.

And we’ll see what the administration that’s coming in does with that.

[00:21:19] Anthony: So right now these are in, but the brave new world we’re entering, is it possible they get just yanked out?

[00:21:27] Michael: I don’t know. NCAP is an area that manufacturers like to some extent they like the comparative. Qualities of it.

They like to be able to say we got five stars and our competitor didn’t. And, it’s, I don’t know. There are a lot. There are quite a few things over and that’s that. I think that the industry has a problem with before you get to end cap. I don’t know what’s going to happen within cap.

I don’t expect it to be improved at any great rate. It never really is. But it’s, traditionally during the, Previous Trump administration and cap did [00:22:00] not get any improvements. So I would guess that we could expect much of the same maybe not, undermining the program, but at the same time, not improving it in a way that could really be beneficial to consumers in the next few years.

[00:22:12] Anthony: But your donation will help us. Keep putting the pressure on NHTSA moving forward to make cars safer. Go to autosafety. org, click on donate. Help stick it to the man. Is that? No, that’s not really what we do. But I like the way it said. Michael giggled. Let’s go on Consumer Reports.

[00:22:30] Consumer Reports: Reliability and Satisfaction

[00:22:30] Anthony: They came out with Their owner satisfaction, reliability survey, and okay.

Drum roll, please. Who, please, drum roll, please. The winner of the most reliable car from consumer reports, consumer reliability index is anybody. How’s Fred not jumping

[00:22:47] Fred: for joy? I’ve got two of them. Oh, two Subies.

[00:22:52] Anthony: I’m a two Subie family. Yeah, Subaru tops the list this year, displacing Toyota and Lexus because Toyota and [00:23:00] Lexus always wins.

But they pointed out that Toyota and Lexus had some problems with, what was it, the Tacoma and their really junky EV, right? Was it the Tacoma? They had some

[00:23:12] Michael: power trains, some engine issues in the Tacomas, I think. But yeah, Subaru has gotten to the top here, which I think I don’t think anyone else has been number one other than Toyota for the past five years or so.

Toyota and Lexus. So they are always leading the pack in the, in this survey. I, as long as you don’t hit a deer like Fred and have your Subaru out of pocket for a couple of months in certain ways. I hear a lot of good things about Subaru vehicles.

I can only imagine that they’re fairly reliable vehicles. They had a, they had some, issues 10 years ago with some of their transmissions that probably dragged them down in the list. But overall they’re looking pretty good.

[00:23:53] Anthony: The first US manufacturer on the list is Buick coming in at number 11.

But surprisingly, wow. [00:24:00] Is Rivian is, first of all, they made the list, which is, they don’t have every car in there because they don’t have enough data, but Rivian made the bottom of the list, and personally, I think Rivians look cool, I like their headlight design, I think they’re fun, I think they’ve taken some interesting engineering things.

But they’re at the bottom of the list for reliability, not too surprising given that they’re a small manufacturer, brand new manufacturer. But then at the same time, Consumer Reports comes out with their owner satisfaction ratings and Rivian makes the top of the list, which is just, I think it’s more money than brain’s problem.

I guess if you spend a hundred grand, you’re gonna be like, I love it.

[00:24:38] Michael: So this is this is, I’m pegging this as my gas light of the week not from consumer reports and not necessarily from Rivian, but it just feels like there’s some gas lighting going on here to me because you’ve got Rivian coming in.

They only got five. 14 out of 100 on their reliability score from consumer reports, which is [00:25:00] about half of what Cadillac got one notch above them at 27. So Rivian’s reliability is terrible. And I think it’s fair to say that based on this, it’s terrible. And yet they got Five out, they were the only manufacturer that got five out of five on the satisfaction side of things, which suggests to me that there’s some smoke and mirrors going on there.

However, it could just be, if you look at the top five in reliability, you’re not seeing a lot of the brands that have, The top five and satisfaction. You’re not seeing the brands that come up on top and reliability. You’re seeing Rivian BMW, Tesla and Porsche, which are, and Lexus comes in at number five, which are, very, uh, expensive vehicles, they have a customer surface system that caters to their customers.

