Does your AV need a windshield? And do you need shoes?

Introduction and Welcome

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.

Hey listeners, welcome to September 10th. It’s a Wednesday where I am. What day of the week is it where you are? I don’t know.

Fred: It’s still September

Anthony: 10th

Fred: here.

Anthony: Oh, it is. And good morning World. I want know if it was a Wednesday. It’s is. Can I start again?

Political Updates and Autonomous Vehicles

Anthony: I’m not going to, Hey so let’s start off with some political stuff.

Not really political. It’s a, an update from Sean P. Duffy. Nice. You may remember him from the real world. Whichever one he was on. I don’t remember. Oh, is that where you

Michael: got it started on [00:01:00] MTV? Yeah. Yeah. He was, I knew he was a rally star. I didn’t know the real world was this thing.

Anthony: Oh yeah. It was the real world.

Like San Francisco, maybe Los Angeles, Nevada. I don’t know. Anyway, he he’s the secretary of Transportation because, the orange guy saw him on TV and said hey. So he’s updating, he’s trying to advance the autonomous vehicle frameworks to modernize safety standards and quoting from him, America must lead the way in transportation innovation.

If we don’t, our adversaries will fill the void. Huh? Wait, what? That’s what? Damn them adversaries. Making things safe. The rules of the road need to be updated to fit the realities of the 21st century. You got the century right? Our changes will eliminate redundant requirements and bring us closer to a single national standard that spurs innovation and prioritizes safety and outlaws fluoridation.

Michael: This is just I don’t know what to make of that paragraph. It’s nonsense. [00:02:00] I don’t know if Sean Duffy even wrote that, but the rules of the road don’t have anything to do with what they’re doing here, no. The rules of the road are typically the, how drivers need to operate their vehicle on the road.

You hear rules of the road and the context of state laws and, regulations relating how you’re supposed to operate a vehicle, not in the context of making modifying federal standards to accommodate innovation or whatever is going on

Anthony: here. I don’t know, Fred, do you think Michael sounds like one of our adversaries.

Fred: I have a vision of freighters steaming towards New York, threatening to take it over with self-driving cars from China. Oh, is that happening? Don’t we have minds to control that? And I

Michael: think it’s pretty clear we’re talking about, he’s referring to China here. So China is really, as far as I know, the only.

Adversary that is coming for, even though we’ve banned, I think the executive [00:03:00] order banned a lot of Chinese technology from being introduced onto our roads. I think they’re worried more about the international impact of China advancing autonomous vehicles before the Great United States can get there.

But I, I don’t see how, they’re making three basic Yeah. Let’s get into the specifics here, because I have

Anthony: questions.

Federal Safety Standards and Autonomous Vehicles

Michael: So the Trump administration finally released what is the unified agenda? This is the spring unified agenda, right? Now typically it, it comes out later in May, maybe in June.

It’s always, it’s not coming out the first day of spring. We’re no longer in spring anymore, we’re approaching fall quickly. Some people even, if you go by a, I don’t know the difference between fall, like some, for some folks it starts September 1st. For others it’s the 21st. Oh.

Okay. Mike let’s get back to

Anthony: the safety. What’s going on?

Michael: The, but it’s the, it’s six months late, essentially the regulatory agenda and maybe there’s a reason for it to be late given [00:04:00] the a recent presidential administration change, but it’s far later than I think it’s ever been.

And NSA outlined, three things that it’s going to do in the next, few months, it’s gonna have rulemakings on. Three things. Transmission shift, position sequence start our interlock transmission braking effect, that’s F-M-V-S-S 1 0 2 windshield defrosting and DEF fogging systems and windshield wiping and washing systems.

That’s F-M-V-S-S 1 0 3 and 1 0 4 and F-M-V-S-S 1 0 8, which is lamps reflected devices and associated equipment. Now, essentially what they’re going to try to do in each of those rulemakings is modify or remove the requirements that reference humans, your transmission sequence and your starter brake shift interlock.

Essentially, there’s a human requirement there of a human foot on a brake pedal. There’s human references that are in the federal Motor vehicle safety standards that a vehicle without a driver simply cannot be certified [00:05:00] to the windshield. Defrosting and defogging and the windshield wiping ones are very similar.

There are certain tests I believe that require, manual control by a human that, that are problematic for vehicles that don’t have a human operating. Those systems and then the lamps and associated equipment are similar in that they have manual re recall controls and some other aspects that require essentially a human there.

This is something that NS has been exploring for a long time. They’ve done a lot of studies on, through Virginia Tech’s Transportation Institute and through their Volpe Center around, what do we need to do to make the federal Motor Vehicle safety standards modernized so that they can accommodate autonomous vehicles.

That’s something that’s ultimately looks like is going to need to be done as autonomous vehicles proliferate and if we’re going to be able to craft safety standards around them that are. In line with the previous set of safety standards we’ve had, it has to happen at some point. I think, however, and this is essentially my [00:06:00] Gaslight of the week, this whole action by Nitsa jumping in early, because what they’re doing here, it’s, we’ve always referred to it as putting the cart before the horse.

You’re putting out this idea that we need to spur innovation and relax motor vehicle safety standards to allow for this technology. Meanwhile, they’re doing nothing. On the regulatory front to address the safety of autonomous vehicles. They’re all committed to this. Let’s fight our adversaries.

Let’s you know, let’s beat China. Let’s get these autonomous vehicles on the road. But they’re not setting out any basic safety regulations that could help regulate autonomous vehicles and at least prevent. People like Tesla who are pretending to have an autonomous vehicle from jumping into the market and basically lying their way through the process or, the great charade that Tesla’s performing in Austin and other places right now.

And they’re not doing a lot of [00:07:00] things around, around the safety of these systems. The, the transportation department under this administration is essentially turning into a, a cheerleader for autonomy without providing the rulemakings that are needed to ensure that autonomy is actually safe as it makes its way onto our roads through testing and otherwise.

And a good example of that would be their approval of Amazon Zoox vehicle about a month ago when there’s really, the. They essentially created out of whole cloth a way to approve those vehicles without running them through the proper protocols of exemption from motor vehicle safety standards.

And it looks like, very political favoritism and it all basically goes into this big ball of, we think the government should be supporting innovation rather than doing what, NITSA is chartered to do and monitor the industry to ensure that, that their vehicles and their deployments of new technology aren’t going to create hazards on the roads.

Debate on Windshield Requirements for Autonomous Vehicles

Anthony: Michael, I have a [00:08:00] specific question on this ’cause it looks tell me what I got wrong on this? ’cause odds are I’m wrong. Is it saying that windshield wipers are no longer required on autonomous vehicles?

