Distracted Driving Month and better safety tech

Introduction to the Podcast

Anthony: You are 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.

Good morning. Yes, it is a good morning. Yay, everybody out in we’re gonna start off with something positive today. How’s pos positivity? Sounds good. It’s worth a shot. Yeah. Okay.

NHTSA’s Distracted Driving Month

Anthony: This is NHTSA’s distracted driving month. Part of that is NHTSA has released their estimates for fatalities in 2024, and it looks like it’s decreased 3.8% compared to 2023.

That’s huge. The numbers are still ridiculously high. It’s, they’re estimating now is [00:01:00] 39,000, 3 45 people died in traffic crashes in 2024. But like I said, this is an almost 4% decrease from the prior year. We’re happy about that. Even a small decrease. Come on.

Fred: It’s hard to be happy about 39,000 some odd people dying.

Slightly more

Anthony: happy than 40,000 people.

Fred: That’s true. Marginal improvement. But still a lot of work left to be done. Agreed.

Anthony: Part of this is NHTSA has a, it’s actually a video that, cynical me. I enjoyed, told put the phone away and it’s a. It’s a well done video, I think, I don’t know if they’re running as an ad on TV or anything, or if it’s just on the internet where it shows basically what everybody listening to.

This is done at least once where you’re driving along and you’re looking at your phone and like people sneak in, the people propping it on the steering wheel and basically don’t do that ’cause you’re gonna cause a crash. You might survive, but the people you hit might not. [00:02:00] And so it’s we’re making slow progress.

Michael, look at me. Ly distracted.

The Issue of Distracted Driving

Michael: Yeah, distracted Driving is a gigantic issue. The NHTSA data on it, suggests that there were about 3,200 people killed and about 325,000 people injured in traffic crashes involving distracted drivers in 2023. That makes up a little less than 10% of the.

Crashes on the road. But the real issue here is that I think everyone tends to agree that distracted driving is vastly under-reported, right? It’s not something that drivers who are at fault are reporting to the police. It’s something that they’re hiding if they can. And, it, it distracted driving encompasses such a range of behaviors.

We’re not just talking about phones here. We’re talking about, using your touch screen in your vehicle while driving, using your radio and, messing with your climate [00:03:00] control, talking to passengers, eating, tending to a child or a pet in the backseat day about your high school sweetheart reaching for stuff around the car.

So anything that takes your cognitive processing away from the act of driving is distracted driving. And I think there are pretty good arguments that. The numbers of number of fatal crashes and injuries caused by these behaviors are far higher than what’s what’s reported and what, what.

Police are able to determine during crash report investigations. So it’s a huge problem.

Technological Solutions for Distracted Driving

Michael: And there are, when we’ve talked about driver monitoring here before, there are systems that can be put in cars that can ensure that the driver at least, focusing their eyes on the road, has their hands on the steering wheel, is doing the things that it takes to remain focused while in the vehicle [00:04:00] it’s not gonna stop daydreaming and things like that.

But as far as the physical activities that can be monitored by the vehicle, there are solutions either in place or on the way that can address those behaviors. And hopefully one day we can get those into cars and start protecting people a little better from these behaviors. Right now I. We’re almost wholly reliant on state laws around cell phone use.

There aren’t any state laws regulating whether you can reach for something, whether you can tend to your child. There are in some ways if you can prove that was going on. You can, make an argument that the person’s driving recklessly. But there aren’t specific ways to address all these different types of distracted human behavior, and it’s a battle.

I would argue that distraction probably contributes to more than 10,000 fatalities every year if you really dug down and looked at all the crashes that take place.

Fred: Yeah. But Michael, isn’t this, in some sense a distraction itself? Because [00:05:00] the biggest safety issues, and I’m not trying to minimize the people who are killed or injured because of distractions, but the biggest safety issues are associated with speeding and drunk driving.

And, we’ve talked about the technical solutions that can address this problem. We’ve talked about regulatory actions that can address those problems. And isn’t the focus by NHTSA self congratulatory to say, oh, look, we’re, we’re so good. We really want you to pay attention to the road, when in fact, the bigger issues are looming out there and.

Are just not being addressed by current NHTSA actions as well as they could be.

Michael: I don’t know how much NHTSA can do in this area. We filed a petition with NHTSA, God, almost 20 years ago now, that sought to ban the telematics devices usage while you’re in a vehicle. [00:06:00] NHTSA has some authority issues there, right?

They don’t have the ability to regulate cell phones and that sort of thing.

Anthony: What, I’m sorry what do you mean by there’s telematics devices?

Michael: We were trying to prevent vehicles at the time. Vehicles were just beginning to integrate cell phone the ability to talk on your cell phone and do other things on your cell phone into the cars, and we were trying to make sure that didn’t happen in a way that was unsafe.

Okay. But Mitsa doesn’t have the authority to, make everyone put an app on their phone that prevents them from using it while they’re driving. It’s it basically, they only have the authority to address things that are like OEM vehicles. And so we were trying to get at that the petition was denied by NSA because I just don’t think they.

We’re willing to open that can of worms. But, it could also be argued, Fred, that distracted, when you’re drunk, your alcohol problem, or when you’re on drugs your drug issues are doing a very similar thing to [00:07:00] distraction. You’re taking your mind off the road through a chemical means versus, movement or the other ways that the distraction occurs.

So think

back on TikTok,

Michael: I think when you Yeah, it’s vastly under reported. So it could be that distracted driving is every bit as big of a killer as driving while inebriated or driving while you’re, while you’re. I’m losing my mind here. Sorry. Okay. But it’s I think that it’s probably on equal footing in, in some respects.

The fact that it’s so under-reported means we don’t really know the full scope of the problem. We don’t know how many people died while eating McDonald’s cheeseburgers and not focused on the road in the past year, because that kind of thing is rarely going to be picked up or recorded in, in, in NSA’s fatality counts every year.

So it’s a really tough issue. NSA tends to hit on the cell phone part of it because we see a lot of young people who are [00:08:00] just getting into cars who haven’t really found the correct balance between cell phones usage and driving, which is, should be no cell phone usage while driving. And so I, I think it helps.