You walk into the Lexus dealership and they’ve got a machine making [00:26:00] lattes for you. They’ve got bagels, there’s an owner experience. I’m going to have

[00:26:04] Fred: to find one of those dealerships.

[00:26:06] Michael: Yeah, that maybe I think we’re missing here. And I think maybe what we’re seeing here is, yeah, Rivians are unreliable.

They’re a new brand. They’re an electric brand. There’s going to be a lot of problems there. But they’re treating their customers so well that their customer satisfaction scores are absolutely through the roof. And that’s really the only explanation I can come up with it for this, because there’s just such a great deficit between that terrible reliability rating, which you would think would piss off vehicle owners and the satisfaction score, which is through the roof.

[00:26:38] Fred: I think that if they had a keeping up with the Jones index, you’d find a direct correlation between Jonesyness and customer satisfaction. There’s it’s the same thing as selling these pickups with extremely high front ends. It’s just a lot of chest thumping going on, a lot of testosterone poisoning going on.

But I think in the case of the Satisfaction [00:27:00] Index that they’re talking about here, There are a lot of women involved, so there’s a lot less testosterone poisoning, but I think a lot more social positioning that gets involved in this. I know people who’ve got the Porsches and they’re really partial to them and you can tell who’s got a Porsche because they’ll always tell you.

That’s interesting.

[00:27:23] Anthony: That’s why I’m always wearing my Ferrari jacket and my Ferrari keychains and all this stuff. I think you’re right though. I’ve

[00:27:30] Michael: moved on. I’ve moved

[00:27:32] Anthony: on to

[00:27:32] Emotional Purchases and Buyer Regret

[00:27:32] Michael: Paganis.

[00:27:33] Anthony: Oh yeah. You’re a 0. 001 percenter, okay. But I think it’s right because I think everybody’s had the experience where you’ve paid way too much for something and it’s more of an emotional decision.

And you don’t want to admit, Oh I got suckered. I bought something stupid. So you’re going to be like, I love it. I love it. That’s it’s falling apart. I’ve personally never spent a hundred thousand dollars or more on something and been dissatisfied. I would have been the person in there screaming cause that’s all my money I’ve ever [00:28:00] seen.

But. I, maybe you’re right. Maybe the Rivian dealers they come out, they give you massages once a week. I don’t know. They, they give you caffeine coffee enemas. I don’t know. I don’t know what they do. It’s not my lifestyle. I don’t own a vest of any kind. They seem like you have to have a vest to have one of these.

Fred’s wearing a vest. For all we know, he might be a secret Rivian dealer or a hedge fund magnet. I Because that’s the only people I see wearing vests.

[00:28:26] Rivian and Toyota: Satisfaction and Reliability

[00:28:26] Anthony: Yeah, because on the owner’s satisfaction, Toyota comes in at number 13. Which is also insane because this is not an advertisement for Toyota, but I think it’s well known that you can leave that engine running without changing the oil for I don’t know, 50, 000 miles, 100, 000 miles.

It’ll be fine. We’ll just keep going. There’s

[00:28:43] Fred: one more factor here, which is that all Rivians are new and a lot of the, for a lot of the cars in that satisfaction list, they’re all new. The Toyota’s have been around for a long time. So there’s a lot of people driving 15, 20 year old Toyotas.

[00:29:00] Maybe they’re not so happy with them anymore. So that’s a factor as well.

[00:29:04] Anthony: That’s a good point, but also not every Toyota has been recalled the way a Rivian has. Actually, I’m not. It’s most of their rivian have been recalled,

[00:29:14] Michael: not all. And there’s another thing in the article, I think it’s worth pointing out or taking a look at.

As part of the reliability ratings, they saw that plugin hybrids had 70% more problems than, gas powered and hybrid vehicles. And then electric vehicles had 42 percent more problems noted than gas powered and hybrid vehicles. However, those problems were down. Let’s see, last year, the plug in hybrids had 146 percent more problems than gas powered and hybrid vehicles.

And last year, electric vehicles had 79 percent more problems than gas powered and hybrid vehicles, which suggests. That both plug in hybrid and electric vehicles have made a lot of [00:30:00] strides in the past year to, to make their vehicles more reliable which is great to see.

[00:30:08] Anthony: Indeed.

