Lightning strikes, MPG and wrong turn signals

Introduction to the Podcast

Anthony: You are listening to There Auto Be A Law, the Center for Auto Safety Podcast with executive director Michael Brooks, chief engineer Fred Perkins, and hosted by me Anthony Cimino. For over 50 years, the Center for Auto Safety has worked to make cars safer.

Hello. Welcome to Fascism Watch, wait. No. Welcome to the Center for Auto Safety and we’re gonna tell you all about how to make your life better behind the wheel or on the road. That sounds about right.

NITSA and Fuel Economy Standards

Anthony: Let’s start off with NITSA saying, Hey, remember what that last guy did bad. Let’s lower corporate average fuel economy.

I don’t understand this. This is so under the Biden administration, they did this saying, Hey, we’ll get cafe standards. That’s the average. Gas mileage that an entire fleet from a manufacturer should get to a little over 50 miles per [00:01:00] gallon. Which sounds impressive, but I had a Saturn back in like the late nineties and it was getting like 40 miles a gallon.

So that doesn’t really strike me as impressive. And you can go back even further to, they had cars in the eighties, which, and it’s also destroyed that were getting like 70 miles per gallon called the research safety vehicle. That was cool. So these guys are just like, yeah, this is bad.

Political Controversies and EV Mandates

Anthony: From an article on MSN last year, 120 tough Republican lawmakers said, NHTSA exceeded its authority by adopting fuel economy standards that effectively mandate EVs while at the same time force the internal combustion engine outta the market and make us eat tofu.

Only some of that quote is real. I think you can figure it out. This is who’s doing this? ’cause like the auto manufacturers, they’ve already invested up billions and billions into realizing that internal combustion engines are phasing out. So is this just shooting their own? Themselves,

Michael: This is part of [00:02:00] this whole anti ev.

There, there was not an EV mandate, first of all, there’s no federal EV mandate, but that was used in the election as a way to garner some votes for more government overreach. But what’s, we’re not really sure exactly what’s going on here because, the Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy, has announced that they’ve submitted an interpretive rule resetting the Corporate Average Fuel Economy program is the title of it to OIO, which is the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs that reviews rules and rulemakings by all agencies.

They haven’t released a copy of what this is, but the way they’re describing it makes it sound as though it’s, I. It’s pretty clear they’re trying to get out, get around to rulemaking here, right? They’re calling this interpretation not economically significant, which doesn’t make it a major rulemaking, which subjects it to less scrutiny by OIR when pretty clearly this is an [00:03:00] economic, economically significant rule, right?

They’re essentially rolling back a fuel economy stair that applies to every vehicle on the road. And also another way they’re getting around of rulemaking. The DOT Nitsa both have the ability to do interpretations. Of statutory guidance rule regulatory guidance, regulatory rules that have been pa that have been put forth in the past by calling it an interpretation, they’re not required to put it through a rulemaking and comment process, make it public get input from all the stakeholders out there, and then change the rule according to the feedback they get.

So they’re basically trying to make an end run around rulemaking to dis to dismantle the bi Biden Cafe standard under the guise that the Biden Cafe standard was somehow an EV mandate. It wasn’t an EV mandate. It, it literally just raised the. Number of miles that vehicles using gasoline [00:04:00] have to be able to get per gallon.

It’s pretty simple and it might make EVs more attractive to consumers. It might make some of the ice vehicles more expensive. There are other arguments here, but what it wasn’t doing is mandating elec electric vehicles. We will have more on this when we see exactly what they’re doing.

But, I think it’s fairly safe at this point to, look at this as a somewhat sneaky attempt to modify something that, the folks at Nitsa spent the greater part of the entire bi Biden administration trying to do after that standard was, ha. The cafe standards have been incredibly politically.

I guess fraught with trouble over the years because automakers continuously oppose them. And meanwhile, we’re in the middle of a climate crisis that’s going to require us to buckle our belts a little tighter when we use fossil fuels. And it’s a very politically sensitive topic and, each administration comes in [00:05:00] and wants to put their stamp on it.

And this is what, this is the Trump administration’s attempt to do that here. More details later.

Anthony: So Michael just real quick, so the Republican current administration argument is that EVs are bad. We don’t like EVs. Just,

Michael: I think it’s, that’s I look all this stem, I him stems from this.

All this stems from like the climate denialism, should government be doing anything to prevent global warming from occurring? You see the Trump administration shutting down scientific reports on global warming going after Noah and yet going after attacking the weathermen doing all these crazy things that are simply based on this anti global warming philosophy, for lack of a better word.

I’m not sure if it even qualifies as philosophy, but it’s, it’s. It’s hugely problematic when you start calling things that they aren’t, like the Cafe Standard has [00:06:00] been raising vehicle fuel economy standards for years to the benefit of everyone except the oil industry. And maybe the auto industry at times, which is tasked with, passing, creating vehicles that can get more miles per gallon and maybe consumers come up, have end up funding that through higher vehicle prices at some point too.