Michael: We don’t know yet, right? They have they, they’ve announced these actions without giving much context at all.

I know there are manual control requirements in the windshield wipers and defrosting defogging system that are important here that require, some type of human interface and couldn’t be passed by an autonomous vehicle. But at the same time. Are they eliminating the requirement that autonomous vehicles have windshield wipers at all?

Autonomous vehicles don’t have a driver. Do they need windows? My argument is yes, they do. For one, the passengers inside the vehicle need to be able to see the environment of the road around them. Because if they get into a situation that the autonomous vehicle can’t handle, they need to request a stop.

They need to get out of the car [00:09:00] safely. And they need to be able to see their environment to do they need clear windows to do that. And that’s a problem. I’ve seen other people say, even from, a health standpoint, being in a vehicle where you can’t see out of windows is going to make a lot of people motion sick.

It’s there, there’s some other considerations here that I think windows are need to be preserved for, but from a safety perspective, egress from the vehicle and, simply being able to monitor the environment outside of the autonomous car you’re riding in is I think a pretty critical important.

You don’t want to step out of your vehicle into a riot or, if you’re riding in DC you don’t want to walk out the vehicle and bump into a national Guardsman as soon as you get out, right? So there’s a lot of considerations you have to have here around people leaving and entering vehicles and the and the need for windshields.

I don’t think windshields are going to be going away anytime soon, even though. That’s a whiz bank thing that we see some of these tech guys propose, as we might talk about [00:10:00] later in the show with what is it? The pole stars.

Anthony: We’re gonna talk about that right now. ’cause you started this.

Yeah there’s a polestar, and I had a question from Michael during the week that the Polestar four SUV kus a rear window in favor of more headroom for passengers and a rear view camera. And my question to Michael was, wait, we don’t need a rear view. What A rear window. We don’t need that anymore.

Michael: Yeah, it’s a, it’s an interesting question. And because the Federal Motor Vehicle safety standards don’t have a line that says you’ve gotta have a rear window, right? So they aren’t explicitly required. However, there are, references to rear windows and the glazing standard that kind of presumes they’re there.

But importantly, I think if you look at. The federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard one 11, no, which is a rear view mirror field of view requirement. That’s important. It says, each passenger car shall have an inside rear view mirror of unit magnification. Now, if you look at those pole stars, the interior, there’s a [00:11:00] rear view mirror, at least a box that looks like it would be.

But if it is a mirror, it’s staring into, an enclosed space. And the standard requires a field of view here and it requires a field of view. And I’ll read this and bore you for 20 seconds. Oh

Fred: God.

Michael: The mirror shall provide a field of view with an included horizontal angle measured from the projected eye point of at least 20 degrees and a sufficient vertical angle to provide a view of a level road surface extending to the horizon, beginning at a point not greater than 61 meters to the rear of the vehicle.

When the vehicle is occupied by the driver in four passengers or the designated occu capacity, if less, blah, blah, blah. But so essentially the field of view requirement there, i, it appears to me and Fred, maybe you have a different opinion or you, maybe there’s something here that I’m not seeing.

From an engineering standpoint, it appears to require a view through that mirror of a road or to the [00:12:00] horizon, a road surface beyond the vehicle in the rear of the vehicle. I, and I don’t really see any way around that. I don’t think these pole stars have are being introduced in North America or the United States yet, which, this may be a reason why I don’t know that they can be with that sort of design.

Or at least they would have to get an exemption to that design. And also, I’m assuming that the rear view mirror that is located in those vehicles, the, in the inside rear view mirror is using a camera and projecting it’s more of a screen than a mirror. So it doesn’t even qualify as a mirror.

Technically.

Anthony: Rear view mirror cameras are great. They’re the best. Yeah. And we love rear

Michael: view cameras. We just like them in combination with rear view mirrors. Especially when we’ve seen the number of rear view camera recalls that we’ve seen.

Fred: They never fail. There, there is a clue in the name of the rear view mirror as to what it’s supposed to do.

It’s supposed to give you a view behind the rear of the vehicle. This. Current administration is of [00:13:00] course committed to making sure people can see as little as possible about what’s going on. So maybe this is just, a little bit of overflow from the orange guy to, into the world of car design to make sure that you can’t see out of your car either.

Anthony: Wait, but doesn’t the word mirror like, imply that it’s a mirror and not a camera, not a TV screen? Yes, it

Fred: mirrors, mirror does suggest a mirror, yeah. And okay, it has,

Anthony: I thought that was the hint in the title. It specify language.

Fred: It specify that it has zero magnification, which means flat. Flat mirror, right?

So it’s not convex, it’s not concave, it’s flat. So that is in the spec as well, or in the F-M-V-S-S.

Anthony: So I think I, I have to update my gaslight based off of part of the regulation you read there, Michael, because this is the US Federal Motor Vehicle [00:14:00] Safety Standard. And it uses something called meters.

There’s some meters in there. God damnit. Look, my ancestors didn’t fight against the British to start using meters. This is ridiculous. Wear good old feet. Wait, the British use feet, don’t they? My ancestors were, I think, martyred by the British. I’m sorry. Yeah,

Fred: I think the British So is that your gaslight war against metrics?

Anthony: No, I’ve got a better one. I’ve got, that’s, that was, I was inspired. But Fred, do you have a gaslight?

Gaslight of the Week: BMW and Qualcomm

Anthony: I do.

Fred: And oh boy. This is another joint gaslight. This one’s going out to our friends at BMW and Qualcomm. Oh. They have announced that they’ve the title is Qualcomm and BMW Group Launch New ad system with co-developed software attack.

That sounds pretty good. Quote, Snapdragon Ride Pilot, the revolutionary driver assistance system that prioritizes safety. That’s good. New. That’s a [00:15:00] new standard for the industry. That’s good, except when you set a new standard, it means there’s no basis for it. But that’s okay. We’ll let that go by. Apparently prioritizing safety is the new standard.

It’s not really too reassuring when you consider there’s already companies doing this, but it’s all right. Again, quoting, engineered to meet the highest safety standards and supports ad levels ranging from entry level new car assessment program to level two plus highway and urban navigation on autopilot.

Capabilities. All right, so let’s pick this apart. It says entry level. It’s consistent with entry level new car assessment program requirements for automatic driving,

Anthony: right? Yeah. What is the entry level new car assessment program? There

Fred: are none. There are none. This is this is pur bullshit. Then it, so Namp has no a DAS tests or whatever, so there’s no compliance with anything, that’s the way they want to go.