[00:30:09] Gaslighting Segment: GM’s Autonomous Driving Claims

[00:30:09] Anthony: With that, I think let’s move into some gaslighting.

I’ve done mine with Kyle gaslighting himself. I’ve got another one lined up if we need be. Michael, do you want to expound on yours?

[00:30:20] Michael: Mine was I was, I was, It’s thinking about doing the Rivian one, but I’m still not sure that’s a gas light. I’m a little, I don’t think it qualifies.

So I’m going to switch to, since this may be our last chance to talk about Cruz, I’m going to switch to Kyle from Cruz,

[00:30:37] Anthony: Cruz.

[00:30:37] Michael: But actually I’m not going to go with Kyle. I’m going to go with what, what they’re still saying in over at GM is, we’re fully committed to autonomous driving and excited to bring GM customers, its benefits, things like enhanced safety, improved traffic flow, increased accessibility, and reduced driver stress.

This is from Dave Richardson, who’s senior vice president of [00:31:00] software at GM. But, these are still the same claims we have been hearing from crews the whole time with its, humans are terrible drivers spiel, we’re going to enhance safety with autonomy. We’re going to improve traffic flow.

I don’t think there’s been any. Any proof whatsoever, positive that autonomous vehicles have done that accessibility. I don’t understand how you think accessibility is improved with autonomous driving. That’s something we’ve had a number of contentions with and reduced driver stress. Which, I’m not sure if it’s reducing driver stress when they’re having to monitor the actions of a robot that can also control their steering at the same time.

That’s not reducing driver stress for me if I’m in a car. That’s going to be my gaslight of the week, just GM’s continued aspirationalism about the greatness of autonomy without any, real proof that it’s going to be helping anyone anytime soon.

[00:31:58] Anthony: Excellent. So Fred, before [00:32:00] we get to you, I want to point out that Michael gets an automatic plus 100 for choosing GM crews, but he also gets another plus 78 for using the word aspirationalism.

I’m not even sure if that’s a word, but I love it. So Fred, you’ve got quite the challenge. You’re running a deficit. Take it away.

[00:32:18] Fred: You’re familiar with the recycling of sewage debris. People use it as fertilizer.

Yeah, it’s

[00:32:25] Michael: everywhere. It’s actually, if you’re getting soil for your yard, it’s hard to avoid getting the human poop.

[00:32:32] Fred: Yeah, and it’s great. It gives you a good feeling that you’re recycling things. Unfortunately, it leaves lethal chemicals in your yard. Heavy metals. Heavy metals and forever chemicals and things like that.

[00:32:45] Volkswagen’s Safety Standards Critique

[00:32:45] Fred: I think that’s a lot like the, voluntary safety self assessment site that NHTSA set up.

It’s a rich source of things that kind of make you feel good, but it’s filled with lethal byproducts. So I [00:33:00] picked one of the examples from that, which is from Volkswagen. They have their VSSA on their website, and I’ve got a couple of quotes from it. So first they say, We intend to update our V. S.

A. as our story progresses. That sounds really good, except there’s no date on the V. S. A. So it’s going to be really hard to know when they’ve updated it. So that was a that’s a good start. They go on to say we welcome feedback from the public regulators and all stakeholders. But they don’t offer any means to do that.

Michael, I’m sure you’ve had lots of calls from them getting soliciting suggestions on how they could improve the safety, right? We yeah. Okay. In fact, I think I can hear your phone ringing right now. You just

[00:33:48] Anthony: don’t answer while you’re driving.

[00:33:49] Fred: Yeah, there you go. So moving on to design standards, this is a good one.

They say. Volkswagen safety system is designed in accordance with industry automotive safety standards and [00:34:00] regulations. Anthony, quick question. How many system safety design standards are there for self driving vehicles? Zero. There you go. Yeah! Basically they’re saying they designed it in regard to nothing.

They go on to quote, ISO 26262, Functional Safety for Road Vehicles, ISO 21448, Safety of the Intended Functionality, UNECR 155, that’s the United Nations European Standard. Which sounds really good, but unfortunately all of them are built on an unacceptable definition of safety. None of these standards are normative, meaning you’ve got to subscribe to them, so they’re all kind of advisory.

