Elon’s Escape Room: Can You Get Out of a Flaming Tesla?

[00:00:00] Introduction to the Podcast

[00:00:00] Anthony: You’re listening to there auto be a law, the center for auto safety podcast with executive director, Michael Brooks, chief engineer, Fred Perkins, and hosted by me, Anthony Cimino for over 50 years. The center for auto safety has worked to make cars safer.

Hey everybody. Welcome to Fred’s bird feeder show. No, the Center for Auto Safety podcast. I started off that way because Fred said he does not watch his bird feeder while he’s recording this show.

[00:00:37] NHTSA and NCAP Updates

[00:00:37] Anthony: No this week let’s start off with we’re gonna start off with NHTSA and NCAP. Because this is the final days of both of those things.

Ugh. NHTSA updated their 5 star crash test ratings. They will add four new technologies including pedestrian automatic emergency braking, lane keeping assist, blind spot warning, and intervention if a driver tries to move to [00:01:00] toward a vehicle in a blind spot. Wow, that was hard for me. I don’t know why.

The new rules also strengthen test procedures and performance standards for technology that’s already included in the rating such as automatic emergency braking. I love this. This is great. These are all things we’ve talked about and said, yes, this needs to be part of there. Because we’ve talked about the five star test rating being basically, everyone gets five stars.

Michael, are you happy with this?

[00:01:24] Michael: Yeah, I’m pretty happy here with a lot of what’s being done in this notice, and it’s essentially this isn’t a traditional NHTSA regulation. NCAP operates outside of the NHTSA regulatory structure and the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards.

So what they’re doing here is essentially creating a program to evaluate. The crash avoidance systems that are becoming a lot more common on all of our vehicles. There’s a very large focus in the update that on automatic emergency braking technology, essentially [00:02:00] creating in cap tests that are.

That test vehicles ability, not only to meet the current or the federal safety standard that’s coming into effect in 2029 on automatic emergency braking, but also, adding a few miles per hour to challenge the equal manufacturers to meet that standard, which is great. And that’s what in cap is supposed to do.

Also as part of this, they’ve, up until now, in cap has really only given manufacturers credit for having an automatic emergency braking system in the vehicle, that kind of thing. It’s based on whether or not you had the technology. The new structure of in cap is actually going to allow the agency.

To test and rank those technologies, depending on how well they work so that manufacturers who are doing better on automatic emergency braking are doing better at preventing pedestrian collisions via automatic emergency braking get more credit. And ideally, [00:03:00] this is a sliding scale.

So that as manufacturers get better. NHTSA comes in and then updates, makes another update to raise the bar so that the technology, ultimately gets better over the, over time with manufacturers who are seeking a perfect, five star rating.

[00:03:19] Anthony: So this only applies to vehicles weighing 10, 000 pounds and less.

Now, will our Hummer EV be required to follow this?

[00:03:29] Michael: None, I doubt Hummer EVs or Cybertrucks or any of the vehicles that are not mass produced, in any vehicle that has a sales or distribution, 20, vehicles for a year. It’s probably not going to qualify for the program simply because NHTSA can’t afford to test every vehicle on the road.

Especially the ones that. Just there aren’t that many of them out there. It doesn’t matter. So [00:04:00] the but ultimately this is going to be a great thing. I think, especially if you look at the roadmap part of the infrastructure law in 2021 or came out that, told that, we need to update in cap also said, you need to give us a roadmap for what in cap is going to be doing in the future.

That’s, essentially so that consumers have an idea of what’s going to be protecting the future, but also importantly, to give industry a notice of, what they can expect going forward and how safe their vehicles are going to have to be to get a five star rating. And the, beyond what’s covered in this immediate update to end cap, which is.

Mostly automatic emergency braking, pedestrian automatic emergency braking, some lane keeping and blind spot intervention features were long term. They’re going to do a lot of work on dummies. It looks like they’re going to be putting female 5 percent dummies into driver and rear positions and [00:05:00] crashes.

That’s something we’ve discussed a lot on this podcast. Kind of the inequities. And in the type of types of crash test dummies that are used right now, they’re mostly male in the front seat positions. And also, there’s a lot of other long term things that are going to take place in it.

Cap a lot of. Focus on new headlights. There’s going to be automatic emergency breaking at some point that is focused on intersection crash scenarios. Looks like they’re trying to get rules out on that are not rules, but in cap test out on that by 2028. there’s enhanced automatic emergency breaking which would work at higher speeds and in different scenarios.

And even driver monitoring systems. They’re planning to start evaluating around 2030. It’s an interesting look at what, where in cap could be in a few years. All that is contingent, of course, on how well the next administration supports in cap.

[00:05:56] Explaining NCAP and Its Global Impact

[00:05:56] Fred: Michael, for the benefit of those legions of new [00:06:00] listeners sitting in the Piggly Wiggly parking lot listening to this podcast, would you please explain what NCAP is and how this is related to harmonization of world standards?

[00:06:14] Michael: So NCAP is the new car assessment program. It’s basically a program where NHTSA buys vehicles. They do a blind buy of the vehicles from dealers so that manufacturers, can’t produce the perfect car for them to test and can’t game the system. They take those vehicles and run them through a number of different scenarios and crash tests.

You have a five, you have a crash worthiness ratings that vehicles are given, they do, frontal collisions, rear collisions and side collisions and offset collisions and all sorts of things to come up with a crash worthiness rating. And now we have, crash avoidance technology that’s coming into play in the ratings with automatic emergency braking and some of these other features that are [00:07:00] included in the most recent update.

And essentially what NCAP. does is it creates, a competitive arena where manufacturers compete against each other to achieve the highest ratings, the five star ratings that they can then turn around and used to advertise the safety of their vehicles. So it incentivizes manufacturers to continuously improve safety in their vehicles.