[00:16:00] Automotive, vaporware. We’ve seen vaporware before. And then another part of it, it says level two plus, right? So they’re consistent with level two plus highway regulations. What does level two plus mean? There’s no such thing as level two plus. And there’s no definition. SAE or government for a level two plus.

The

Anthony: highway regulations though, come on. There’s the level two plus highway regulations that they just didn’t,

Fred: they’re words. So what that really means though, level two plus is that they want you, the customer to have additional automatic driving capabilities that they’ve built in and may have tested.

Who knows? But there’s no requirement to test any of those. But whatever they’ve wheeled in there, they want you the driver to be responsible for its safety. That’s a level two plus means. It means they don’t have any automatic capability to keep you safe If their control system cramps out, which it [00:17:00] will.

So they’re off to a good start, right? Saying they are consistent with two non-existent standards, but it gets even better. They say safety first approach. Snapdragon Ride Pilot prioritizes safety through a steadfast commitment to automotive safety, integrity levels, and functional safety standards.

Anthony: So BMW just has chat GPT riding their shit now, huh?

Yeah,

Fred: basically, so the, you’re nonsense as I went through this, the only standards that are applicable are the United Nations, European Commission Engineering, I guess is the last one, but U and A CE. And then they see the D Cs, which they referred to BMW referred to, and they categorize as automatic driving systems corresponding to SAE level two.

So again, they’re saying you, the driver are responsible for the safety of these systems. Ultimately, if their system craps [00:18:00] out putting that all together and I’m gonna win. Gaslight this week, Anthony. God dammit. So putting that all together, this statement by BMW and Qualcomm is pure bullshit to cover up inadequate transparency and safe and lack of safety engineering, therefore qualifying BMW and Qualcomm as the castlight of the week.

Anthony: Yeah I think you won. Thank you. No time damnit,

Michael: because you’re scared.

Anthony: Little bit. That, and we’re gonna hit on some stuff later on. That one Fred won’t enjoy. But yeah that’s a good gaslight. My gaslight, I’m going to a prenatal one of my favorites. Yeah, that was the word I was going for.

It’s got stuck in my face though. Kathy Wood arc investment Oh boy. Quoting from their newsletter, while Tesla’s Robo Taxii program still operates with safety drivers, Elon Musk has suggested that the service could be driverless by the end of 2025. Come on. Are [00:19:00] you kidding me?

Michael: Wait.

Look she’s not lying. He has suggested that, right?

Fred: I thought he had perfected that back in 2016. Wasn’t that the date? He said they were gonna be self-driving cars around?

Anthony: Yeah. Hey, listeners, if you wanna perfect things, go to auto safety.org and click on donate. You’ll feel perfect, I don’t know. Yeah, so that’s my guess. Fred wins this week. There you go. I’m sticking with a usual. And with that, let’s jump onto this was interesting.

Speed Limits and Local Regulations

Anthony: This was IIHS an article titled More Localities Look at Speed from a Pedestrian’s point of View. From this article, I’m gonna quote, state laws often require local communities to perform engineering studies to justify a lower speed limit.

These studies typically examine traffic volumes, crash history, road design, and current travel speeds. They’re expensive and they can take a long time. This struck me as surprising that state laws require like the local [00:20:00] communities to, to do all this work, to say, no, this is a school zone, or this is, yeah.

Fred: Basically they, they take a road and they you’ve seen these people by the side of the road, the clipboards and the rubber strips going across the road to measure the speed of cars. And so the laws in a lot of states that the speed limit should be set at whatever, I can’t remember the exact number.

85%, 85% of the drivers actually use going across that road. So it’s a crowdsourcing what the speed limit should be.

Michael: Yeah. I guess the problem with that is, and the article points this out, is the crowdsourcing speeds. If you, once you raise that limit, then people are going to travel even faster, and then you’ve got a new crowdsourcing speed that’s going to be even higher.

And I don’t know that process ever really ends, does it? There has to be some sense deployed here. And the other thing I noticed about it is that it’s similar to what we talk about with autonomous vehicles, how localities often don’t have [00:21:00] any control over what’s happening and they have to run to the state government to do things.

If a city is seeing, significant problems with speeding and crashes on a certain road. My opinion is the city should be able to go in and address that, reduce the speed limit, without having to run to the state and do a lot of expensive studies. They have a pretty point blank case to be made that, we’re seeing excess speeding on this road on a consistent basis.

We’re seeing people injured and killed in crashes, or we’re seeing a higher incident of crashes on these roads. Let’s reduce the speed limit. It makes a lot of sense, especially when you consider things like, we talked about Helsinki a few weeks ago where they haven’t had a fatal collision in a year now in a city the size of Washington DC and the number one thing they did there was reduce the speed limits in the city to and to the majority of the city’s roads.

It wasn’t the entire city, but to [00:22:00] 18.6 miles per hour. Which sounds really low even to me, right? It’s, that’s a really low speed. But, under 20 miles per hour is where you see very few severe injuries and almost zero deaths. And when the majority of your roads are running at that speed, you’re not going to have crash fatalities.

Or they’re going to be incredibly rare. That’s something that, Americans. Our struggle with people want to get to where they’re going fast. They, they want speed limits to be higher, I think, rather than lower in a lot of cases. But we see significant gains in safety when speed limits are lowered.

And I think that’s been displayed by number of places in, in, in America where it looks like this has worked. I think Seattle changed its speed limit to 20 on non arterial roads in 2016. Boston did it the next year, changing that. It’s the basic speed limit that they have [00:23:00] set. If you’re on a road.

You don’t have a speed limit sign. The basic speed limit in Seattle is 20 miles per hour. In Boston, it’s 25 miles per hour. Lowering those speeds to, to levels where they’re not going to kill people is a critical part of, building a good modern infrastructure that allows for pedestrians and bicyclists and other vulnerable road users that aren’t in cars to travel to their destinations with a little less worry about their safety.

Anthony: What’s the speed limit? In dc

Michael: I wanna say it is 25. Although there may be some roads that have gone to 20 now. DC has a lot more in the last 10 years, I’ve noticed a lot more, cameras and speed limit focus in the city.

Fred: Those cameras are incredibly effective. I happen to be working in Washington when they instituted the speed cameras.

I got tagged and then I started driving a lot slower on the E [00:24:00] street expressway and everybody else did too. Yeah. At the beginning of that period, if you were driving at the speed limit on that expressway, you were hazard because you were like a stone in the middle of the stream and people trying to swarm around you.