And none define safety except as a void. The definition of safety they’re using is, quote, safety is the absence of unreasonable risk, close quote. That’s not a design standard. [00:35:00] That’s just a property That safety must have, but how do you design to that? You can’t write that into an engineering specification that anybody can design to, for example, the atmosphere that we all live in there’s not defined as the absence of a vacuum, but the absence of a vacuum is a property that an atmosphere has to exhibit, right?

So it’s like saying safety is the absence of unreasonable risk. The atmosphere is the absence of unreasonable vacuum. Makes no sense. But it’s also true. So it’s a, it is a great gaslight criteria safety criteria while we design and test the bus, the ID buzz ad to recognize and respond to many situations.

We understand that the ID buzz ad will experience situations that could not have been anticipated to address these situations. We’ve implemented tools. to detect unknown situations in the surrounding environment. We will analyze these edge cases and use them as opportunities to [00:36:00] improve our ADS.

[00:36:01] Anthony: We will detect unknown situations.

[00:36:04] Fred: That’s I’m quoting that. Yeah.

[00:36:06] Anthony: Pre cognition stuff. Yeah.

[00:36:11] Fred: I’d buy more lottery tickets if I had that. The question is what criteria will be used by VA by a Volkswagen, since there are no regulations to determine that it’s level four vehicle is safe enough for initial testing or for determining.

When safety goals need modification, VSSA is silent. They don’t tell you what their safety goals are. They just tell you that they’ve got them. And then finally, the final quote here is, As we transition away from safety drivers, ADS will be responsible for system fallback and for achieving a minimal risk condition, MRC.

All safety relevant subsystems will be monitored continuously and provide active feedback. If an event arises yada, The safety of the passengers and all traffic participants [00:37:00] have the highest priority in the selection of the most suitable transition to minimal risk condition. The minimal risk maneuver ends in a minimal risk condition.

That sounds good. The only problem is that they don’t say what the definition of MRC is. And the minimal risk condition formulated by SAE and its J3016 best practices is not inherently safe, and any system that relies on SAE’s MRC is a safe harbor for fallback. which they have to do in the event of a fault or departure from the operational design domain, is fundamentally flawed.

Equating MRC with safety is no basis for a safe AV design. That leads me to the conclusion at its heart. VW’s VSSA does not describe their safety goals, does not adhere to any quantifiable safety standards, And it is an excuse and bullshitting the public into [00:38:00] believing that VW has public safety at the center of their AV development.

That’s just wrong. Hence my Gaslight nomination.

[00:38:09] Anthony: It started off really strong, talking about fertilizer. That was, you were getting up there. You mentioned a lot of acronyms. That’s minus some points, because, TikTok. But then, you came out okay there at the end, but I this week’s winner has to be me, because GM Cruise is gone.

[00:38:25] Fred: I don’t think you’re unbiased, Anthony.

[00:38:29] Anthony: I don’t think the voting public cares, okay? But hey. That’s

[00:38:32] Fred: a good point. That’s a good point.

[00:38:34] Anthony: Listeners, if you enjoy the dulcet tones of Fred Perkins voice, if you donate a significant amount of money Fred will record your answering machine message. If you still have an answering machine we’ll use some of your donation to, to recycle it, I don’t know. Who has a recycling machine? We’re going to record it in a wiggly, piggly parking lot. Oh boy. Anyway, let’s move on to the next story. Oh, this is a bad transition.

[00:38:59] Tesla Autopilot Lawsuit

[00:38:59] Anthony: [00:39:00] There’s an article titled, Family Blames Elon Musk for Son’s Death. While driving Tesla in autopilot mode. The family of a California man who died in a horrific crash while his Tesla was in autopilot mode is suing the electric car maker over claims by the company and CEO, Elon Musk, that its self driving tech had been perfected and was ready for the road.

So this is, we, this is another case where Someone bought a product based on the CEO of the company saying this is what the product does and Unfortunately, if you listen to the show, you know That the Tesla’s do not drive themselves and unfortunately in this case

[00:39:40] Michael: And if you listen to the show, you also know that Tesla’s have a terrible habit when they’re in autopilot of not recognizing the fact that there is a giant flashing fire truck in the road in front of them and plowing into the back of it, which is what happened here.