There are And NCAP, as far as harmonization, you, we often talk about how the European standards are much higher than the ones that, than the federal motor vehicle safety standards in America and NCAP is one way, when the government is not moving fast enough to put in federal rulemaking, NCAP can be a little more flexible and they can get new tests and more advanced tests into NCAP that can incentivize manufacturers to make safety [00:08:00] advances even when there’s not a federal regulation requiring those advances or that regulation might be years away.

It’s a good way of incentivizing safety across the marketplace.

[00:08:11] Fred: If a manufacturer opposes this expansion of NCAP aren’t they shooting themselves in the foot with regard to export markets?

[00:08:22] Michael: They could be, there is, there is some NCAP isn’t based on the European standard or the standards of other markets.

It can, I think manufacturers ultimately love a system where, In cap is the same all over the world so that then they only have to build, they want a predictable marketplace. They would love for all the vehicle safety standards in the universe to be the same. So that they only have to build 1 car that they can then ship to every country.

Unfortunately, it’s. It’s a lot more complicated than that. Federal motor vehicle safety standards move along very slowly. The process is a little more cumbersome than it is [00:09:00] in Europe and in Asia and some spots where they can get these standards and certification standards passed a lot quicker than we, when we’re able to hear.

And we’ve seen the effects of that in, in the Crash data where the likelihood of a fatality in the, if you’re riding in a car in the United States is, three to four times higher than it is if you’re in France. So it’s a, NCAP is a way that you can incentivize American vehicles to meet these higher standards that you might see in other countries even if the law doesn’t require it yet here.

Oh, thank you for that.

[00:09:39] Anthony: And NHTSA’s putting these new rules in place now, and I don’t know if you guys are aware, but in, a couple months, a whole new administration’s coming into the U. S. government. And that means Hasn’t Vin Diesel been nominated for head of NHTSA? I think he’s going to be in charge of the energy department.

With a name like Diesel. It’s got to be. [00:10:00] Anyway He so a new administration comes in, including a new head of the Department of Transportation, which oversees NHTSA. What’s gonna stop the reality star who’s nominated for the Department of Transportation to say, Hey, I don’t like this.

Especially because the new, the person that Trump nominated, Duffy, Oh my god, Duffy. We’ll make part of DOT Overseas Airlines and what not, and part of what Trump said is, Hey, we’ll, he’ll make our skies safe again by eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. And I just think to the NCAP model where, hey, we’re putting in the 5 percent female model, That seems like we don’t need that kind of diversity in our crash jets anymore.

So what’s gonna stop these guys from just coming in and saying, yeah, we don’t need any of this stuff you guys proposed?

[00:10:45] Fred: You have to you have to appreciate the undisputed observation that virtually every airline crash that’s occurred has been at the hands of a Caucasian pilot. There’s got to be some way of improving [00:11:00] the complexion of pilots that will help avoid this problem.

The,

[00:11:05] Michael: The thing about NCAP is that, it’s supported by the manufacturers as well, especially the ones who do well in it, right? They have a pretty powerful extra selling point when they can say, we’re safer than everybody else. That’s the one thing I think I hold out hope for in this process.

The, yes, the NHTSA administrator has a great deal of control over the future of NCAP. However, manufacturers, it’s one area where manufacturers, I think, are somewhat less likely to be a cohesive group pushing against NHTSA action where, when some of them stand to benefit from NCAP, if you already have great, Automatic emergency braking, lane keeping and blind spot intervention technology in your vehicles.

You don’t want NCAP to go away because you’re going to be getting great advertising bullet points for to sell your vehicles for the next few years. [00:12:00] So NCAP has been around since Around 1980, late 1970s, so it’s a very long standing program under the department that, multiple administrations of all sorts have kept plowing ahead with.

And it’s, ultimately it’s critical, I think, to incentivize manufacturers to keep up with the rest of the world versus the United States falling behind. So there’s a competitive aspect to it that I think might help preserve it even in the, even in administrations that seem to be incredibly threatened by federal regulation.

[00:12:37] Anthony: It’s very positive to hear. I like that. Maybe cars will remain safe with a new Department of Transportation secretary who has zero experience with transportation. But he was on a reality show, so that’s always a plus in this administration. So the new D. O. T. head comes in do they assign the head of NHTSA, or is that a separate nomination [00:13:00] process?

[00:13:01] Michael: I’m they’re part of the process, I’m sure, the process of consulting them for that. But ultimately, who knows really in, in this next administration, how those decisions are made. But ultimately I’m sure that the new DOT secretary will play a role in trying to figure out who’s going to be the nominee for NHTSA’s next administrator.

[00:13:23] Anthony: And what are the odds that Fred Perkins will be the nominee for the new administrator of NHTSA?

[00:13:28] Fred: There’s no chance because I’ve have solved differential equations in the past and that is a Disabling characteristic of any nominee that’s going to be involved in an engineering regulation.

[00:13:42] Anthony: There you go We’ll put you down as neurodivergent.

[00:13:48] Ford’s Recall Penalties

[00:13:48] Anthony: No problem up next Ford Aw, poor Ford. Ford will have to pay a 165 million fine for failing to comply with federal recall [00:14:00] requirements. 165 million. I would love to have that. But if I’m Ford, and what’s their market cap? Billions upon billions of dollars? Is this much of a fine? Is this much of a disincentive?

[00:14:12] Michael: It’s, you say 165 million and that’s the consent order, but essentially, I think 65 million of that has to be paid. Within 60 calendar days of the order. And then there’s another 55, 000, sorry, 55 million, which is an abeyance amount. So NHTSA has set certain goals for Ford as part of this.

They’re going to have, an an an independent monitor that’s evaluating how much better Ford is doing on recalls during the next few years. Ford is going to have to put in place a system for tracking parts and being able to track parts by VIN number. Apparently, this all started with a series of rear view camera recalls [00:15:00] where apparently, it’s not totally clear from the consent order or from the NHTSA investigation.

That’s exactly what happened, but there was pretty significant violation to see a fine of this magnitude. size. It appears that Ford was, was doing a recall on certain vehicles, other vehicles that had that same technology installed, weren’t being recalled. And so ultimately, Ford had to do, a number of different recalls for this same part rather than just doing them all at once.