But within a couple weeks after that camera, the speed camera was put on the overpass where you couldn’t see it as you were approaching by the way. Then people slowed way down. So this, these technologies really do work. I’m not sure if they work in New

Anthony: York. Yeah, really? Because I don’t know if there’s much, I don’t know if there’s much enforcement, honestly.

People are speed. The speed limit inside New York City is 20 miles per hour, and I see people regularly going way beyond that. People right on my street, they’re regularly going through red lights, like not slowing down. There’s a corner for me. People are always making right on red there.

It’s not legal. There’s no camera. There

Michael: are there speed cameras everywhere? Not

Anthony: there, there’s one further away. But it’s like they put a speed camera there, like a [00:25:00] traffic light camera at a place where you can’t really, fudge the laws ’cause it’s just too much traffic there.

So that’s my rant for the week. Get off my lawn. Yeah, and it took my wife multiple speed tickets to finally adjust her behavior.

Michael: Essentially the point of the article is that some of the problems we have in our infrastructure and with speed are baked in to our laws and the regulations governing infrastructure and how we do it.

That 85% thing is a big problem. The inability for localities to, change lower their own speed limits when they see an issue is a problem. It prevents them from responding quickly to problems. And there’s a lot that needs to be done. This is not just a problem in, in, urban America.

It’s a problem in rural America. I live on a rural curvy road where the speed limit is 45 and I don’t feel safe driving 35 around a lot of the corners and on, on such a skinny road. So this is something that impacts everyone [00:26:00] when state authorities and local authorities aren’t on the ball or can’t be on the ball given the regulations.

Driving Barefoot and Other Fun Facts

Anthony: All right let’s play a little quiz time. Fred, I got some quiz questions for you. Are you ready? The answer is six. Ah, played. You lose Gaslight now. Okay. Yeah. Let me ask the question first, David. Now the question is, okay, so I’m hanging out at the beach in Malibu, and I get into my car and I don’t wanna put my shoes on, so I’m barefoot.

Am I legally allowed to drive my car? You betcha. Okay, great. Here’s another one. I’m in the state of Alabama and I went to the beach in Alabama, and I don’t have shoes on, and I get on my motorcycle. Am I legally allowed to drive my motorcycle?

Fred: I believe you are.

Anthony: No. Oh,

Fred: wow.

Anthony: Nope, sorry. Alabama Code Title 32 Motor vehicles and traffic section 32 dash five a dash 2 45 states that no person shall operate or ride upon a motorcycle or motor driven cycle unless he or she’s wearing shoes.

Fred: You weren’t specific [00:27:00] about Gram driving it, so this could be an automatic, an AV motorcycle and you’re getting on the rear. So

Anthony: yeah. Where’s an AV motorcycle, huh?

Michael: Yeah, motorcycles seem inherently problematic with bare feet because of all the hot parts that are right there around your feet.

I don’t know if you risking burns, yeah, but it’s not like Alabama to pass a law that actually protects people. That’s an interesting law. I didn’t I didn’t know Alabama had that, but it’s just a motorcycle, apparently no state. Yes. Motorcycle actually have a law against driving barefoot.

I was under the assumption since I was a child that it was illegal to drive at least in some states, in my home state of Mississippi at least barefoot. But, and I always assumed that was because, you wouldn’t have the similar grip on or. Friction between your foot and the accelerator or brake pedals, that might be a problem or an unsafe issue.

I personally wouldn’t drive barefoot, mainly because I’ve seen what happens to human feet in collisions. And if you’re [00:28:00] not wearing some type of protection on your foot in certain circumstances, you’re going to be injured a lot more significantly than you would if you’re wearing footwear. Foot injuries and lower leg injuries are a huge problem in crashes that I think more can be done about.

And also, if you get into a situation where you’re in a crash or you need to exit the car quick, being barefoot’s probably not great, but, that’s me. I put on shoes when there’s a tornado warning in my area, just in case. So our summary is so

Fred: far for this session. For this episode.

Is shoes good? Sean Duffy bad? Yeah. Is that where we are?

Anthony: Yep. Shoes good. Sean Duffy bad. Yeah. There we go. I’m not wearing shoes while we record this. But hey, listeners, if you go to auto safety.org and click on donate, I’ll buy some shoes. So this barefoot driving thing comes out of an article from consumer affairs.com, which had some fun survey questions, asking people things like do you think it’s safe to drive above the speed limit?

How many people text while [00:29:00] drive, and a whole bunch of things like that. Have either of you guys texted while driving? Michael shaking his head No. No. Fred’s texting right now. Nope. Fred has not even like you’re at a traffic light. It’s dead stop.

Fred: I have very effective female relatives who are often in a car with me.

Oh, okay. They make sure that my hands. Stay where they belong and while they’re driving.

Anthony: Okay, this might be a different issue you’re dealing with instead of texting. But anyway, this is a, it was interesting. There’s some very upsetting parts of this that the school bus rule, people don’t know the ru the rules of the road.

And, there’s a school bus stopped. It’s got its sign out stop signs, flashing lights, and some people think you’re allowed to pass it. 6% said, oh, you can you can proceed with caution around it. Come on people. What’s going on here?

Michael: 6%. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

Anthony: That’s pretty high.

Michael: The other one of the left lane rule, this one tracks 8% [00:30:00] of drivers think the left lane has no special purpose or for driving at any speed. I agree. I know. I see you 8%. I know you and I don’t like you.

Anthony: I know the ones who get in there and they park. Anyway, it’s a fun little.

Article to jump to. And hey, another fun little article is about our friends at Volvo. And I think this is just some hype words looking for some advertising. Volvos wants to use AI to adjust their seat belts. This advanced system leverages sensors to assess a BO passenger’s body shape, weight and positioning.

Yeah, I feel that’s a lot of body shaming right there. While instantly analyzing crash forces during an impact. An AI powered retractor then dynamically adjusts seatbelt tension to optimize protection and reduce injury risks. Mobile plans to continuously improve the belts algorithms by collecting real world crash data, delivering updates remotely over the air, using over the air technology.

What could go wrong, Fred Perkins.

Fred: What could possibly go wrong except the computer [00:31:00] fails because it’s getting crushed at the same moment when you need the seatbelt to work. That one possibility. That’s a good one.

Exploring Smart Seatbelt Technology

Fred: Another possibility is latency because you’re collecting all this data and you know you have to execute the seatbelt and a couple of milliseconds, so this it, there may be something good in this.

Yeah. There may be a pony in this pile of bullshit somehow, but I think there’s a lot of safety engineering that’s gotta proceed. Deployment of this technology.