This just, things, this happened in 2023, I believe. So [00:40:00] there, the story is about a lawsuit that was recently filed by the family. And I believe the brother of the driver was killed. His brother was injured in the crash. It was in February 18th, 2023. And essentially they were on the interstate going down the road in autopilot vehicle.

did not see the fire truck that was in the lane in front of them. It was parked across two lanes of traffic. So it was in out in the actual road with the emergency lights on. It was diverting cars from another collision that was ahead. And. Unfortunately, the driver did not see the crash ahead.

I, apparently he was over relying on the Tesla technology to prevent this kind of thing from happening and it didn’t. And so it’s yet another case of, both driver complacency. Obviously the driver was, did not do a great job here. It’s, that, that’s what happens when you have a company like Tesla naming.[00:41:00]

Products, things like autopilot, full self driving and providing drivers and all of us really with false confidence in their product that results in tragedy when people overtrust it.

[00:41:12] Anthony: Sad news. Next up here’s one.

[00:41:14] State Traffic Laws and Safety

[00:41:14] Anthony: Hey guys, you already know the answer to this because you’ve done your homework. Which state has the worst, has the most dangerous traffic laws?

I know you’re thinking, hey, Montana, you can drive whatever speed you want, but no, not Montana. Wait, Fred, did you not read ahead? Oh, Fred, take a guess. Missouri, I

[00:41:33] Fred: think is what they said in the article. I did do my homework, Anthony. Damn it.

[00:41:37] Anthony: Yeah. Advocates for highway and auto safety. They reviewed state laws looking for specifically 18 laws that each state would have.

And Missouri was considered the most dangerous because it had only one of 18 laws in the books. And that single law allowing red light cameras was deemed invalid by the state Supreme court. That means since 2015, red light cameras have [00:42:00] only been operational in one town in Missouri named Hannibal, Missouri.

So what are these other 18 laws that the state of Missouri is just yeah, we ain’t doing this? I have a list.

[00:42:12] Fred: One of them is the recommended law that makes not wearing a seat belt a primary offense. In most states, it’s a secondary offense. So you have to stop for something else. And if they then discover, we’re going to seat belt, you can get ticketed for that.

So a lot of the laws are like that. In fact, I was surprised to see how low. On their list, Massachusetts was, where I happen to live, especially when you compare it to the excellent highway safety records that Massachusetts offers its citizens. That was interesting to me, but Massachusetts, like most states does not have a primary violation available for front seat use front seat belt use notice to have her back seat belt [00:43:00] use.

And these are among the laws that are recommended by the, yeah,

[00:43:07] Michael: and this is this is all drawn from the work of advocates for highway and auto safety, which goes through essentially all of the state laws that are, that have an impact on driver safety. They’re, we talk a lot about the federal laws and regulations on this show.

We don’t get as much into a lot of the state laws that are important. Things like seatbelt laws, motorcycle helmet laws, there’s a lot of, rear facing child seat laws booster seats Laws that require kids to be seated in the rear up through age 12, learners and driving permits and licensing nighttime driving restrictions, open container laws, ignition interlocks, text messaging, there’s just a big list of laws in every state that, that advocates keeps track of and does an excellent job of looking at every year [00:44:00] and trying to ensure that states where these laws haven’t been passed, get on the ball and pass them because there are significant life savings involved in getting some of these things onto the books in your state.

So Missouri came up very bad in the list and there’s a number of states that do pretty well. But I don’t think there was a state that’s perfect quite yet. Still some work to do on that front.

[00:44:27] Anthony: Amazing. All right. Last Story before we head into recalls.

[00:44:31] Child Safety and Car Theft

[00:44:31] Anthony: This is one from another friend of the show, kids in Car Safety.

The articles titled Nearly a dozen Cars Stolen With Kids Left Inside Over Thanksgiving. Oh my God. Yeah. At there was at least 11 such incidences over Thanksgiving where somebody stole a car and there was kids inside. And I’ve said it once, if not, I’ve said it a thousand times in the show. When you steal a car, you make sure there’s no children inside.

Okay. You’d look you’d check that [00:45:00] backseat.