It really helps actually, that NHTSA highlights this and does public relation campaigns to, to show that, this is a huge problem and they also have, months that are dedicated to those other issues, anti speeding and driving while drunk or on drugs. So it’s not it’s, this is just the month where they focus on the distracted driving.

Anthony: I’ve noticed that recently Google’s going out of its way to distract me while driving. ’cause I’ll use Google Maps on my phone and the last, I don’t know, couple weeks, it’s, it’ll ask me questions like, Hey there’s cops reported ahead. Are they still there? And it wants you to click on the touch screen away from the driving I and be like, yes, still there.

Nope. Gone. Or X get this away. And then it gets, Hey, there’s traffic reported up ahead. Is it still there? There’s a stalled vehicle up ahead. Is it [00:09:00] still there? Yeah, and I had to, stop the car eventually and dig through multiple menus and find where I could turn this nonsense off. So I had to turn off every feature in Google Maps.

So I haven’t driven since. I have no idea if it still works, I’ll have to drive the old. I didn’t

Michael: realize Google Maps was doing that ways, obviously does that and asked you if the hazard is still there, or the animal or the whatever it is. Which is definitely a source of distraction,

Anthony: but definitely crazy.

Fred: Yeah. But just anything as a helpful hint to our listeners, just ignore that crap. Okay. It’ll take care of itself. It’s like adolescence and snow. It’ll take care of herself if you just wait long enough. Yeah. But it’s so annoying

Anthony: and frustrating. Cold and wet.

Smartphone Apps and Safe Driving

Anthony: So AAA has come out with a study and I don’t really, I.

Understand how this works, but the studies the articles titled Do Smartphone Apps Hold the Key to Safer Drivers? And it talks about how research shows that speeding aggressive driving and distraction contribute to a [00:10:00] significant number of crashes. And so it seems that there, they did a whole survey of people and it seems they’re thinking that they can have a smartphone track to see if you’re doing aggressive driving or not.

I don’t know, am I driving aggressively or am I mad at my phone? I’m throwing it around. I don’t know. How, I don’t understand exactly how this would work. It simple answer is it won’t. There we go. Next topic. Yeah,

Fred: Look at the world. The way the world works. Lower deaths are associated with speed restrictions and restructuring highways and city centers so that you separate pedestrians with physical barriers from speeding vehicles.

It’s got nothing to do with people looking at their cell phones, so I, again, I think this headline is just a distraction from the real issues that are associated with traffic safety in the United States.

Anthony: I felt it was a distraction too, while I was trying to read it on my phone going 50 miles down the [00:11:00] road.

Michael: Oh, come on. So what they’re do, what they’re doing here is, it’s not a cell phone. It, I don’t think there’s anything in this study that had people using their cell phones while driving. This study was basically you allow your cell phone to track what you’re doing. I use a in my family we use this app called Life 360 and it’s, I think it’s through Verizon’s cell phone service.

And at the end of every drive that my daughter takes, I. She’ll get a report that says, or at the end of every drive I take, I’ll get a report that says, okay, here’s what happened while you’re driving. You had rapid acceleration during this period. You had this hard braking here. You were speeding here.

And it counts those behaviors up. And, then at the end of every week, I get a report back that says, here’s your weekly driving summary. It says basically, you were a great driver or you had room for improvement, or you sucked. And what AAA is doing with [00:12:00] studying groups that use this information to see what incentivize people to do a better job driving and what improved driver behavior.

And I, I don’t think there’s really any surprise here. That 67% of the participants reported that the tactic that most likely changed their behavior was the potential to earn money driving. So if effectively they were rewarded for improving their driving week over week based on the behaviors recorded by these apps also, they found that the weekly driving feedback and the dashboard that, let them know, Hey, last week you drove terrible.

People reported, there’s a problem there. People don’t evaluate their driving grade, but they reported, 45% that the dashboard coming to them weekly incentivize ’em to change their behavior. 53% reported that the feedback via text message incentivize the, to change their behaviors for [00:13:00] the good.

Maybe there’s something to this, that it’s almost like a game in some ways. Every week you try to get better if you’re getting paid. Apparently that’s something that can really incentivize people to think about their driving behaviors. And we see this in the way that the insurance companies have rolled out some of their monitoring programs where, these are the same metrics they’re looking at the insurance company.

Hard and hard braking, rapid acceleration, speeding to determine whether or not, you qualify for discounts on your insurance. Progressive and a number of other companies have rolled out programs that allow drivers to sign up and have their driving behavior monitored by their insurance companies in the hopes that they could be rewarded for their behavior.

There’s some commercials that you might’ve seen during, on Sunday afternoons during football about that. So it’s, this is something that could work. I guess the question is, where’s all that money gonna come from to pay these people to drive safer? I’m not sure if the industry is interested in, in, in subsidizing that effort.

Maybe the insurance industry could dig in a little [00:14:00] deeper on that, but I don’t know how interested they are in, paying people to drive safely. But it’s an interesting study and it shows, at least shows some of the things that could be done via cell phones, which we all have on us to ensure that people are driving more safely and to try to improve their behavior.

Fred: Sure. Thank you. But you gotta assume that if they’re I actually like working with your younger guys and your unled optimism. Michael’s bonds

Anthony: are a big brother, let’s be honest here.

Fred: But, look at the insurance industry. If they have a profit margin, that is their target.

The only way they can raise money to pay these relatively safe drivers is to tax the rest of us to generate the revenue that they’re gonna hand over to these relatively safe drivers. I okay. I’m all for safety. I’m not necessarily all for paying higher rates so that they can provide incentives to people to do the right thing.

Have you considered stop driving

Anthony: into deer?[00:15:00]

So I considered using one of these apps ’cause I was like, we’ve talked about this before and I thought this is a really good idea. But then I thought about it, just the environment I live in, they’re, to get on and off certain roads, you have to do hard acceleration. If you don’t, there’s no way you’re getting on.

And the only times I’ve ever done hard braking is not because of something I did, it’s because of what some asshole in front of me did, and I’m saving our lives. So I’m like that’s gonna count against me. Either that or I can only drive at three in the morning when there’s less traffic.