Now maybe that’s why Ford is leading the recall charts every years, because they’re staggering out all these recalls. And that also provides an answer for a question we’ve had for a long time, which is why does Ford lead the pack and recalls every year? But additionally, it’s a game that Ford and that other manufacturers have played for a long time with Nitsa where they’re aware of a failing part in a, a.

Certain number of vehicles, they know that part or something very similar to it is [00:16:00] in a lot of their other vehicles, but they focus, they try to focus the recall as small as possible to reduce their costs and essentially hiding the other vehicles from site until, more consumer complaints come up or other reasons come up for that section of vehicles to be recalled.

So it’s a shell game. That’s It’s been played by a lot of manufacturers over the years including Ford. And I, this is a great move by NHTSA to put a cap on that. Ford is going to have to spend, I think the, I, I talked about the 65 million and the 55 million.

There’s another 45 million that’s also going to be required to be spent by Ford. Not as a fine, a civil penalty, but to improve their Their capacity to evaluate safety problems. They’re going to have to spend 20 million on advanced safety data analytics. They’re gonna have to spend 10 million on a another system that has end to end information on vehicle compliance.

And they’re gonna have [00:17:00] to spend another 10 million on a driver assist technology lab that focuses on low voltage electronics. I think that’s because we’ve seen so many problems with electronic interference in these rear view camera systems that have been put out by Ford. And then they’re gonna have to put out another 5 million to.

Be able to trace their vehicle components by VIN which goes to my idea that a lot of this problem was vehicle components that were unsafe, weren’t being recalled in time. So Ford’s got a lot to do and, we’ve talked to a number of cases about their high recall numbers and their lack of quality assurance in the past.

Almost the past decade, they just had a lot of problems there. Hopefully some of this money that NITS is requiring them to spend will allow them to take control of that problem. But we shall see. So

[00:17:53] Anthony: this is amazing. This is, I think the first time ever in this podcast where, you know, roughly 20 minutes or so in.

[00:18:00] And two big thumbs up to NHTSA. Is that right?

[00:18:04] Michael: That’s right. NHTSA is busy. They’ve got a lot to get done before the stretching comes in and replaces the people at the top of the building.

[00:18:12] Anthony: Yeah.

[00:18:12] Autonomous Vehicle Regulations

[00:18:12] Anthony: So the new people at the top of the building one of them is this guy, Elon, who I don’t know if he’s owns the building for all I can tell.

He he really wants to ease rules for self driving cars. Cause he showed, Hey, I have this thing. And, uh, ignore the fact that it doesn’t work. I’m going to say it works and people are going to buy it and this is going to be great. And we’re going to get into how the new administration may want to ease all these self driving rules first.

But I want to follow up something we talked about last week, which was when an AV breaks the law or violates some traffic safety thing, we had a question around, okay, who gets ticketed? Who gets issued this? Michael did some work, looked up our friend Phil Kopman and there’s a law in California that says, Hey, maybe there’s a process in place to [00:19:00] do this, but they actually haven’t set up doing this.

It’s very confusing. Michael, can you understand? I’m in a self driving taxi of the future and it decides to run through a stop sign. Who gets, and the police pull it over and they go, Hey, there’s no driver. They’re not going to give me a ticket as a passenger. So who’s getting the ticket?

[00:19:20] Michael: The vehicle and the company essentially would end up getting the ticket under the legislation that was passed in over the summer and approved in late September in California.

Essentially it allows, the bill authorizes peace officers or policemen to issue notices of autonomous vehicle, non compliance to the manufacturer of the vehicle. Upon observing a violation of the vehicle code. So how exactly this is going to take place is still a little bit up in the air because the bill authorizes the Department of Motor Vehicles to set these standards, how they’re going to set just how this [00:20:00] process is going to play out.

Is it going to be a ticket stick into the, Inside of the vehicle, it rolls down its window and you throw the ticket in. Is it going to be, and a, a digital system where, you know the officer writes a ticket, but, there’s really no one to give it to in the vehicle and that goes into the system.

It also, it requires that. The manufacturers let the Department of Motor Vehicles know about the notice within 72 hours after it was issued. So there’s, it suggests that there are going to be actual tickets issued. But again, there’s some latitude in the statute that, that allows the department to make these decisions final or modify the scheme at some point.

But I think that the overarching point of all of this is that, yes police officers in California are going to be issuing tickets of some sort to autonomous vehicles when they break the law.

[00:20:58] Fred: The rules for [00:21:00] implementation of a law always follow the passage of a law.

[00:21:03] Michael: Yes, depending on how much time they’re the Department of motor vehicles is required to put these rules into place.

That’s what they’ve essentially been mandated to do by this bill. The time frame for that, as we know, from NHTSA, it can be anywhere from, a few months to many years. Years over a decade, I expect, I’m not as familiar with how the department of vehicles works in California and how fast they move on this type of thing.

But I expect it will be in the next year or 2 when we’ll see, actual written regulations around how tickets are issued to autonomous vehicles.

[00:21:39] Fred: The really important part of this law is the requirement that. These respond to geofencing in case of emergencies. If there’s a fire, for example, the fire department or the police department can declare a zone around that fire where AVs need to be excluded.

This will require some technology development, but I [00:22:00] think it’s a very important thing to do. And once it’s developed in California. It could be implemented nationwide, I would think, very easily.

[00:22:09] Anthony: Let’s repeat that one, because Michael and I were talking about this one before the show started, and I find this fascinating.

I’m in an autonomous vehicle, it’s in some sort of accident, it’s caused some sort of road hazard, and now that vehicle, or the police, or who can, so who can set up that geofence to prevent other autonomous vehicles from coming in?

[00:22:29] Michael: It doesn’t, it could, it could happen in a situation like that actually involves the autonomous vehicle.