Michael: There’s a, there’s, I think there could be a lot of good things that come out of this. The. Assessing a passenger’s body, shape, weight positioning, and all that is something that can be done, at the time the passenger enters the vehicle.

And if, if they move slightly, the positioning can be determined prior to the crash. The part that really has to happen fast is when they say they’re instantly analyzing crash forces during an impact. That’s tough. Crashes happen [00:32:00] in an infinite number of ways, different angles, different speeds, all sorts of things can happen.

I don’t know that we have the base of knowledge as humans at this point to have a system that can, instantly analyze a crash force, determine what type of crash it is, and then make your seatbelt deploy in a way that addresses that particular crash. I don’t think we’re there yet if we can ever get there, on the other side of things, having smart seat belts and, I’ve probably ad nauseum discussed pretensioners and how important they are and how we’re still missing them in the backseats of some cars. But how important they are to occupant injury and survival rates and smart systems like this that can adjust the seat belts and pretension deployments based on the occupant size or shape or weight.

They’re positioning the vehicle are awesome if they work to promote safety. So I’m rooting for Volvo on this one.

Anthony: Hopefully just not updating [00:33:00] while you’re in a crash.

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

Anthony: No manufacturer, but that’s software right? All the time. But the comes in is,

Michael: Crashes happen incredibly fast and thinking that a system can, evaluate the crash in real time and be adjusting the CI mean, that all seems to be a lot happening in a very small amount of time.

Fred: Getting back to Sean Duffy’s paranoia about the Chinese,

Anthony: that was weird. He started talking and then he must have hit the mute button. I don’t know how he did that, but ladies and gentlemen, Fred Perkin’s, very animated. He’s throwing things it’s out of control. Okay, so you said speaking of Sean Duffy and his paranoia, and then you went silent.

Fred: Ah, speaking of Sean Duffy and his paranoia about China, it’s worth noting that Volvo is a Chinese company.

And maybe the hazard he’s trying to protect us against is the idea of improved seat belts. I’m not sure [00:34:00]

Anthony: the adversarial seat belt. Alright, so before we run into the towel, let’s, we’re gonna, we’re gonna brace through it. We’re gonna do it.

Tesla’s Autonomous Vehicle Controversies

Anthony: We’re just gonna push through a bunch of Tesla shit right now.

Okay. We ready? We ready? Let’s go. Okay, good. First up Tesla in Texas, they don’t have a, their safety monitor thing and their auto taxi nonsense. You

Michael: didn’t describe that very well.

Anthony: Yeah, I didn’t do that all. I’m trying to push through this. Okay, so Texas has a broken taxi. They’re moving guy, they’re moving the guy from the passenger seat to the driver’s seat.

Not because it’s unsafe, man, because man, those Texas legislators, they wrote some law that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is nonsense. Don’t get in a robo taxi.

Michael: The fact is, they could leave the guy in the front passenger seat if the vehicle qualified as a level four or higher under that new Texas regulation.

They’re, it Robo taxii and the full self-driving does not qualify as a level four system. It’s they’re continuing to hop through the level two loophole. So they’re putting someone in the driver’s seat because they’re preserving their status as a level two vehicle so [00:35:00] that they aren’t subject to the enhanced requirements.

For vehicles that are beyond that level or level four truly autonomous vehicles, this is just all part of the charade. The Tesla is operating level two vehicles, calling them autonomous, but then complying with regulations that only address, only partially autonomous or non-autonomous vehicles at level two.

What can you say? It’s a big, it’s a grand charade.

Anthony: I prefer

Michael: charade.

Anthony: Alright, I’m just gonna do one more Tesla story. This is one where Jay Leno sat down with the chief designer, Franz von Ho Hausen and Vice President Viva Engineering. Lars Ravi. These names are made up. These came out of a Marvel comic book or something like that.

Anyway, these guys are saying that everybody loves full self-driving. All their customers that the Model S and Model X vehicle surpassed 50 to 60% of users using this stuff. Ah, I don’t believe them ’cause they work for [00:36:00] Tesla. I can’t believe anything they say.

Michael: We’ve talked about how the, how low the take rate on full self-driving was, and we would encourage no one to take it ’cause we don’t think it’s safe to operate.

But what they said, I believe is that they’ve seen the percentage of people adopting the technology or the take rate rise from being, in single digits to being in the teens. But he said that in our premium models, the take rate is over 50 or 60%. I don’t know, those numbers don’t seem totally right to me, but, there are people who use this stuff all the time.

And they love it, and they won’t stop using it until it drives them into a freeway barrier.

Anthony: Yeah. It’s the strangest thing. ’cause in 2022 it cost $10,000. They raised it at $12,000, then to $15,000, and now they’re saying it’s $8,000. And then you could, or you could subscribe to it for $99 a month.

What ha. Hey, ladies and [00:37:00] gentlemen, if you’re gonna burn money on that, send it to auto safety.org instead. Okay. Are we ready for the TI pushed through that as best I can, Fred. Okay. I’ve seen you do your calisthenics. You’ve been working the medicine ball.

Comparing Car Crash Fatalities to WWII

Fred: You are a history fan. Are you not? I love history.

It

Anthony: just happened.

Fred: Okay. Do you ever hear of World War ii? Yeah. Yeah. Fake news. One of the early parts of World War II was something called The Battle of Britain. You’re familiar with that?

Anthony: That’s where they get involved with people in a tent and they bake.

Fred: No, that’s the TV show. That’s a little different.

So the Battle of Britain Germany wanted to invade Britain. So they sent over thousands of airplanes to indiscriminately bomb Britain, cities and and industry. And so Britain, of course, thought this was a bad idea and they did a number of things to respond to it. They set up Nationwide alert [00:38:00] systems.

They built a lot of airplanes. They made a lot of civil engineering investments to protect their defense industry. Public investment in tools and technology to counter the hazards. Enlisted a whole core of people to counter the threats, the pilots. You may have heard Winston Churchill advocating for the pilots.

They supported their core with capital equipment and mobilized for public acceptance of the costs and disruptions needed to remove that threat then and in the future. They built a lot of brand new airplanes and they trained people how to use ’em. These bombs were being dropped all over the country.

In particular, Liverpool, Bristol, Belfast, Coventry many more. The number of people killed by the Lut Wafa in the Band of Britain that was responsible for all this tremendous activity on the part of the British government was 43,500

Anthony: period

Fred: time.

Anthony: So I took a look. What period time, sorry. I’m sorry what period of time did this happen?

Was it like [00:39:00] over years or was this months or over?