[00:45:02] Michael: Yeah, and so we when we had Jeannette on the podcast It was almost two years ago. I think she’s

[00:45:09] Anthony: got

[00:45:09] Michael: to come back we talked about her experience where she were her husband and her were Carjacked and put in the trunk and Their child, I believe, was in the car seat in the back seat when the vehicle was stolen, but was left at their home, I believe, at the time.

So that was a case where, the child wasn’t unattended in the seat. But it shows you, kids in car safety which tracks this data. There’s tracking it because Jeanette herself has been in a similar experience and it 11 times around Thanksgiving. Giving, but also 107 children so far this year were left in vehicles that were subsequently stolen with the children inside, which, I’m [00:46:00] sure there are a lot of these victims that are ultimately reunited with their families, but there are also cases, where people driving stolen cars get into a lot of trouble and crash and other things.

So that threatens the kids inside. So just from a general perspective. You should never leave a child in the car unattended, period. Don’t, if, if you’re going somewhere where children aren’t allowed to get out of the car and go inside, You should do that, Aaron, when you don’t have your children with you.

It’s pretty simple. And it’s something that, every parent should follow because you just never know, beyond the chance of a car theft. There are a lot of other things that can happen to unattended children and vehicles that we’ve had to work on over the years. There are, power windows and rollaways and all sorts of things that can happen.

That bad things that can happen in a car with a child, not to mention leaving a child unprotected just generally is a bad idea.

[00:46:55] Anthony: Or they should change the laws and allow me to bring a child into a bar [00:47:00] so I can drive there, get drunk, and the kid hangs out and I give them, I give the kid the keys so everyone’s safe.

We’ll let, we’ll

[00:47:06] Michael: let you work on that

[00:47:07] Anthony: on your own time. Okay, fine.

[00:47:08] Fred: I think it’s it’s important to note that this is relative to young children because, a lot of times people have 15 year olds that they would really prefer disappeared.

[00:47:21] Anthony: Christ. No one’s going to carjack a car and it’s going to be a teenager in back.

The eye rolling will be unbelievable. Oh my God, we’re going where? Jeez. Nobody

[00:47:33] Fred: wants that. No thief is dumb enough to hijack a 15 year old.

[00:47:37] Anthony: Yeah.

[00:47:38] Michael: Another thing it’s probably worth noting in the article is that the numbers here peaked in 20 22, 265, dipped to 162 last year, and then apparently have dipped to 108 so far, 107 so far this year.

So that’s, I think that generally since [00:48:00] less cars are being. stolen. Now that the Hyundai and Kia patches out to about 70 percent of those vehicles, we’ve seen the rates of theft of those vehicles go down a little. I think we’re seeing the rates of car theft generally go down because of that, the spike that was caused by Hyundai and Kia is now somewhat abating, but still not anywhere near as low as it was before the problem started happening.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons for the drop in the number of People that were, children that were stolen along with the vehicle in the last two years.

[00:48:31] Anthony: That’s a positive note that this is declining. Love it.

[00:48:35] Vehicle Recalls: Chrysler, Honda, and Volkswagen

[00:48:35] Anthony: All right, on to recalls.

First up, Chrysler 317, 630 vehicles, the 2017 to 2018 Ram 3500 pickup. The Yeah, it’s all ram, that, rams, pickups, ram, pickups, there’s a whole subset of them. Loss of anti lock brake traction control [00:49:00] may cause the vehicle to crash without prior warning. Oh my god, this is horrible.

[00:49:06] Michael: It is horrible. That’s a pretty big recall.

So it’s 317, 000. These are the larger RAM pickups, the 2, 500 And essentially they have a brake hydraulic control unit that also impacts your interlock brake system, your electronic stability control system, your traction control system. So when there’s a failure in the brake hydraulic control unit that impacts all those, you.

Start to have a lot of problems controlling the vehicle when it fails. And so this is an investigation. This was a recall that was influenced by NHTSA. They started an investigation about two years ago, November, 2022 into this problem. And they’ve been meeting ever since reviewing engineering data.