No need for crazy acceleration. Yeah, I’d be

Michael: interested in a comparison of the insurance statistics on those types of behaviors, in New York City versus in, COE d’Alene, Iowa or Idaho or somewhere like that, where you, it would be really interesting to see how the same driver fares and different driving environments and what their statistics look like.

Anthony: ’cause in here I’m trying to get to a supermarket out there [00:16:00] and in Idaho I might be trying to get to my militia meeting. Okay.

Speed Limiters and Traffic Safety

Anthony: Hey, so we were talking about, okay, if we control speed, we reduce speed, we can reduce deaths. We’ve talked about this a hundred times. Fred claimed there’s something called physics.

No one knows if that’s true or not. That says this is the truth. The the French people over at. They have put out a big change for their Clio drivers. Clio is a type of car that kinda looks like a Toyota Corolla hatchback, but it’s smoke cigarettes and eats cheese. They’re not all winners but they have put in a speed limiter that will limit the maximum speed of these vehicles to 68 miles per hour.

I don’t know that, what that translates into kilometers per hour. About a hundred. It’s roughly a hundred. Okay. And five or so. So this is this is pretty cool. So you can still use your eight ass and you can still use your cruise control and whatnot. But it will limit the cars to speed, which, sounds like a good idea.

This car would be useless in the state of Connecticut where everybody [00:17:00] drives like a goddamn maniac. But

Michael: it would be useless and, it would be useful in America, but nobody would buy it. I don’t think this is happening in the uk. Where I think there’s probably I don’t even know.

We’re gonna see how Reno fares with the system. But functionally what they’re doing is something that, we’ve made this point on a number of occasions on the podcast. Why do manufacturers allow you to set your cruise control at rates that are far above the speed limit? There’s a argument that you should be able to set it within, five miles per hour, seven miles per hour, the speed limit and speed a little.

There are. A lot of systems out there that allow you to set not just your cruise control, but your a DAS systems, your adaptive cruise control, and the convenience driving, setting those systems to speeds that are well above the speed limit. And we think that should be limited, right?

You shouldn’t be able, you shouldn’t be able to program your vehicle to break the law. [00:18:00] And unfortunately, that’s the way that cruise control has been made forever. And that’s the way that a lot of the a DA systems that are coming out operate. They don’t say, Hey, you can’t set your, you can’t set a DS up.

You can’t use autopilot, for instance when you’re going over the speed limit. So it’s a programmed end function that allows drivers to break the rules of the road, which I. We’ve seen NHTSA do recalls on other things like that. Tesla had to do a recall because it was rolling through stop signs.

Why aren’t they having to do a recall? ’cause they’re allowed to set their speed at reckless dr at rates that could be considered reckless driving in certain states. I, this is the type of technology that I don’t think America is willing to accept at this point. This is essentially a governor.

You’re, we have states with speed limits that are, 12 miles per hour higher than the maximum speed that these renos can travel. So that’s, this is something that obviously is taking place in another [00:19:00] country ’cause I don’t think it would work here.

Anthony: There’s a road I have to drive on regularly where there’s, the police always hang out on it.

So that’s why I like using eight as there. ’cause the speed limit’s 25 miles per hour. I set it for 25 miles per hour and watch every car behind me. Get angry. It’s unbelievable, but it’s like a No, that’s a thing. Yeah, it’s a tight residential street where the UPS truck will take up an entire lane.

There’s children walking around, but the police are always hanging out on this. At times they’ve done the as your car inspected check. But I watch people pull over regularly and, a couple times a month I’ll drive down this road, set it right there. ’cause I’m like, there’s no issues here.

I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna be one. They pull over and invariably someone will get behind me flashing their lights, honking their horn being like, come on, I wanna kill that kid. Let’s go. So I don’t know what to

Michael: No, that’s a huge problem for, driverless cars frustrate people because of their sticking to the speed limit.

And I think it was even noted, maybe it was the, in Insurance [00:20:00] Institute when they. Looked at intelligent speed assistance and staying around the speed limit is going to trigger people who want to speed.

Fred: Anthony, are you sure they’re not just congratulating you on your safe approach to public safety?

That’s

Anthony: a good point. I am getting the Hawaiian good luck sign.

Fred: Yeah, and there’s probably getting, your number one sign from time to time as well. That’s

Anthony: absolutely it’s all how you

Fred: look at it, I think.

Anthony: Yeah, whatever. I’m not getting a ticket. ’cause I have a valid driver’s license, so I, there’s this article we passed around from the New York Times where I asked the question ’cause we have, there’s technology right now.

If you’ve getting. Convicted of DUIs and whatnot, you’ve gotta blow into the pipe and before your car will say, yeah, you’re sober enough to drive, or You’re smart enough to get a 6-year-old to blow into this pipe before you got into your car. Don’t do that if you have one of these in your vehicles.

And so I asked Michael, I was like, Hey isn’t there [00:21:00] something where you have to like, insert your driver’s license in the car and just then you can see, hey, is this a valid driver’s license? Is it active? Can you drive the car? There’s no such thing. And I’ve been in hotel rooms where it’s confused me.

’cause you have to stick the hotel key in a wall socket for the lights to work. Wow. Yeah, that is confusing. But, and then you look like an idiot. You have to go on the front desk my lights don’t work. And they come up and they’re like, here you go sir. And you’re like, ah yeah, that’s so that doesn’t exist for cars.

And that’s unfortunate because quoting from this New York Time article. Miriam Yami should not be driving at all, but on Saturday, even with her license suspended, miss Yami, a 3-year-old professional wig maker and social media influencer, we needed that got behind the wheel of a blue Audi sedan. Her trip down Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn ended in three deaths out of a 30 5-year-old woman and two of her children’s age eight and five.

And so this is like she’d racked up over $10,000 in [00:22:00] fines for parking and speed camera violations and speeding in school zones, failing to stop at red lights and just being a shit driver. And now, unfortunately, people are dead, it seems in my mind, why not a little thing just pop your driver’s license in there.