But this is more for a lot of the circumstances we saw in San Francisco, where there would be a fire or an emergency call and the autonomous vehicles in the air got confused, cause a traffic jam, prevent emergency responders from reaching the destination they’re trying to get to, to save lives. So essentially this would allow The emergency services to put [00:23:00] a pin on the map and exclude autonomous vehicles from a certain zone when there’s an emergency so that we don’t encounter those kind of situations.

[00:23:09] Fred: Overall, it includes accountability for behavior and also a requirement that they stay away from dangerous places that have been acknowledged. I think, this is a real advancement. an AV regulation for the benefit of consumers and the public.

[00:23:26] Anthony: I love that. And I think we should add something like that into the Consumer Autonomous Vehicle Bill of Rights.

We should do that. We need to check it again. All right. So related to this new administration coming in, Elon Musk, big part of it saying, Hey, I’ve got this self driving robo taxi nonsense and don’t look over here and look over here and look at this demo. And he says it’s going to get approved within months, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So right now, NHTSA. To get a autonomous vehicle on the road without pedals and steering wheels, you need an exemption from NHTSA, right? So [00:24:00] right now NHTSA only offers like 25, 000 of these per year. And you

[00:24:06] Michael: can do 2, 500. Oh, sorry. 2, 500. It’s a number that’s not really. Talatable to folks who are manufacturing these because they want to be able to scale quickly to a lot more vehicles than that.

Now it’s important to note that if you have an autonomous vehicle that is operating in a vehicle with a steering wheel and pedals, like Waymo is doing in most of its areas. Then you can deploy as many as you want. There are no real rules around that. The only area where there are rules is if you’re trying to put a vehicle out without permission.

Traditional controls, which means you won’t be able to meet federal motor vehicle, current federal motor vehicle safety standards. So that would apply to folks like Zooks, which we’ve talked about recently, they are claiming to have certified a vehicle, the federal motor vehicle [00:25:00] safety standards that doesn’t have steering wheel or brake pedals.

So there’s still an open question here of whether there really are any U. S. rules preventing the deployment of self driving cars. The, if it’s not really just up to the companies involved and their fear of liability, when there’s an inevitable problem with one of the vehicles and people are injured or killed I think that most of these companies are more scared of the liability right now than they are the federal rules, which is why, some of this.

A lot of this chatter around, Trump and Elon relaxing federal rules around self driving cars falls flat for me because, A, there, there really aren’t any rules preventing self driving cars from being on the road. Most of the compliance that you’re going to have to do as an autonomous vehicle manufacturer is going to have to be done at the state level and all the states have, Somewhat different, but still fairly [00:26:00] substantially similar autonomous vehicle regulations.

Some states are a lot more permissive than others and require a lot less out of manufacturers. But there’s going to be, and some states have nothing at all. So I don’t really understand the giant. Rules that have to be bent here for a manufacturer to introduce autonomous vehicles onto the road.

There’s not a lot standing in their way from that perspective. Also, the fact that Musk and Tesla are pushing for these rules to be bent doesn’t really make sense to me either, since, Tesla doesn’t have an autonomous vehicle. All of their vehicles require supervision. They’re based on a vision system that is, Totally inadequate on its own to power an autonomous vehicle in the future safely.

It’s they just don’t have it yet so the idea that I mean if you relax these rules now, I think you would be you know, benefiting Tesla’s potential future competitors in autonomy, which would be, people like [00:27:00] Zoox who were trying to put a vehicle on the road without a steering wheel and pedals.

If you could ease rules, it would help them. It can help Waymo. But right now Tesla doesn’t really have an entry in the market. They just have, another puffery claim by Elon that they’re going to have this at some point in the future.

[00:27:18] Fred: Michael, come on. I’m going to bet a nickel, which is my betting limit, that we will very soon have a proposed federal law that updates the by some people thinking oppressive regulations right now, the preempts all state requirements for safety certification of any AV.

That’s what’s going to happen and right now. If people want to operate this way, they’ve got to have an exemption, and they’ve got to live with the rules, and so it would be very simple for the Congress to just say screw you, we’re going to do whatever Elon wants, and what Elon wants is to eliminate [00:28:00] all pertinent regulations and use the power of the federal government’s preemption of state laws to say, eh, we’re going to go nationwide with this.

[00:28:09] Michael: Yeah, and that’s something we, I think that we expect to be coming, but that’s not going to be, a Trump Elon administration decision. It’s not an executive decision. It’s going to require Congress to come in and create those create a law that does that. There’s, we’ve been pushing back on similar laws now for almost a decade.

Very permissive laws that essentially allow manufacturers to deploy these vehicles anywhere and in very large numbers and prevent consumers from who are injured or killed by them from being able to sue the manufacturer when that happens. There’s some really bad and consumer unfriendly laws that have been proposed over the past decade around autonomous vehicles.

And I would expect that with the current congressional bill. Constitution or the current set up in Congress that we’re going to be seeing [00:29:00] bills like that come out very soon after the new year.

[00:29:05] Anthony: You know what Elon doesn’t want? He doesn’t want you, listener, to go to autosafety.

org and click on that donate button and put in so many zeros with a preceding number of your choice in front of it, because Elon will be like, yeah, do that. And you don’t want him to make. So go to autosafety. org, click on donate, and we’ll keep pushing against Elon and these dangerous laws that he wants to get out there.

Because in his mind, even seatbelts are a step backwards. They repress my freedom To do my herky jerky dance when I listen to YMCA with Donald in my passenger seat. Cause I, that’s what I imagine the two of them just in a Tesla Roadster, dancing. Being like, yeah, Y, M, T, F, E, yeah, and then both of them thinking the other one’s weirder than they are.

I think your,

[00:29:55] Michael: Your Southern accent with Elon is weird, actually, but he’s

[00:29:58] Anthony: South African. There you [00:30:00] go bro. I don’t know how to do that.

[00:30:01] Gaslight of the Week

[00:30:01] Anthony: But anyway, so my gaslight of the week, little jumping right into that. My gaslight of the week was for a second was teetering on Michael Brooks there thinking that, Hey, this isn’t an act of Trump and Elon.