But overall, it’s a great goal. We’re gonna use less fossil fuels rely on fuels coming from countries. We haven’t historically been the greatest of friends with and that we may not wanna align ourselves with. And, it’s been a net positive period for the United States and now that, they’re attacking.

You know what’s been a great standard in America overall and trying to eliminate it because of some pretty significant scientific denialism that’s going on. It’s, just one added to the list of scary things that are taking place right now under this administration.

Anthony: I’m so confused. ’cause didn’t like, maybe a month ago convicted felon and [00:07:00] unfortunate gesture, aren’t they on the White House lawn promoting EVs So confusing.

Michael: Yeah. It, nothing makes sense. And when there’s no logic anything flies.

General Motors’ Shifting Strategies

Anthony: Ah continuing with no logic, general Motors so General Motors, they they changed their strategy it seems Weekly. Yeah. Which is very strange. But they’re they’re sending emails out to their white collar employees with the phrases, we need your help.

Emission standards that are not aligned with market realities pose a serious threat to our business by undermining consumer choice and vehicle affordability. And have you seen our Hummer SUV again, more cognitive dissonance here, but this is an article on the Wall Street Journal title. GM is pushing hard to California’s ev mandate, just a refresher court.

Of course GM released the first EV in California in the early nineties. Hey, we love you. We hate you. We love you, we hate you. They just want to be short sold, [00:08:00] is my opinion. But hey GM is just odd. Fred, you have all your money tied up in gm, right?

Fred: Not me, sir. You must be thinking of some other handsome devil.

Oh,

Michael: yeah.

Yeah. And

Michael: this is more, this one is, I. The people keep using, th this one is specifically directed at California. They, California has the measure that actually bans the sale of gasoline powered cars and trucks by 2035. And I think that I, I’m not exactly sure about this.

I think that applies to hybrids as well. That’s a pretty problematic deadline. And given the fact that the federal government’s been withdrawing from funding charging outlets and stations across America and laying out the infrastructure for electric vehicles, 2035 at this point has to seem like a, an incredibly optimistic goal to [00:09:00] actually ban the sale of new gasoline cars and trucks.

Maybe it’s a laboratory goal in many ways. I think we’ve talked about this on a number of occasions how hybrids might be the best way going forward for the moment until electric vehicles can trim their weight and their size and the issues with batteries and charging, and a lot of things that are going on there.

But in, in this case this is an EV mandate, unlike what a lot of people have been casting the federal government’s activities as. So General Motors, which, did build one of the original electric cars, or at least one of the original mass produced ones. And has. What do you call it when someone is saying one thing and changing their mind constantly waffling crawfishing on the electric vehicle commitment.

Anthony: Schizophrenia,

Michael: that’s probably a little too far. It’s, they’re doing what companies do when, a new pair of pants moves into the White House. They’re kissing up to [00:10:00] whoever’s there, right? When Biden was in the White House, GM is saying, oh yeah, we’re gonna do electric vehicles.

Let’s go Joe. And now the Trump’s in the White House. It is a complete reversal of that. And let’s go attack, the California measure, and let’s not commit to ev. So it is pandering at best,

Anthony: and what a pair of pants he has in that White House. My word, you could fit a family of five in those,

Fred: they probably figured they’ve only gotta put up with this guy for another few years.

They’re, I think naively under the assumption that he will leave when his term expires. But I agree with you. They’re just watching which way the political wind is blowing and trying to get their boat in front of that little breeze.

Anthony: The problem I have with it is that, okay, they throw a bunch of money towards EV manufacturing and whatnot.

Then they’re like, we’re not gonna do that. They throw a bunch of money towards GM crews, then we’re not gonna do that, and they’re setting billions and billions of dollars on fire. And they could have just invested in safety and made cars safer. [00:11:00] How cool would that be? They could make good cars instead of literally they set at least 5 billion on fire with this stuff they could have, solved automatic emergency braking and made it awesome.

Michael: Yeah, absolutely. That’s exactly what I think they could have done with that.

Anthony: Yeah. But hey, I’m just an optimist.

National EMS Week and Road Safety

Anthony: But on a positive note, it is national EMS week. If you on the unfortunate opportunity, hug your EMS worker but just wait for them to finish doing the chest compressions.

Yeah.

Michael: And everything else they do, which is, EMS professionals are, EMTs, paramedics, the, I think the EMS week is specifically focused on the paramedics and the emerging medical technicians, not necessarily to the firefighters who are also a critical part and the police to an extent, who are part of the critical response to all crashes.

But, we talk a lot on this show about fatality statistics and fatality rates and injuries and all the bad things that happen in car [00:12:00] crashes. But that could be owe so much worse if we didn’t have these professionals on the ground taking risks and, they’re thrusting themselves into the midst of some of the, most horrific human traumas that, that, that happen day to day in our society.