I

Michael: mean, there’s another thing that I think would is being passed as we speak in states. I think it was Virginia a couple weeks ago became over summer, the first state in America to do something similar to the alcohol interlock device that you’re talking about. But it is basically a speeding not an interlock device, but it’s intelligent speed assistance we’ve discussed many times before, but it’s active intelligence, speed assistance.

So rather than just the driver getting a warning or an a cascading series of warnings, the faster they go, they have to drive a reno. This tech? In some ways, this technology limits the vehicle to either at the speed [00:23:00] limit there’s a bill being proposed in New York that’s five miles per hour over the speed limit.

But it is actively limiting drivers from exceeding the speed limit. And it’s in Virginia, if you get a reckless driving. Ticket. Your license will be suspended, but the judge has the option to allow you to continue to drive and restricted, like to work and to necessary functions, right?

But you have to have this device installed on your vehicle that prevents your. Car from exceeding the speed limit that was passed, signed in the law by governor Youngin about a, I think a week or two ago. And then last week Georgia passed a very similar law that’s going to allow that to take place in Georgia.

Now New York is proposing this law as well. So we’re seeing a movement to get, this isn’t the intelligence speed assistance with Europe has, which is, you can turn off every time you get in the vehicle. This is basically [00:24:00] forcing vehicles to stay around the speed limit, which is something I think a lot of us could use.

I, when we discuss intelligence speed assistance, I often bring up the fact that problem speeders are going to ignore the bells and whistles. They’re going to turn the technology off if that’s an option every time they get into these vehicles. And ultimately, while the technology can help drivers who want to be good, understand when they’re exceeding speed limits and, reign in their behavior, it’s not going to impact the people who truly want to speed.

And the people who think that speeding is one of their many freedoms not listed in the constitution. These are good things that are happening in Virginia, Georgia. If Governor Kemp signs the bill and hopefully in New York and hopefully more states are going to get onto this and get on top of people who are racking up speeding tickets.

Speeding Violations and Enforcement

Michael: We saw this problem in Washington, dc resulting in a collision on Rock Creek Parkway a couple years ago [00:25:00] that killed a couple of people because this person had racked up thousands of dollars in speeding fines and nothing was ever done to find them or to stop them from driving Appears the same things happened in New York.

We just really need to focus on enforcing speed violations and getting these people off the road.

Anthony: Michael, is there a limit you think, in terms of the number of tickets someone gets or the dollar amount or what’s the threshold there?

Michael: If you see a vehicle exceeding the speed limit by 30 or 40 miles per hour on a camera, I think you have a duty right then to go after that person.

Okay. In some way. Take away their license plate, do get them off the road, get them, get one of these systems into their vehicle so that they can’t do that anymore. It’s, the data is there, it’s live, it’s coming in. This car was just speeding at a very advanced rate on a road in your jurisdiction.

Obviously there are going to be some, law [00:26:00] enforcement can’t go after every single speeder, but the worst of the worst, and especially people who are racking up multiple violations at high speeds, I don’t understand what’s stopping. We have license plate readers everywhere. We have registered addresses for these cars.

I don’t understand what’s stopping law enforcement from going after these persistent speeders who are really at this point. And the data at a as big or bigger threat as drunk driving.

Anthony: Okay. The reason I ask is, ’cause in the New York Times article I wasn’t aware that all of these speed camera and parking violation data, it’s all public data and there’s a website called How’s my Driving?

And you can enter into anyone’s license plates and pull it up. And so I did that with my own license plate. There’s this woman I live with who good. It was excessive speeding. None of these are excessive speeding, which is great. They’re, there was just that one speed camera put in and she kept doing 30 and a 20 and yeah.

They’re just like, it’s enough of them. Great. They’re not gonna take away my driver’s, my license plates.

Michael: Yeah. I don’t think they’re gonna come after you for 30 and [00:27:00] a 20. Damn I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me. If you have multiple, this the car that was involved in the crash and the fatalities in New York in the story, I believe had, multiple viola.

Yeah. Multiple school zone violations, which are a pretty big red flag. The driver’s not paying any sort of attention and doesn’t care about human life all that much. So we’re really just going after the worst of the worst who caused, an outsized proportion of the fatalities and injuries on our roads.

Anthony: Got it. What do you got, Fred?

Advanced Vehicle Safety Technologies

Fred: I’m gonna slip into the tower here because Anthony asked the receptive question about why can’t you turn how would you, how did you say that exactly, Anthony?

Anthony: Oh, so this, my, my inspiration for your towel was yesterday. I’m driving home on the highway and every now and then I have a bit of a death wish and I just think, Hey, I’m doing 50.

I was doing the speed limit. I’m fine. But I was thinking, Hey, can I take my steering wheel and just yank it all the way to the left? One, would my car allow me to do that? And two, would it be awesome? [00:28:00] Okay, so

Fred: first question is, would your car allow you to do that? Sadly, the answer is yes. Awesome. Second question is, would that do some terrible damage?

And that answer is probably yes, what I flip like in a movie. But that leads me to an extension of what Michael was saying, which is technology’s being developed now to make cars self-driving, I’ve heard. And in order to do that, you have to be aware of speed limits. You have to be aware of the performance limits of the vehicle.

A lot of things. And there’s some arguments about whether or not they are capable of considering everything to operate safely. But a very simple extension of that technology would be to act as a supervisory driver on, standard vehicles so that it basically acts as an anti-collision warning system and anti-collision mitigation.

So with such a system [00:29:00] in place, Anthony, if you drove down the street and yanked the steering wheel to the left, when you’re going 60 miles an hour the car would say, nah, you can’t do that. And it would either put the brakes on or it would steer you straight ahead or do something else. There are anti-collision warning systems in all kinds of airplanes, right?

There’s terrain warning systems. They have stall warning systems. There’s a lot of things they do in there to keep people alive, and they operate automatically and they don’t interfere with the human operation of the vehicle, except when the human operator’s trying to do something stupid or hazardous.