Fred: About no, it was about, I think it was six or seven months, something like that. Okay. Just checking. So it was within a year though. We’ll just say it was within a year, because I compare that to the average number of annual deaths from car crashes in the USA from 1960 through 2022.

That average number was 43,608 every year after year. So it’s more than died in the Battle of Britain. So I, I would I think it’s interesting to ask the question, how has the US government mobilized since 2020 to address this annual carnage each year worse than the thousands of German bombers could inflict on the Brits during the Battle of Britain.

So it’s as though the government opened up the country to bombers and said, oh, come on in. We don’t care that you’re killing 43 some [00:40:00] odd thousand people every year. That’s okay. We can accept that. So the different response from what the British government did during World War II is striking.

Government’s Role in Road Safety

Fred: So what has the government done since 1960 in response to this Battle of Britain damage every single year? They established nitsa, NCAP and VMSS. That’s good. They invested in test facilities and sometime in the last century, not so much this century recently they’ve tried to eliminate NCAP under Secretary Chow.

And the gap between NCAP and IIHS testing and similar testing, including the Euro NCAP testing continues to increase. They, the NISA does relatively less every year. So the investments headed down, not up. They’ve refused to [00:41:00] license proven V two X communication technology. In fact, they gave up the bandwidth for this technology, which it was proven was being deployed in Georgia and among other places.

And so in response, the government gave up that bandwidth and probably we’ll never get it back. So exactly the opposite of what needed to be done to reduce this holocaust. They gave up. So they gave up the RF bandwidth and they refused to. The rationale that they used was that nobody’s using it.

Of course, nobody was using it because they refused to license people who wanted to use it. So there was a longstanding pattern of bullshit within the FEC to make that bandwidth available for people who wanted to do wifi. More recently they’ve eliminated more. NSA has eliminated more safety requirements than they’ve instituted.

They continue to try to reduce more as talked about [00:42:00] earlier in relation to Sean Duffy and his van Dvids. They’re reduced fund highway funding for safety programs. They’ve relaxed safety standards for unproven automated self-driving systems. They including exposing pedestrians to mortal threats of unsupervised machine-driven vehicles on public roads and city streets.

They’ve promoted PR myths over transportation engineering facts by saying that we’re gonna have 94% fewer accidents from self-driving cars than human-driven cars. And you’ve heard all that before. So the killing more civilians each year in the US than were killed in the entire Battle of Britain.

In my mind, that’s an unacceptable result of the last 50 plus years of federal highway safety funding. And so really, I leave this with, where’s the urgency? These are, cities, people, [00:43:00] civilizations are being destroyed every year, and the government stands by and worries about a mythical Chinese threat.

End of rent.

Anthony: That’s a good one. I don’t know what to do with that one, but you’re right. I think you come up with these great comparisons all the time. And I look forward to your testimony.

Michael: Michael.

Innovations in Driver Safety Technology

Michael: I think that we need to take a look at something that, iHS also talked about this week, how they are going to start including features to address risky driving.

That’s an area where I think the United States is really failing to push, NSA’s failing to get alcohol detection and other impairment technologies into vehicles. That a requirement to do so was passed in 2021 and we’re just watching that rule sit there and do nothing to get alcohol detection in cars.

Another component of that rule is [00:44:00] something that, that the IHS discussed in the article this week about, and that we also had an article on about gm. GM filed a patent for a, technology that can detect when older drivers are doing things that are risky and, a, an app that could warn them, warn their families about the fact that their driving’s declining, that same technology could be deployed to figure out when someone is driving drunk drug impaired with a health condition that prevents them from a driving well, that technology is something that w we knew was possible.

Years ago when we were pushing for Congress to adopt the provisions in the infrastructure act that directed Nitsa to do this kind of thing, your car. Detecting when you’re incapable of driving properly and eliminating that small percentage of drivers on the road who just don’t give a crap about other people who are gonna speed [00:45:00] drive drunk and do the kinds of things that result in a lot of the high fatality rates we see every year.

The United States is just like Fred’s talking about, is failing Americans because we have this technology that’s inexpensive. Look at speed prevention, technology, for instance. The technology is inexpensive. It’s there, it’s cheap. It’s been mandated in Europe for years now, where the crash and death rate is something between four and five times.

Less than the one than what we have in the United States. We need technology in vehicles to prevent humans who refuse to drive safely from, risking everyone else’s life on the road. And it’s not getting put into cars. The, the auto companies. You’re not gonna find an auto company that’s going to be willing to put a speed prevention device in its vehicle.

Now, ISA is one thing. It can be turned off by bad speeders. What ultimately I think we need in [00:46:00] that area is a mandatory speed prevention technology. You can’t turn it off. It’s you’re not going to be able to drive over the speed limit or very much over the speed limit when it’s implemented.

But a manufacturer’s not going to put that in a model because that model’s, not going to sell to the 50% of Americans who want to drive over the speed limit. We’re in the midst of kind of a lot of culture wars going on, but this is one that has true impacts on our roads every day and is destroying human lives and destroying families and all, because some people want to drink, some people want to speed, some people want to drive recklessly, and a lot more could be done.

It’s not being done, and it needs to be done.

Anthony: I think if my insurance company cut my rate in half, I would sign up for all of these things.

Michael: Good luck on that.

Anthony: Yeah, I know. Sorry, Fred, you were gonna say something?

Fred: Yeah, I was just gonna leave a message for our friends at Nitso that, don’t allow the invasion [00:47:00] of the United States that’s equivalent to the Battle of Britain every year.

You, it is up to you to change this as you’re the ones you know, and Sean Duffy. Sure you can worry about a mythical Chinese invasion of our parking lots, but the reality is there’s a holocaust that’s already going on that you can do something about.

Anthony: So

Fred: please do

Anthony: John Duffy message for you.

Related to this article, this thing you talked about, Michael, with the GM having their patent for getting the old folks off the road is from an article in Jalopnik we’re linking to. So they’re basically having some sort of scoring system that can, like you were saying check driving behavior and whatnot.

But there was one part of the article that jumped out at me. It said, quoting, it’ll also determine whether the driver is using the turn signal appropriately and complying with road signs. So there’s no way this sells in the state of Massachusetts. That’s,

Fred: that could be. To [00:48:00] be clear, this is a patent application.

And patent application has driven for remote from people actually. Commercially offering the device. So there was, oh, I

Anthony: thought I got approved. Sorry.

Fred: No. It’s an application and there are years between now and the time the patent is approved and then you’ve gotta go into the whole commercialization loop.

But my guess is the GM is simply doing this defensively ’cause they see it coming down the road and they want to make sure nobody else patents it and causes them business problems in the future. A lot of patents are developed that way. Good idea. But it is gonna be a while before this is enforced, if ever.