That’s started putting a little more of a crunch on to Chrysler over this problem in the last few [00:50:00] months. So it’s Looks like NHTSA played a significant role in getting Chrysler to agree to this recall. A role that we hope they can continue to play in the coming years and in situations like this.

Owners are going to hear about this one starting in mid January, it looks like. And it looks like they’re going to replace Your hydraulic control unit with what they say is a pump motor brush material change. I don’t know what that means, they’re going to fix it.

[00:50:32] Anthony: It means it’s a pump.

It’s got a motor brush. Anyway next up, Honda, two hundred and five thousand. Thank you for that explanation, Anthony.

[00:50:41] Fred: That

[00:50:41] Anthony: really helps. It’s technical. I’ll talk slower. Honda, two hundred and five thousand, seven hundred and sixty vehicles. The 2023 to 2024 Honda Passports. Honda Pilots, and this could be a fuel fire.

What? Oh, no. They have an incomplete connection between the fuel filler neck tube and a fuel filler pipe. The [00:51:00] fuel filler Neck tube is connected to the fuel filler pipe and is connected to your shinbone. If a leak occurs in the presence of an ignition source, the risk of fire and or injury increased.

Oh.

[00:51:09] Fred: Oh, this is a bad one. Get this one fixed, folks.

[00:51:12] Anthony: Definitely.

[00:51:15] Michael: Yeah, this is a bad one. And I think it notes That, I don’t know if it notes in here, but you may be able to detect this one by, if you have fuel leaking in that area, you’re probably going to smell it while you’re filling up your gas tank, or right after you get home and you’re away from the pumps when there’s not a gas smell present in the air.

But owners should hear about this one relatively quickly in the next month. They’re not going to replace anything. Essentially what happened here. They didn’t properly connect the filler neck tube to the pipe, and they’re just going to make sure that the connection is made. So there’s no parts that have to be weighed for it’s this is a remedy that should be out and quick and available to owners very soon.

[00:51:56] Anthony: All right. Last up Volkswagen [00:52:00] 4, 616 vehicles. This is the 2022 to 2023 Audi Q5 and the 2022 Audi A7. And this is in rare circumstances, the high voltage battery modules may experience a thermal overload, possibly resulting in smoke or fire. Oh, that’s not great. And this is for the hybrid electrics.

[00:52:21] Michael: Yeah, this one’s kind of a mystery to me as to exactly when this problem occurs, they said there’d been four fire incidents that spurred on, the recall, but it doesn’t say whether the vehicles were parked, in a garage or out on the road at the time of the failures.

There was not a, Park outside warning issued along with this recall. But I would just to be safe. If you do have one of those vehicles, you would probably park outside. If that’s something that’s convenient for you in the meantime, because it looks like the remedy is going to take some time [00:53:00] from what I can tell.

They’re still trying to investigate the root cause of what’s going wrong with these battery modules. And that means that it could be months. If not more before any type of fix comes out. And it looks like they’re planning not on a fix that replaces these batteries, but a, an installation of new software that monitors the batteries.

So we’ll see how this turns out. This is this looks like a recall that might require owners to wait for some time, even well after the first owner notification date, which is January 24th, when owners should start hearing about it.

[00:53:37] Conclusion and Sign-Off

[00:53:37] Anthony: And now, listeners, I apologize to Mr. Fred Perkins, we ran out of time for this week’s TOW, I’m realizing it now, and it’s a good one, so we’re definitely going to do it.

Can we do Cybersecurity and Latency next week?

[00:53:49] Fred: I don’t know, Anthony, I’m in great demand, I’ll have to see if we can fit it in next week. I will make sure. This is a fast breaking world of AV safety. I was looking [00:54:00] forward to this one. There’d be a lot of issues here. And I want to point out that I said wiggly piggly before.

It’s not, it’s piggly wiggly. Oh, sorry about that folks.

[00:54:10] Anthony: Look, I want to cover that as long as GM crews doesn’t start up next week, we should have plenty of time to get to the towel as so listeners. Thank you. Like subscribe, tell your friends, please go to autosavedue. org, click on donate. That’s how we know that you love us.

Or just that’s how we keep them running. Until next week! Thanks, bye. Thank you for listening,

Bye.

[00:54:33] Fred: For more information visit www. autosafety. org