There’s absolutely no push anywhere that I know of in, in America or anywhere in the world actually, to take this adaptive driving technology that’s being developed for self-driving vehicles and turn it into a supervisory safety collision avoidance system for standard vehicles you could easily [00:30:00] put on a map in front of the driver, the road ahead of you, and identify with colors or some other way the intersections that you cannot turn to because the steering radius is too small, you’re going too fast.

Somehow that maneuver would be outside of the safe operating envelope of the vehicle and. As we discussed briefly earlier, Michael, yeah, you could stop the vehicle if it’s gonna do something stupid. You could anticipate that you’re driving too fast for the hairpin, turnip ahead. All of this technology’s currently available, and I think that would go a long way towards solving a lot of the traffic problems.

We’ve talked about somebody driving off the road because they’re sleepy. If your car senses where the road is and it’s sensing that you’re headed in a bad direction regardless, excuse me, regardless of the state of your own attention, the vehicle [00:31:00] could sense that you’re entering a hazardous area because it’s gonna violate either the safe operating envelope of the car or the particular circumstances of the, hairpin turn or right way intersection, or there’s a dog in the middle of the road.

All these kinds of things that you might overlook. Could be there in a supervisory computer that would not in any way interfere with your normal human operation of the vehicle. That’s a pretty long answer to your question, Anthony, but it seems like something that’s is a tremendous market opportunity for somebody to put in a car and say, Hey, this car is just like the car that you drove yesterday, except it’s better because it may sense a dangerous situation that you’re not aware of and keep you from dying.

That seems like a pretty good sales. Technique to me, but

Michael: yeah, Brad, yeah I’ll add to that that there’s, it’s not like this is an idea that’s out of [00:32:00] left field. The electronic stability control functions a lot like that, right? Oh, yeah, exactly.

Vehicle Safety Innovations

Michael: That’s right. It detects whether when the vehicles losing control and applies brakes on certain wheels to help steer the vehicle and slow it down and prevent it from crashing.

This is something that has reduced the rollover rate significantly and saved thousands and thousands of lives since it was mandated by nhtsa. So I, I don’t see why we can’t have. Things, other things that can do the same type of life saving work inside of our vehicles.

Fred: And the software has been done.

The software is developed, it’s out there. It’s just a question of putting different parameters into play. You engage your vehicle. The yeah, where just the antis swerve, Michael is right there. The automatic emergency braking is already there. The pedestrian automatic emergency braking is coming right along.

They’re making some tentative forays into this arena.

Market Opportunities for Safety Software

Fred: But I [00:33:00] don’t understand why, Waymo or Google that owns Waymo doesn’t go into this hammer in tongs because instead of looking at a thousand vehicles a year, they want to put out, they’d be looking at a million vehicles a year and a million copies of this software.

It’s a huge market opportunity for somebody.

Anthony: This was an amazingly thoughtful answer to an amazingly stupid question. This was great. ’cause let’s be on my, it was a dumb question. This was just me distracting my brain while driving. But I loved your response.

Listener Engagement and Support

Anthony: Listeners, if you have similar dumb questions that you want Fred to challenge Fred to come up with a very thoughtful responses, send ’em to [email protected].

Hey, and while you’re taking a break from the podcast and you’re like, Hey, yeah the stock market hasn’t totally tanked, right? Go to auto safety.org and click on donate. And that would be great. But I think you’re right, Fred. ’cause I’ve pointed out a thousand times in the show that the economics for [00:34:00] a Waymo, for a GM cruise, rest in peace and similar things, the, it’s not there that it doesn’t work.

But if you were going to sell this as an add-on to a car, I think Volvo or somebody else who like realize we can sell safety. They’d be making bank off of this. ’cause you’re right, the software’s already done. And you know what the expensive part of software is just doing it once. Copying it’s frees, right?

That’s

Fred: right. And the other thing is, it doesn’t have the requirement to be perfect in this application, right? It just has to make people better. It just has to make people safer. And that’s the model of the show. The perfection that they’re trying to achieve with self-charging vehicles is never gonna happen.

So why don’t you take your investment away Waymo into the software and put it someplace where you can actually earn some money. Thank you. There we go. You’re welcome. [00:35:00]

Michael: Yeah. Ram and license it to manufacturers and charge them. Charge them by a subscription.

Anthony: You can definitely do that. I’m, I am getting a subscription to nautical charts ’cause they’re updated daily with weather and stuff.

I don’t see any reason why not.

Waymo’s PR Campaign Critique

Anthony: But this I think leads us right into the Gaslight illumination. Fred, I’m gonna guess yours is gonna be Waymo and I am gonna guess that you’ve you can just say Waymo and be done.

Fred: I’m gonna ask a couple of background questions to you guys. Did you ever see a tow truck speeding to a crash site?

Yes. How did you know, how did you know it was speeding to a crash site? Because it passed me

Michael: and I was going to speed limit or a little above.

Fred: But was there anything else characteristic about the tow truck that made you think? If lights

Michael: were flashing lights.

Fred: I see. Okay. Yeah. Alright.

Follow up question. Did you ever see police directing traffic around a crash site where this tow truck perhaps arrived? Yes. And [00:36:00] what are the things that you see there and how did you know flashing lights? You

Michael: see flashing lights, you’ll probably see a flare too on the road, right on occasion, that kind of thing.

Anything to attract the attention of oncoming traffic.

Fred: And it’s usually some physical obstructions. The police will park their car across the lane or a fire truck will do that, right? Fair physical barriers, flashing lights, distinctive a signature of that scene. That’s all to protect the public from unsafe interaction with dangerous machinery and operations, right?

Nobody wants to allow a car to get in between a tow truck and the vehicle is trying to pull by ducking under the cable. That would be a stupid thing to do. So now Waymo’s got a campaign running and did you, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a driverless Waymo approaching an intersection, but Waymo had somebody take a picture of that and have you ever seen evidence of a Waymo acting [00:37:00] erratically or going the wrong way in traffic or Yes, perhaps you’re running into a telephone pole repeatedly so stuff happens, right?

But in this new PR campaign a YouTube video shows a Waymo vehicle in an urban intersection approaching about a half dozen pedestrians and numerous vehicles ahead. The text on this m image reads. Quote, witnessed a young man give a small thank you wave to the Waymo I’m in for stopping as they cross the street.