Anthony: Let’s, g this is really gonna, the thing that saves GM

Fred: cruise, and I glanced I just moved right past that SL on my fellows here in Massachusetts, Anthony. Look

Anthony: even the sheriff we had on, he said, yeah, we’re mass asshole.

Police Tools and Car Chases

Anthony: But before we jump into recalls, here’s a fun one [00:49:00] from Boing titled Watch, high Tech Police Tool Leaves Car Thief stranded without real reels.

So now, being a man of a certain age, I loved grappling hooks. They were everywhere as a kid. Every movie there was grappling hooks and quicksand. They don’t exist anymore. I don’t know why I don’t. Grappling hooks with the greatest thing. And so apparently there’s a TA police device called a grappler where they fire this tethers and it connects onto the rear wheels or to the rear axle.

And it basically acts as a toe I’d say, or an anchor. Against the offending vehicle. And it’s a fun video as you watch. If somebody gets this into their car, the police cruiser stopped and the person tries to drive away and their entire rear axle drops out. I want a grappler. Michael, can I get a grappler?

Michael: I don’t know if you can buy a grappler or not. I don’t think, I can buy, I don’t know why you would want, I don’t know why you would wanna put yourself at risk running around behind a, I don’t know why you would be chasing a car.

Anthony: Let’s just, it doesn’t say I’m [00:50:00] necessarily chasing a car, just, someone’s bothering me.

Get outta my way, grapple.

Michael: It’s, it is a lot safer than chasing a car for 20 miles and all the other vehicles and people that are put at risk during that period. I think the grappler iss great. I think I’ve mentioned a number of times in the podcast that I am a fan of watching police chases because.

It’s amazing the differences in policies that you have from state to state. For instance, if you watch the Arkansas State Police, they’re crazy. They’re simply crazy. They’re pitting, they’re using pit maneuvers on at speeds of, 120 plus miles per hour. They don’t appear to have any chase policy going on there.

Or if it is, if they do it’s very minimal. Whereas you could never do that in a lot of other states. A tool like the Grappler, which can be deployed, from directly behind a vehicle that’s fleeing from law enforcement and stop [00:51:00] it, is great because it ends the chase ending. The chase is the number one thing I think we’d like to see.

I would suggest, along with my comments earlier about the government and people not supporting measures that could really help safety. A kill switch for law enforcement on vehicles that are fleeing police is great. It would be a great thing. Also, there are a lot of alternatives nowadays too.

You, drones are certainly an alternative. You can deploy a drone to follow a vehicle that otherwise would be fleeing the police. But instead of chasing that vehicle and creating an even greater hazard for the public, a drone that could follow that vehicle, other technology that can follow that vehicle. I think I mentioned flock cameras last week but things like that, that can be used to prevent the chases from happening, but still allow the police to catch the criminal are great.

I don’t think police chases generally, unless [00:52:00] you’re chasing, terrorists with. Act active weapons in their vehicle heading towards a crowd, or, un unless there’s an actual imminent threat to life, I don’t think we should be seeing all the chases that we do in America.

Certainly not for things like expired license plates and, really minor infractions creating a public safety risk where there wasn’t one as a bad thing. So grappler is good. Yeah, there are things that are, there are other things that might even be better that we have yet to really full, fully roll out.

Anthony: No I think the grappler, and this is gonna be a new reality dating show, grapple or not, and you get a, you have singles in cars and they chase each other around and you decide, Ooh, do I want to grapple Ben or do I want to grapple Susie? And they, oh, you’ve missed your grapple. Ah.

Anyway. Let’s do some, I think that’s

Fred: a little aggressive, Anthony. I’m not sure that’s where we want to go. You

Anthony: haven’t watched a lot of reality dating shows, have you? They’re I, no, I have not. You’re [00:53:00] missing out anyway.

Recent Vehicle Recalls

Anthony: Let’s go into some recalls. First up a little company. Rare entrant Ford Motor Company.

Holy shit. 1,000,456 vehicle. Four 1.4 million vehicles. Hey, yes. 2015 to 2019. Lincoln, MKC, the Lincoln Navigator. That’s a lot of ’em. 2019 Ford Ranger. 2015 Ford Edge. If you own a Ford, it’s been recalled. Oh my, this is pages and pages. Yeah, pages. Bus Ford buses. Oh, customers may experience a distorted or intermittent rear view camera.

Come on, this is how you gotta get me rear view camera. There you go. Hey, Jim Farley. Come on. What? Just come on the show for five minutes and just talk us through their rear view camera. You’re a smart man.

Michael: They’re just losing the rear view camera views. We’ve seen a lot of these in the past.

We’ve been making fun for [00:54:00] years and actually, looking at the data on recalls for this year, this is the 47th, I believe it’s the 47th recall for rear view camera systems, which is the most we’ve ever seen a year. Last year, I think 40 was the new record. And then I think 2022 was around 39 recalls on rear view cameras.

The rear view camera, federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard one 11 came into play in 2018. It was mandatory. So now we are seven years out and we’re seeing more. We’re seeing the most recalls we ever seen by far. We’re only in September and we were already, seven over the last year’s high watermark.

So it, I don’t know. This has continued to baffle me as to why manufacturers can’t get this one, right? Essentially you’re just putting a camera on the rear of the vehicle and transmitting that video to the driver when [00:55:00] they’re in reverse, right? It couldn’t sound too much simpler. And yet we’re seeing, this year, if, the rate continues, rear view camera recalls are gonna represent, what, about 15 to 20%, maybe not quite 20% of all the recalls in the United States.

It doesn’t make a lot of sense. 10% right now I think is probably a better number. But that’s, it’s relatively simple technology and it just mystifies me as to why there’s so many problems with it. And it makes me wonder, about, especially with the manufacturers that are having trouble with rear view camera issues, can you really trust the electronics elsewhere on those vehicles?

There are camera systems that are responsible for a DAS operation, your advanced cruise controls, forge, blue Cruise, that kind of thing. If you can’t get a rear view camera right in reverse, how do we expect them to be getting, making safe a DAS systems and all these other, [00:56:00] whiz bank systems that manufacturers are promising us if they can’t get the rear view cameras right.

It’s scary. And I, at this point I’m wondering if NSI even needs to do a special study of rear view camera. Design and deployment to figure out why this is occurring. I think it has a lot to do with software and integration with the touch screens and other things. But, I’d love to see some type of valuation to determine what’s going on here.

’cause this is, it just such a significant percentage of the overall recalls that it’s a red flag.