This has to go through Congress. Not realizing that Congress is just a bunch of toadies. For Trump and Elon. Come on. This is a group of people without a spine being like, okay yeah, constitution bad. Yeah. Let’s do that. Yeah. One of these clowns recently said, Hey, we don’t need a union anymore.

Let’s get rid of these blue states. Yeah. It was a, it was touch and go there, Michael. I’m not sure if it’s you or I’m just going to go back to Cathie Wood, ARK Investment. I don’t have to say anything else. Cause that’s just, you

[00:30:41] Michael: know I thought it was important to make a distinction between, executive action and legislative action there.

[00:30:47] Anthony: See, this is what people don’t like. You educated people, tell me I’m wrong when I’m wrong. All right, Michael Brooks, who’s your gaslight nominee of the week.

[00:30:55] Michael: So my gaslight nomination of the week was and [00:31:00] is the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, who, essentially came out in opposition to a recently proposed pedestrian safety standard by NHTSA that focused on head injuries.

Under the, and they came out against it for an odd reason. They said that because NHTSA is deviated from standards in place all around the world, this decision could require new vehicle designs and then divert resources from their safety research and development efforts and blah, blah, blah.

The fact is that NHTSA. had to propose a standard here that was different than other countries because Americans choose to drive vehicles that are freaking gigantic. They are bigger than other countries. And when we’re talking about, where on pedestrians, the injuries occurring and trying to protect their head, then the size of the vehicle and how the vehicle is designed are critical considerations.

And The standard that’s in place [00:32:00] in the EU simply wasn’t going to be able to evaluate the giant trucks that the manufacturers themselves have been providing to consumers for over 30 years now, as vehicles have grown larger and larger. So it’s ultimately their own fault that they’re in this situation.

So criticizing Midsa for having to create a standard to accommodate their giant vehicles is, ultimately, their responsibility and it’s not something that NHTSA could really avoid in this scenario. So the Alliance, once again, has gotten my Gaslight of the Week nomination.

[00:32:37] Anthony: I prefer people who don’t get run over and have had injuries.

Fred Perkins, who’s

[00:32:44] Fred: your Gaslight of the Week? I’m going with the most valuable corporation in the world right now. Any of you know what that is? The Catholic Church? No. Oh. Michael, your guess? That is NVIDIA. That is NVIDIA. Yes, you’re absolutely right. And I would have gone with [00:33:00] NHTSA for establishing the voluntary safety self assessment website, but I like NHTSA this week because of the other work they’re doing.

So I’m skipping through to NVIDIA. And NVIDIA’s NVIDIA. Voluntary safety self assessment starts by saying AI defined vehicles are creating safer and more efficient transportation while providing occupants with customized in cabin experiences. Close quote, so there’s absolutely no proof of that statement.

[00:33:29] Anthony: What is the tell listeners what Nvidia is before we jump down that rabbit hole.

[00:33:34] Fred: Sure. Sorry about that.

[00:33:35] NVIDIA’s AI and Safety Claims

[00:33:35] Fred: Nvidia is a chip manufacturing company that makes something called a graphical processing unit, and that is a piece of hardware that’s supported my software that allows people to very rapidly make floating point arithmetic calculations.

Now, this is a key to all of the artificial intelligence, and it’s basically the engine that lets all these [00:34:00] artificial intelligence engines work, just because there’s an awful lot of calculations involved in it. So that’s what NVIDIA does, and they’re trying to sell this to the entire AV industry. And so they’re starting with that statement that’s what they do, but again, there’s no proof offered, there’s no data offered.

And We’ll post this on our website, but for a scholarly appraisal of AI vehicles control shortfalls, specifically including identifying research gaps through self driving car data analysis by Missy Cummings, they really established in that scholarly report that there’s no basis for saying that AI will ever provide a safe self driving vehicle.

That’s the background completely contradicting the assertion made by NVIDIA, but NVIDIA goes on to say, in particular, automated and autonomous vehicles are poised to transform the transportation industry. [00:35:00] They have the potential to dramatically reduce injuries and fatalities from collisions, alleviate traffic congestion, increase productivity, and provide mobility to those who are unable to drive.

You notice what they’ve done here. They have, they’ve mixed. These aspirational statements with present tense of saying that, because we think this can happen in the future, that’s what we can do. It’s a very subtle rhetorical technique for confusing the public who’s reading this. And you’ve got to be really perceptive to notice those verb tense changes and what’s going on here.

So it’s whether or not intentional is certainly very misleading to anybody who’s reading this. There are a lot of other points, but I’m only gonna harp on two of them.

[00:35:44] Critique of ISO 26262 Safety Standards

[00:35:44] Fred: So they tout the fact that Nvidia Quoing Nvidia uses two of sued an independent accredited assessor to ensure compliance with the international organization for standardization.

ISO 2 6 2 6 2 functional [00:36:00] safety standard for road vehicles. That’s fine. Except that ISO 26262 has no actionable definition of what safety is. Their definition of safety is absence of unreasonable risk. That’s like defining the atmosphere as absence of a vacuum. It’s not something, it’s just a property that whatever that something is has got to also exhibit.

We have been advocating for an affirmative. Statement of safety, something like accessibly, acceptably safe disposition of the vehicle, which can be tested on the track can be affirmatively. Included in design requirements, absence of requirements, absence of data is not a design standard.

It’s just a void. For NVIDIA to say that we’re compliant with the standard, therefore we’re safe really requires you to look into the standard and discover that there’s no there. [00:37:00] There is no statement of what safety actually is. There’s only a statement of one of the properties. That safety might have to have so you want to call that nonsense or not.

I’m not sure, but I certainly think of it that way. And there’s another key point in this what they say is in situations quoting again in situations with the vehicles outside is defined or conditions dynamically change to fall outside it. Our products enable the vehicle to return to a minimal risk condition, also known as a safe fallback state close and quote.