That’s so nice. Superimposed on the images, the picture of a cute nine year old-ish Cora. Her relationship to the Q CCC is not provided nor is the person giving the affirmative waive. But I guess we’re supposed to think that her 9-year-old appraisal of Waymo safety is self-evident Proof of safety could,

Anthony: I think that’s an amazing advertisement for the PR company that came up with is nonsense.

I do.

Fred: And what could possibly be more compelling objective evidence of [00:38:00] safety standard compliance than that. There’s no barriers, there’s no warning signs, there’s no protected travel lanes as would be required in any other context for hazardous machine operation in public spaces. This really stands out to me.

There’s another UCL YouTube clip that I’ve seen and I have this reference. I’ll send it to you for posting. It shows Katie Kerick Gidley quote. Oh my gosh, this is so great. Close quote, writing in a Waymo to an interview with Waymo’s Vidia, miss Vinia, Srin Vasan, excuse the pronunciation. You need to subscribe to her podcast to see the interview.

I didn’t do that, but I’m confident that relentlessly addressed with the hard hitting journalism for which she’s known, the outstanding and unresolved Waymo safety issues.

Gaslight of the Week: Waymo

Fred: So Waymo has apparently decided that cute videos about the Waymo tagline, [00:39:00] future of Transportation is a better strategy than actually addressing the real public safety issues caused by its vehicles and therefore wins this week’s nomination for Gaslight of the Week.

Anthony: That’s pretty good. What I, my takeaway from that is that the Waymo Division thinks that the leadership at Alphabet are assholes, and we can pull this obvious bullshit on them and they’ll go along with it. Hey, so if you happen to be in the C-Suite at Alphabet, are you gonna fall for this con? ’cause you keep doing to billions and billions of dollars a year.

Michael, what’s your gaslight?

Gaslight of the Week: NHTSA

Michael: All right, so I’m going back to the NSOs 2024 preliminary fatality estimates, and there is a quote from NHTSA chief counsel Peter Simshauser, who started out great, ended on a gaslight. So he says it’s encouraging to see the traffic fatalities are continuing to fall from their covid pandemic highs.

[00:40:00] Yes. Traffic road fatalities have remained significantly higher than a decade ago, and America’s traffic fatality rate remains high relative to many peer nations. Absolutely great statement. Yes, the traffic fatalities remain really high. If you look back at 2013 and 14, I think we were down into around 32,000 road fatalities for those years.

We’re still nudged right up against 40,000 even after the good report for last year. But it goes on to stay, to reduce fatalities further. U-S-D-O-T is working closely to partner with the law enforcement community to enhance traffic enforcement on our roads, including speeding impairment, distraction, and lack of seatbelt use.

That’s where it goes off the rails because, first of all, the US DOT and Itta already commit, millions and millions of dollars in grants to the law enforcement community every year. In fact those grants may outweigh the amount that NHTSA is [00:41:00] spending on research, rulemaking and enforcement of its own.

So that’s nothing new, but they’re saying, nsa, what NSA’s failing on here is they cite speeding impairment, distraction, and lack of seatbelt use. NHTSA Europe already has intelligence, speed assistance going into its cars. Now it’s required. NHTSA nothing. Supposedly, they’re still researching it.

Nothing’s going on there. I don’t expect anything to happen with intelligence, speed assistance. Under this administration, things don’t look good there. We see states having to fill in the gaps. We just talked about that in the podcast impairment. NHTSA put out an advance notice of proposed rulemaking on alcohol detection.

The technology is there right now to start detecting the worst of the worst for alcohol impairment on the roads. NSA shuffling its feet, not getting that mandated, not getting that in cars anytime soon. Distraction driver monitoring could address this. Nsa not even touching that right now. Not even thinking [00:42:00] about mandating that right now.

They’re continuing their messaging or lying on state enforcement, but they’re not doing anything technologically to get that stuff into cars and prevent it. Lack of seatbelt use, NHTSA took. Just finished taking 10 years plus to get rear seatbelt reminders into vehicle. So perhaps rather than continuing to, work with the law enforcement community, which can only do so much to enhance traffic safety, NHTSA needs to get on the ball with its rulemakings, with its enforcement and make sure that these problems are being taken care of in the area in which it should be doing more to regulate the vehicle itself versus, traffic enforcement in the states and police enforcement.

And that is my gaslight of the we. That’s a good one. That’s a good one.

Anthony: Yeah we like that one.

Gaslight of the Week: Trevor Milton

Anthony: Fred’s ahead ’cause it’s Waymo and I’m scoring this but my gaslight this week is gonna be a little guy named Trevor. That’s [00:43:00] right. Trevor Milton, he founded a company called Nicola not a throat lozenge company, but they were supposed to be a ev truck company where they’re trying to be self-driving to, I think they were gonna be self-driving ev 18 wheelers.

Michael: It sounds like he would’ve promised anything you were willing to buy.

Anthony: Absolutely. So basically he was Elon without the checkbook. ’cause what this guy did is, and don’t fact check me on this, ’cause I’m gonna get details a little wrong, is he’s Hey it’d be cool if we had a self-driving ev, futuristic truck.

And his background was like, Elon not an engineering. But he said what he did essentially went on the equivalent of Fiverr, hired somebody in some Eastern Europe company to be like, Hey, draw me this cool picture. And they did. And then he went to. People with more money than brains and said, look what we’re building.

I have this. And they, these people are like, here you go, somebody who has no experience with anything. Here you go. We’ll give you a bunch of money and you do this. [00:44:00] And the thing they produced was a. They wheeled a truck that they didn’t even make up a hill, and then rolled it down a hill and said, look, it’s working.

Isn’t that truck working? It’s great, man. It’s so cool. This was fraud, a hundred percent fraud. And he’d been sentenced to four years in prison, was fined a million dollars. He’d been appealing this case. And he went to another con artist who’s a little too heavy on the makeup Donald Trump, and said, Hey this the judges, they’re the activist judges.