Fred: No, that’s a

Michael: great point. Yeah,

Anthony: they

Michael: gotta work.

Anthony: Jim, James, Mr. Farley, can you just come on and explain to us why this is happening?

Fred: Maybe he’s just trying to get his place in the Guinness Book of World Records, most recalls in the year.

Oh, he’s already got that. That sense.

Anthony: Yeah. I just wanna know specifically, records are made

Fred: to be broken, right

Anthony: about rear view cameras, like why I [00:57:00] don’t get it. Anyway, let’s go onto the next one. Chrysler 91,787 vehicles. The 2022 to 2026 Jeep Grand Cherokee. This is a fun one. Unexpected loss of propulsion can cause a vehicle crash without prior warning.

I love the way they phrase these things. A-B-P-C-M reset, which is incorrectly interpreted by the HCP, may cause a loss of propulsion. F-Y-I-C-Y-A. What what language

Michael: was this? These are plugin, hybrid electric Jeep Grand Cherokees, and essentially they’ve got bad software that can shut your vehicle down or make you lose power while you’re moving.

Obviously, a bad thing stalling in the middle of the road. It’s bad stalling when you’re trying to pull out in front of traffic bad. Lots of safety problems. They’ve had a lot of complaints on this over at Chrysler, and so they’re going to do something. It’s [00:58:00] not real clear when the remedy’s gonna be available because it’s still under development, so owners need to be very careful in the meantime.

And it’s I hate recalls like this, where you’re, you. You basically ha haven’t figured out a remedy yet. Owners are stuck in the dark for, months to who knows how long with a safety issue and presumably they’re going to continue to drive these vehicles. It’s scary.

I think that Chrysler should probably be doing a little better job of warning folks and telling them, here’s maybe a way to avoid this, or Here’s a way to get a loaner vehicle. And we’re gonna cover that. So it’s not a good thing. I don’t like seeing undetermined Remedy or Remedy under development or we haven’t found the calls yet.

All those things are bad news for owners and there’s not a lot they can do about it other than say, Hey, I’m gonna park this car, or I’m going to take the risk and drive it. And it’s a bad [00:59:00] situation to be putting people who paid a lot of money for a vehicle in

Anthony: Why wouldn’t this car be considered a lemon?

Michael: Because you have to have, now some of them could be right. Okay. If you, those are state laws that regulate that. So if you had a failure with this problem, two or three times, maybe four depending on your state and it continued happening, you would qualify for your state lemon law in a lot of circumstances, depending on how good your state lemon law is.

So that’s what goes on there. You’re

Fred: probably not gonna have this problem several times. This is a one and done kind of problem, I think. Yeah. When

Anthony: you buy a Chrysler once, fool me once fool me twice I’ll buy a Ford. Ah, okay. Vin Fast. Next recalls VIN Fasts. That’s right. People, VIN Fast.

The Vietnamese car company, if you could call what they do. Cars 6,314 vehicles. The 20 23 20 25. Vin Fast VF eight. In certain widened sweeping turns, the adas can activate and provide steering inputs that are difficult for the driver to [01:00:00] override, oh my God. Possibly resulting in the need for unexpecting steering adjustment by the driver.

I’m gonna say, this is my personal opinion, don’t buy a VIN fast.

Michael: Yeah I’m not recommending them. As a general rule, it’s a very new company. And there, there were some, there’s been a couple of issues with them. I think they were having, doing something like sending their cars to the United States and then at the very last moment trying to upgrade them to meet federal motor vehicle safety standards.

There’s just been some issues with them in, in that regard. But a big issue with this recall, it’s pretty clear that their lane keeping assistance system is having some problems. They use pretty flowery language to describe what, it could be a really serious safety issue here.

They’re basically saying. They’ve had to meet with Nitsa. So Nitsa has clearly pressured them. Nitsa opened a preliminary evaluation on this. So Nitsa is investigating this issue. And to be clear, NITSA has influenced [01:01:00] this recall. I don’t think that would’ve done this recall without NSA’s input.

So good on Nitsa for that. What they’re going to do is still a little unclear. It looks like they’re saying, they’re going to update their software. Apparently there is some vibration and some inability for drivers to override the lane keeping assist when it’s misbehaving. So there are a number of issues that.

That occurred here that aren’t really and truly exposed in fest announcements. I think they need to be clear about the safety issues here rather than focusing on, preserving the their brand. Because it’s, they’re not doing owners any favors by trying to cover up some of the problems with their system.

Anthony: Alright. Last recall, then we’ll let you go back to sleep listeners. BMW 1,406 vehicles. The 2026 BMWX five. It lists that out multiple times. The 20, the 2026 x seven. This safety [01:02:00] recall involves the ceiling of the windshield of the vehicle, bo body, which may not have been performed according to specifications.

Oh. So they didn’t seal the windshield and so you got water coming into the A pillar. Oh. It could lead to, and it could hit some electronics. Come on. Just get some silicone, just,

Michael: yeah. Done. I.

Anthony: Imagine

Michael: you’ve just bought your, a hundred thousand dollars BMW vehicles. Wait, how

Anthony: much this thing

Michael: costs, getting it home?

At least, I think there, there are models that go for far more than that, depending on how many bells and whistles and luxury features and pampering features people need. Imagine buying this wonder of modern German technology and getting it home and realizing your electronics are all screwy and you’ve been put at risk because they couldn’t get a damn windshield attached to the vehicle properly.

That’s inexcusable. I bet there’s some really pissed off owners out there on this issue.

Anthony: BMW owners pissed off. Come on.

Michael: This [01:03:00] is a pretty significant recall. It’s not, there are multiple electronics that are impacted by this. And it’s it could be a number of different safety systems that are impacted.

So owners be on the lookout for this. Get this recall as soon as possible. It looks like owners are gonna be notified around mid-October and. They’re gonna be giving you a new, I think they’re gonna be giving you a new windshield, but they may be inspecting your windshield first to see if any leaks are there.

If I was an owner in this situation, and I would probably demand a windshield replacement under my warranty if possible. Because I don’t know I, I don’t know, I don’t like recalls that where there’s an inspection and then it’s up to a another party to determine if the issue exists.

Did they have to detect it? Ah, those always give me the heebie-jeebies and as an owner of, a car that I spent this much money on, just, give me a new [01:04:00] windshield.

Anthony: And Fred’s muted again, but that’s okay. We’re out of time.

Fred: I was just wondering if BMW builds submarines. Wha.

Anthony: Till next week, listeners, bye-bye. Exhibit, bye-bye.

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