That’s great, except that minimal risk condition. Needs a definition, which is not included in the statement. Also, the middle risk condition is usually referred to SAE J3016. And SAAJ 3016 defines a minimum error condition as something that is not safe. It’s not a [00:38:00] condition. It’s a fallback state and basically it’s unattainable because of the large numbers of variables involved in any assessment of comparative safety.

In both cases, NVIDIA refers, defaults to safety statements that are unachievable and unprovable. I think that’s probably enough for now, but. I think you see why I think that NVIDIA’s strategy of obfuscation enables it to be my nominee for Gaslight of the Week.

[00:38:31] Anthony: Thank you. Pretty good. I’d suggest to any manufacturers like NVIDIA or Zooks or GM Cruise or Tesla to avoid using the phrase minimal risk condition.

Cause I’m pretty sure Fred Perkins has this set up as a news alert. And anytime any company uses it in a press release or in anything, he goes, ah, joy, I have my windmill to tilt at today. Ha.

[00:38:57] Fred: You’ve, you flatter me, but I think I’m going to have to use [00:39:00] AI to find out all those references, but that’s another matter.

[00:39:05] Anthony: And that’s another reason to donate to the Center for Auto Safety, because who else is going to look up, Ah, this is your reference? I’m going to dig deeper. Who else is going to do it? You’re not going to do it. I’m not going to do it. But Fred Perkins and Michael Brooks will.

[00:39:18] Tesla’s Safety Concerns

[00:39:18] Anthony: So before we go into the TAO and listen to more of Fred Perkins dulcet tones, let’s talk about Tesla.

Because we’ve suspected this. I’ve suspected this. And now studies come out and show that people who drive Teslas are jackasses. That’s right, Teslas are the most fatal cars on the road. There’s a report from a group called IC Cars where they looked into all sorts of crash data going back years.

And it’s not that Teslas, the vehicles themselves, are necessarily dangerous. There was a family who drove off a cliff in San Francisco. All of them survived after a 200 foot drop. They do great in IIHS crash tests. It’s that they’re being sold by a [00:40:00] lunatic who says these cars drive themselves, do anything you want and so people buy them go Yeah, you know what he’s doing.

Let’s go woohoo and they don’t pay attention They think the car drives itself and they kill people.

[00:40:12] Fred: Is that

[00:40:12] Anthony: the summation?

[00:40:14] Fred: They die and they’re also being burned alive after the crash. Let’s give a little detail on that.

[00:40:20] Anthony: On another, okay. And so also the, this is a, we’ll link to from our friend of the show, Phil Copeland.

He’s talking about how more and more people are burning alive in Teslas, and this is horrific. And the Tesla fan boys basically say, yeah, that’s your fault. How do you not know the secret way to escape the car? Because when they get into a crash, the battery systems, the electrical systems that control opening and closing the doors die.

And so now your car is on fire and you have to remember, Oh yeah, the secret handle to get out. I have to remove a speaker grill and reach in and pull this out. Whereas, I don’t know, I mean imagine if I was in that situation, my entire thought process wouldn’t be, where’s the [00:41:00] secret escape hatch? It would be Ah,

[00:41:01] Fred: Which is, And tools are required, so you’ve just been in a crash, your car’s on fire.

And you can’t get out. So you need to reach for your toolbox in order to get to this magic safety release. And by the way, if you’re in the backseat, you’re screwed because there’s no safety, no manual safety release back there.

[00:41:22] Anthony: Wait, even for those doors. So the two times I’ve been in a tech Tesla that was an Uber, there’s no manual release there.

Like I can’t, there’s no secret door panel. I have to.

[00:41:34] Fred: That’s what I’ve read. I, I don’t own a Tesla myself, so I haven’t been able to verify it, but that’s what I’ve read.

[00:41:41] Anthony: Amazing. Michael, what was your take? Is this a legit study and report?

[00:41:48] Michael: On the fire side, we have long been pointing out there’s a real problem with Tesla vehicles and emergency escape.

Mainly because of the manual releases. are hidden for the [00:42:00] doors and people don’t know where they are. It’s not, it’s not really something a lot of people think about when they’re just purchasing a new vehicle. Let me look and figure out how I’m going to get out of this vehicle when it catches fire is not something that comes to mind and something that people are really prepared for.

We think that Emergency releases and manual emergency releases in electric vehicles should be standardized. Their location should be standardized just other safety systems in the car so that you know where they are when seconds matter. You don’t have time to open up your driver’s manual and figure out how to remove a speaker cover or a.

Panel in your door to access this manual release. It’s a silly system. It’s just, it’s really bad human factors, human interface design. And it’s, I think it’s going to be a problem. If more vehicle manufacturers start [00:43:00] including this tech, this type of thing, wherever they want to put it.

I think it needs to be standardized and in a location where anyone driving a rental car, a car, they’re not used to driving is going to be able to know where the manual release is when they’re, when, when they’re in a situation that requires quick action,

[00:43:19] Anthony: I’d like this as part of the the dealer process, you go to buy a car and be like, Oh, what kind of mileage does it get?

How often do I have to rotate the air in my tires? So I’m in a catastrophic crash and the car’s on fire. How do I open the doors? That would be a fun conversation to have with a dealer. Anyone? No? All right, let’s go. I’m not my kind of fun. I’m sorry. Look, you want to hang out with the car dealership.

You got to ask them some good questions.

[00:43:44] Fred: It’s hard to not be a little bit gloomy about this, the whole prospect of spending 100, 000 on a vehicle that’s going to trap you and burn you alive not a great idea.

[00:43:57] Anthony: I’ll cancel my order for my Cybertruck. [00:44:00] I was feeling good about myself anyway.

[00:44:01] Renewable Natural Gas Discussion

[00:44:01] Anthony: I don’t really need that to extend my anyway, let’s go to the towel of Fred and this week’s topic is now renewable natural

[00:44:11] Fred: gas, renewable natural gas. Okay. So why does this matter? It matters because people are selling it, right? And so the question is, what is the rationale for this? If you look at the amount of natural gas that’s being released let me just talk about flare gas from refineries.