They’re after me. I did this con like you’ve done and pardon me. And he went, you’re a good boy. Buy my meme coin. And Dominus, Bob Bicu, you’re pardoned. So that’s a multi levered, multi-layered gaslight ’cause it’s it’s a nesting doll of assholes. That’s my answer. And and I win.

Because

Fred: that’s a good one. We’re Do you have to go tomorrow, Lago, to find these stupid rich people? Because I’ve got a lot of bad ideas. [00:45:00] I’d like to get over financed.

Anthony: I’ve got a ton of them cars that only turn left at 50 miles per hour.

Fred: There you go. That’s a good one. Because

Anthony: the left of liberals, they’re out to get me.

Oh boy. Hey, I know listeners, you’ve been patient, you’ve been waiting for it the entire time.

Tesla Updates and Lemon Laws

Anthony: What’s the latest Tesla update? They suck. Actually this is a fun little aside. My wife was in Vogue the other day. She was in Vogue Magazine. That’s right. She was holding up a sign that said, fuck Musk.

That’s right. And they got the back of her head. But the entire sign got a serious one here. So people are like, ah, I don’t want my cyber truck ’cause it’s been recalled eight times. And people think I’m a Nazi, so how do I get rid of this thing? And the challenge is that they try to go back to the dealership and the Tesla dealer’s we don’t want it.

Don’t bring it here and you can’t sell it. ’cause no one will give you anywhere near the value that you’ve paid for it. So some Tesla dealers are [00:46:00] saying file a lemon law complaint on it. Now. That’s interesting. Michael, do you happen to know anything about lemon loss?

Michael: Lemon laws are an awesome thing that, that came about in the late eighties through the nineties.

And there’s one about every state, although some state lemon laws are terrible, don’t work that great. Some states are great. And essentially they’re gonna protect you if you buy a lemon, which is defined depending on the state you’re in. It could be a vehicle that fails two or three times in the first year, first 18 months, or has one critical safety issue.

And so assuming that these cyber trucks, if you’re on a cyber truck, you continue to have the same problem again and again within the first year or 18 months or two years of ownership, you can take that vehicle back to the dealer and say, look, this is a lemon. I meet the criteria under the state’s lemon law, you’ve gotta buy it back.

Which is, interesting that, Tesla wouldn’t take them as trade-ins and. [00:47:00] Forced consumers into the lemon law because I think Tesla probably stands to lose more, having to pay back or buy back these vehicles under the lemon law. And then when they do that, in most states you’re going to have a brand on the title of the vehicle saying you this is a lemon, which is gonna prevent it from being resold down the road.

So it’s really odd that approach. I don’t really understand why Tesla’s doing it that way, I also don’t understand why they built the cyber truck in the first place. So nothing really makes sense over there,

Fred: Michael, isn’t there a isn’t there on Washington based non-profit that is uniquely associated with the proliferation of lemon laws?

Michael: That, that would be us. And you can see it right in our logo. The Lemon that is, was a big movement by us and some other consumer advocates. Back in the day we published the Lemon book and, even what to Do with Your Bad Car, a number of, back in the day when people used to read books.

We published a lot of materials for consumers. We collected [00:48:00] consumer stories and went to legislatures all over America to get lemon laws passed. And they’ve been a great success despite a number of states trying to trim lemon law protections back. I’m looking at you, Gavin Newsom in California last year.

The Lemon Laws have been incredibly successful and are a great. A kind of a great backstop for consumers when they’re buying a new car. Some states have used Carle laws, but new carleen laws have been a great success for consumers.

Anthony: So you can go to auto safety.org and click on lemon laws and find all about the lemon laws in your states and you can dig in and learn history like the Moss Magnuson Act and a whole bunch of other things that I vaguely remember.

’cause I am not the resident expert, Michael Brooks is. Michael, right?

Michael: It’s the Magnuson Moss Act. So you proving

Anthony: your point there. So you’re saying, wait, so a. I can keep bringing the, my, my cyber truck back if I have the same issue, not new issues. So what if it depends on the

Michael: stake? Oh, so like some states you have to [00:49:00] have, like two or three or four reoccurrences of the same problem.

Okay. Basically,

Michael: if the dealership can’t fix that problem, your car is presumed to be a lemon. Also, a, a large number of states have a safety clause where if you have one incident of a a life threatening safety issue in your vehicle, the manufacturer may not even get a chance to repair or they have one chance and they have to repair or it can be declared a lemon.

Anthony: Could one of the problems be say, Hey I managed to collect a hundred thousand dollars and buy this car. Now the problem is I have no friends.

Michael: I, I don’t think that would qualify. No.

Anthony: Oh they don’t let me go to Yeshiva anymore. Is that part of it? No.

Fred: The problem is that having no friends is not uniquely associated with owning a cyber truck.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of other, there are many other ways to accomplish that goal

Anthony: by any other Tesla. Speaking of which so Tesla, the Model Y, which is [00:50:00] surprisingly was the bestselling vehicle in the world last year, two years ago. No. Wasn’t ev Maybe bestselling Ev. No, sorry. Bestselling ev.

Yes. We’re you’re right. But now they can’t sell any of them because you used to be able to go on Tesla’s website and be like, oh, can I get this? And we’ll tell you how soon it’s available. And people started noticing, oh, they’re all available immediately. And that’s clearly pointing out that there’s excessive inventory on these dealer lots.

And so what did Tesla do? They hid that. So they won’t tell you if one’s available anymore. ’cause people are pointing out that the emperor has no close. So that’s yeah, just,

Michael: Just desserts. That’s really all I had to say on that. Yes.

Anthony: And then the the last Tesla thing we have here is from futurism, which has a really cool font.

An article titled There’s something very sketchy going on with self-driving, Teslas running down motorcycles, and I think it’s because [00:51:00] of video games and, and Elon Musk, but it could be something else quoting from the audience. I,

Michael: I, I think it’s because of the bad, that they, we’ve continued to see Teslas hitting motorcycles when they’re on autopilot.

This article looks at this, the data that’s been uploaded to NTA through the standing general order and found I think five motorcycle fatalities. I on autopilot, I’ve gotten calls from professional motorcyclists who say they have been cut off multiple times by Tesla’s engaged with autopilot engaged or full self-driving engaged, and it’s.

It goes back to what we’ve talked about ad nauseum, which is the Tesla’s relying on cameras and not lidar, not other systems. They don’t have sensor fusion. They don’t have a lot of the things that are gonna be necessary for safe autonomous operation, and yet we’re allowing them to just go on roads and turn this stuff on and not recognize motorcyclists and kill them.

It’s a problem. It’s something that, that NHTSA hasn’t done enough in its [00:52:00] enforcement activity to stop. Tesla’s not doing enough to make sure that it’s seeing motorcyclists among, and if it can’t see motorcyclists you gotta question whether it’s gonna see bicyclists and other pedestrians.

So it’s a huge problem. And I think it goes back to a lot of what we’ve talked about with autopilot and Tesla’s refusal to use any other sensors besides cameras, which clearly are not going to be enough.

Anthony: So Michael, when somebody calls you up and says, I’m a professional motorcyclist, do you immediately respond and say, Mr.

Knievel, is that you, Mr. Knievel? No. Anyway. No. Sorry. I,

Michael: I, I, evil, KL and safety don’t really go hand in hand.

Recall Roundup

Anthony: Anyway we’re gonna jump into recalls because I didn’t realize the time is flying by. So let’s do some recalls

called out

Anthony: Ford 105,322 vehicles. ’cause that’s how they do it.

The 2018 to 2020 Ford Expedition. Same year as Lincoln Navigator. The driver’s seatbelt, retractor, pretension, or [00:53:00] assembly is the issue. The, they were built outside of the suspect time window of the they showed propensity for inadvertent deployment. Which means that they just lock up on you while you’re driving.

Is that

Michael: Yes. Essentially the retractor, pretension or deploys when it’s not supposed to, and locks the seatbelt.

Oh,

Michael: it won’t retract, it won’t extend. Which essentially it won’t, when you’re in a crash, you’re. Many vehicles have pretensioners that can actually tighten your seatbelt butt before the crash.

I’m not, can’t tell if that’s the case here, but essentially this, these seat belts are becoming locked in place. I, it’s hard to tell from the report if this is happening. If you’re, if you get out of the vehicle and you get back in, if the seatbelt doesn’t retract at all and you’re just stuck with it in that one position, which is certainly a safety issue, but at any rate it looks like if you have this problem and you own one of these vehicles, you’re going to get an airbag [00:54:00] malfunction light.

That’s the occupant. Restraint controller or the occupant restraint system, noting that it’s failing and telling you so that you’ll know there’s a problem here and that your pretension has already deployed even though you aren’t in a crash, and that you need to get this into your dealer for a fix. It looks like owners are gonna be hearing about this as soon as next week, so keep your eye out for that.

And it looks like the, it looks like the re the repair is going to be available shortly, so it’s not going to they already have retractors that were supposedly built that are of the same type that are ready to be installed in your vehicle.

Anthony: And this is no excuse to not wear a seatbelt up next Ford.

4,163 vehicles, the 2024 to 2025 F-150 the 20 24 20 25 expedition. The Lincoln Navigator is an oil leak in the presence of an ignition source. So the engine cup plug, hydraulic insertion press was [00:55:00] misaligned, resulting in your car’s gonna catch on fire.

Michael: You’re gonna lose, you’re gonna lose your oil.

Essentially the engine oil plug. Is misaligned, you can lose your oil rapidly. And so you’re looking at potential engine failure, your engine stalling which is a safety issue. Also, if that oil comes in contact with hot engine or exhaust components, you can have fire. So two, there are two problems here that can be caused by, something that seems relatively simple, getting an oil plug to keep oil from running out of the engine.

That one looks like you should have you may have already received, not notif, no, that notification is gonna be coming at the end of May. So it looks like they may be taking some time to get this recall together.

Anthony: All right. Final recall, Fred for the lightning round, who do you think the final recall is from?

What car manufacturer? [00:56:00]

Fred: I don’t know. There’s so many possibilities.

Anthony: Bored. That’s right. Are you, oh wait, no, I’m reading the same. No, you said Yeah. Way to go thing now. That’s how you did things. Damnit. That’s, sorry, the final one was the BW w

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. They had a starter generator issue. Believe, yeah, he sent me the wrong name.

There was a fire issue on BMWs that was caused by a poorly manufactured starter gen generator.

Anthony: Yeah, I’d love to tell you more information, somebody put the wrong link on it. Thought it was Ford again. Odds are it would be Ford. Yeah, we’ll just say Ford.

Michael: Ford is at Ford reported 35 recalls in the first quarter of this year, which is an incredibly high number.

I think last year total they were around 70. This, they’re already halfway there through the first quarter.

Yeah,

Michael: that’s, we I’ve talked probably. Aum about recalls and whether a lot of recalls means you’re producing [00:57:00] quality cars or not. And whether a lot of recalls means you’re just being better on safety.

That answer is still to be determined, but just noting that Ford has a significant number of recalls reported so far.

Anthony: Alright. And that’s it for this week’s show. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for going to auto safety.org and clicking on donate. You do that while the car’s warming up in your Piggly wiggly parking lot.

Boom. Haven’t said that. Oh, you got it. You got it. You nailed it. Till next week. Thanks everybody. Bye. Thank you. Bye bye.

Michael: Bye bye.

Anthony: Hey folks.

Bonus Story: Waymo Stuck in Drive-Thru

Anthony: We just finished the recording, the episode, but Michael came across the story way too important for us to ignore, take it Away. So last

Michael: night, I think it was last night, 9:30 PM and Santa Monica on Monday Waymo got stuck in a Chick-fil-A drive through which is interesting, right?

Anthony: Yeah. If you had that on your Bingo card, congrats. You win Waymo Chick-fil-A, Santa [00:58:00] Monica, what could possibly go wrong? All right, I’m gonna hit stop so it doesn’t delete our entire episode. Bye again. Bye bye.

Michael: For more information, visit www.auto safety.org.