Okay, and you’ve probably all seen this as you drive along the interstate in New Jersey or anywhere else that’s got a refinery. There’s a stack with flames coming out of it. And it’s burning continuously. Magnitude of this is astounding. If you look at the amount of flare gas that’s burned, it is about 25 percent of the annual natural gas consumption.

In the United States. So tremendous,

[00:44:59] Michael: [00:45:00] tremendous amounts

[00:45:00] Fred: being burned, it’s it is insane, but it’s a safety measure for the most part, because all the pipes from all these different refining stages, if you will, all end up in the same place. And so if they overpressurize the event through this particular stack and they keep the flame burning so that in the event of an overpressurization anywhere, That it goes out through the stack and gets burned up and keeps the refinery swimmers floating.

So it’s hard to know what to do about this.

[00:45:31] Anthony: I think my approach to do this is, hey, if we have an energy source where we have to burn off 25 percent of it maybe we got to find a different energy source. But yeah, that’s a different topic. Yes,

[00:45:43] Fred: go on. That’s a different topic. But anyway, we’re talking about natural gas.

And one of the things that people are thinking of doing is modifying diesel engines so that they can burn natural gas. And this will provide an additional market for that. [00:46:00] Natural gas is primarily methane. Methane is a chemical that has one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms in it. All hydrocarbons are made up of carbon and hydrogen, hence the name.

And methane is the simplest one. Why that’s important is that biological processes that decay organic matter Produce a lot of methane. So your farts, for example, have a lot of methane. And then that’s why teenage boys like to light them on fire. Cause it’s very, you’ve never done that. Okay. Nevermind. I see the look on your face.

[00:46:34] Anthony: Hilarious. Different kind of teenage

[00:46:36] Fred: experience then I guess. That actually works based on my experiments. And so there’s a lot of methane being produced by biological processes. People talk about cows farting and sheep farting, but also dumps and farms that produce a lot of biological material or the contain a lot of biological material exude [00:47:00] methane inevitably as part of the.

Riding of the organic matter that’s in them. So green methane is collected from writing organic materials like dumps farms and sewage pits and things like that. So that’s what people talk about when they’re talking about green methane. And what is the expression? Renewable methane, right?

So they’re talking about biological sources of methane. Chemically, it’s the same, essentially, as the gas that comes out of wells, including fracking. Fracking is primarily oriented towards releasing methane gas from subterranean deposits. So the market for methane is enormous. The amount that gets wasted is enormous.

And what the biomethane introducing into the market is primarily based on all of these numbers that I’ve been looking at a [00:48:00] advertising mechanism for saying that, this is really good stuff, but compared to the amount of gas that’s being wasted. In flare gassing and, other processes, it’s hard to know that if 1 type of methane fuel is really better than the other is frac to gas better than bio gas.

I don’t know if you have a lot of bio gas, I guess you don’t need as much frac to gas. But again these are enormous amounts of gas that’s coming into the market from geological sources compared to the very small amounts that are coming in from biological sources. That’s interesting. It may be renewable, but, again, you have to look into the source.

Is it a dump where you’re getting the gas or is it a farm that’s actually processing biological materials over and over again to maximize its own return on the investment in carbon? That’s inevitable when you’re doing farming.

[00:48:55] Anthony: But the term renewable in my mind says you can use it more than once.[00:49:00]

Like it’s a, I have glasses in my kitchen. They’re renewable. I use them all the time. That’s reusable. But this is not renewable like that. You can, it’s not renewable in the nomenclature.

[00:49:12] Fred: It’s not reusable. You can only burn the gas once, right? Okay. But you can essentially recover it by, by growing corn, for example, which takes Yeah, carbon dioxide outta the atmosphere, puts it back into cellulose, and then you can rot the cellulose and produce methane.

So yeah, if you look at that globally, there’s, there is a cycle Okay. That you can hypothesize. Is it actually working that way?

I don’t know, Michael, what.

[00:49:37] Michael: I was going to say, it’s renewable in the sense that traditional national natural gas comes from underground and there’s a limited supply there.

Whereas the biomethane can be doesn’t require that, there’s not a fixed amount inside of the earth, it’s essentially up to how much of it we want to capture. No, that’s exactly right. Yeah. And also, [00:50:00] it’s there’s landfills and organic sewage systems and all this organic rot going on all around the world.

A lot of that methane is just being released into the atmosphere. At least in this case, you would be capturing that methane to use as a fuel and also reduce the amount of methane released to the atmosphere. Those are probably the two benefits here. I would That’s true.

[00:50:26] Fred: That’s absolutely right.

But you also have to balance the amount of investment required to recover that methane versus the amount of methane release that’s inevitable and natural. For example, if you look at the Gulf of Mexico, there are enormous amounts of hydrated methane that are in the soil or the sediment, if you will.

Underneath the Gulf of Mexico and that melts and percolates up through the surface. Anyway, my uncle once lived in Erie, Pennsylvania, and he [00:51:00] said nobody there had to pay for natural gas because all you need to do is put a pipe into the ground and the methane came up all by itself and you could collect it and burn it in your house.

So there’s lots and lots of methane around. A problem is, how do you tell biogas? From geological gas chemically. It’s the same, right? And in both cases, you have to add mercaptan, which allows you to smell it. Methane itself has no odor. So you need to add something to the gas supply so that you can sell it and detect whether or not there’s a leak.

So lots of issues here and. If somebody sells you renewable biogas that’s great, but you’re in a position where you need to give them absolute trust over their supply chain and wonder whether or not they’ve actually gotten this out of biological sources or whether or not they’ve just mixed in something from the local gas company.[00:52:00]

Anyway, that’s a lot. Any more questions about that? What it means and what happens? By the way, if you convert a diesel engine to burn methane, rather than to burn diesel fuel, it has a lot of benefits. It reduces the amount of soot, reduces the amount of nitrous oxide that’s reduced. Basically, natural gas runs clean or burns lean.

Excuse me. Burns lean, so that there’s no unburned hydrocarbon in the exhaust. That’s why they use it in forklifts in enclosed spaces. But when you convert a diesel engine to burn natural gas, you basically convert it from being a diesel engine to just an internal combustion engine with spark ignition.

So there’s lots of issues there as well. Probably good in the long term, but you got to balance that investment in modifying the diesel engine. Against the value of burning the biodiesel or excuse me, the biogas or whatever is being represented to you as [00:53:00] biogas. It’s complex. It’s a complex situation overall.

Sure. Burn biogas if and when you can, but let’s make sure we don’t lose the perspective that there are a lot of extraneous sources of gas. They need to be controlled as well in order for us to reduce the amount of methane. That’s actually going to the atmosphere.

[00:53:21] Anthony: Okay, I want to propose another tau on fuel related things will be Oh, what is it?

I lost it out of my head. It’s what F1’s planning to move to in a couple of years where it’s completely clean fuel sources. So It’s some sort of not synthetic gasoline because it’s not really gasoline, but it’s all clean synthetic fuels. Alright stop looking at your bird feeder and send it to me once you’ve articulated it.

I don’t have a bird feeder. I’m looking at your ugly faces. No, they’re very pretty. And hey, with that, let’s go to recalls and I’ll try to recall the last statement. Scrap it in

[00:53:52] Recall Roundup

time for the recall roundup. Hyundai.

[00:53:53] Anthony: Hyundai. Hyundai. 34, 964 vehicles. This is the 2024 Hyundai Santa Fe. [00:54:00] Santa Fe hybrid inadvertent sunshade activation could increase the risk of minor pinch point injury occurring from unexpected closure of the fabric sunshade with an extremity in the enclosed fixed sunroof space.

I know this could cause somebody to get pinched, but this is the most adorable recall I think we’ve ever come across. Cause, you got your sunshade and this is a cloth one, so you’re gonna get a little pinch? Or is this more serious and I’m a jackass?

[00:54:28] Fred: If it’s not your fingers being pinched, I suppose you, yeah, there you

[00:54:32] Anthony: go.

[00:54:33] Michael: And I think, a lot of the motivation, this is a noncompliance with a federal motor vehicle safety standard 118, which controls the operation, the safe operation of power windows and sunroofs. And that standard was put into place. For a not so nice reason, which was, children were getting their heads and necks caught in power windows that [00:55:00] were opening and strangulating them and, a number of children were dying every year through inadvertent activation of power windows.

And so the agency put into play 1, 8, F, and D. S. 1, 18 that essentially. Prevents those injuries from happening. It doesn’t in a couple of ways. It’s making sure that the buttons that control power windows are recessed in a way that doesn’t allow for inadvertent activation. That’s the problem. In this recall, the buttons not fully recessed.

So the panel can move without the driver or the occupants intending it to move and trap fingers, most likely children’s fingers, which is really what the standard was geared towards to, to prevent children from getting into bad situations when they’re exploring the interior of mom’s vehicle.

So that’s why this standard exists. And, it applies to basically any window or sunroof or any [00:56:00] other moving partition, not to doors, but to window type partitions in the vehicle, they’re going to have to be able to do things like not have controls that are easily accessed by children.

There’s a provision that can require. Windows to reverse automatically when they encounter an obstruction, like a finger and a pinch point. And that’s a good standard to have, even though in this situation it seems a little cute. It’s, the standard is there for very important reasons.

[00:56:29] Anthony: Alright, let’s move on to the next one. General Motors, 77, 824 vehicles, the 2022 2023 Chevrolet Express. General Motors. The GMC Savannah. And this is a transmission control module. The rear wheels lock up momentarily while driving or the vehicle moves in an unintended direction at low speeds.

Oh. This isn’t good.

[00:56:52] Michael: Not cute. Yeah, this one’s pretty easy. If you’ve got a defect that allows the vehicle to go in forward [00:57:00] when the driver thinks it’s in reverse or the opposite that’s a bad thing and can result in pretty easily result in injuries or, Probably a lot of damaged garages.

In this case, this recall is for the GM and Chevy large kind of cargo vans. And owners should hear about that one just in time for Christmas.

[00:57:21] Anthony: Oh boy. Last recall. Ford! Ha! What are they doing here? 27, 678 vehicles, the 2020 2025 Ford Explorer, Lincoln Aviator, Ford Escape, Lincoln Corsair, F 150, Ford Expedition, 2018 2024 Lincoln Navigator.

And it looks like the dashboard airbag warning label was not installed on vehicles exported to U. S. territories. That’s it, they’re missing a sticker?

[00:57:50] Michael: Yeah, they’re essentially missing the dashboard airbag warning label that, tells you things like, don’t put a child in front of this or, a small female, make, be [00:58:00] aware that there is an airbag here and that it could deploy and injure you if you’re not in the appropriate position.

That’s going to be a label that I think is just going to be sent out by mail to owners. And if you are an owner of these vehicles and you don’t get a label, you should be able to request one from your dealer.

[00:58:15] Anthony: Yeah. It’s listed as just a hang tag anyway. Was that

[00:58:19] Fred: included in the massive?

Ford penalty we talked about earlier.

[00:58:25] Michael: I don’t know if this was, Nitsa in the last week has opened up to additional recall queries around Ford. And they didn’t really note in those, whether or not they were related to the penalty. But it looks like as part of their investigation into Ford’s recall practices.

They uncovered a couple of other things that they want to look into. So Ford is still somewhat under investigation for some bad recall practices by NHTSA. And, those investigations are new. We’ll have to see how they progress and see how interested the new [00:59:00] administration is in pursuing enforcement matters.

[00:59:02] Anthony: Ha.

[00:59:03] Closing Remarks

[00:59:03] Anthony: And with that, listeners, thanks for spending time with us. We appreciate it. Tell all your friends. Donate. Give us five stars and until next time stay sane.

Thank you for listening. Bye bye. Thanks everybody. For more information visit www. autosafety. org