And they have to deal with that on a personal level as well. So these folks should be admired. And frankly, like police officers, firemen, teachers should be paid more and valued more than they are by our society.

Anthony: Yes. And if you’re driving down the road and you see them.

Over on the shoulder, move out of the lane, give them extra space. Yeah, please. I

Michael: don’t I’ve been watching my share of police chase videos and my ever ever expanding attempt to gain a knowledge of what conditions under what, when are these pursuits practical when they should be taken up.

And I’m just completely shocked by the number of drivers who are not watching in their rear [00:13:00] view mirrors or completely out to lunch when it comes to getting out of the way of police and fire vehicles. It is absurd and it shows you why we have a traffic problem in America when that many people are not paying attention to their surroundings while driving shameful.

Anthony: Ah, hey, so Fred, I got a question for you.

Turn Signal Colors and Safety Standards

Anthony: You come to an intersection, it’s a nice sunny day, you hit your turn signal to go right. What color is the turn signal in the exterior of your car?

Fred: Mine happens to be red, but I was behind a Cooper mini yesterday that has a fancy turn signal. That’s amber. And what was interesting is the left it points signal the wrong way.

Yeah, yeah. It points the wrong, it points back thought of the car. I seen that too. It’s super goofy. Yeah. You turn the, you turn, they turn the left blinker on, then there’s suddenly an arrow pointing to the right blinking. Yep. Wait,

Michael: what Stupidest goddamn thing I ever saw. It is [00:14:00] absolutely stupid.

And I’ve seen the same thing and pointed it out to other people and it is, it complies with federal motor vehicle safety standards. Somehow they don’t have, a rule in there that says you can’t have an arrow on the left blinker pointing

Anthony: are all these cars made in Massachusetts?

’cause that seems like a very kind of. That’s what I’ve experienced in there. No,

Fred: everything in Massachusetts only has left, left wings on them.

Anthony: That’s insane. I’ve seen the cool ones where you hit the blinker and like their arrow animates, but it pointing in the correct direction.

Michael: Yeah. This one’s really odd, to their credit, they’re using amber arrows even though it’s pointing the wrong way.

So in the United States, we’re allowed to use either red or amber for the turn signals. Why would I

Anthony: choose one or the other if I was manufacturing a car?

Michael: Apparently the amber ones take more power to produce the light required to meet the visibility requirements of the standard. And so they cost more.

And apparently there’s some consumers prefer the look of the [00:15:00] red to the amber, even though they’ll never see it while they’re driving their car. So those are the only real things I’ve been able to dig out. I’m assuming that this is all going on because it’s cheaper. Like a lot of decisions that are made in the industry, if a red turn signal’s cheaper and you have that option, the industry is going to take it the majority of the time.

Anthony: Red, why do they paint? Farm farmhouse is red. I’m sorry. Say it again. Why do they paint farmhouses red barns? Barns on farms. Why do they paint ’em red? I have,

Fred: I’m hoping you know the

Anthony: answer to that

Fred: cheapest

Anthony: color paint.

Fred: Oh,

Anthony: there you go. That’s right. They can make Who with

Fred: Rust.

Anthony: Yep. Yeah.

So Michael but in Europe there all the turn signals are amber.

Michael: Yeah, and there’s been studies conducted by nitsa I believe the last time they did one was around 2009 that the one in 2009 found that Amber signals have a 5.3% effectiveness in reducing involvement in two vehicle crashes, where the lead vehicle is struck from the rear, while turning left, merging a traffic, changing [00:16:00] lanes, entering, leaving a parking space. It looks like Amber signals are more effective, and so why they weren’t. And there are other studies that show an even higher, rate of effectiveness for Amber turn signals. I think that they, they stand out better.

And there’s a lot of reasons behind that are probably not worth getting into. But there, there’s less, there’s, they offer more contrast the background on other things. But if you’re, if you’re, you’ve got a finding by a federal safety agency that shows a statistically significant.

Impact of yellow turn signals over red and reducing crashes at 5.3% in certain cases. Why aren’t you, why aren’t you doing that? The cost can’t, cannot be that much higher for amber lamps versus red. So it, it’s a no brainer. And yet, nothing has been done here. Meanwhile, most of the other countries around the world require Amber and their fatality rates are much better than ours at the moment.[00:17:00]

Fred: Yeah. It might surprise our listeners to know that there’s a body of design standards put out by the United Nations. It’s called the United Nations, European Something, council on Economics or something like that. Yeah. But anyway, there’s a whole raft of standards that are out there, and this Amber Light is included in the standard that comes out of the NECE and I just a quiz for you, Anthony.

What major country does not adhere to the United Nations, European standards,

Anthony: North Korea, United States. Korea is not a member of the un, I don’t think United States Got it. And then the, and if the United States is against it, so is Israel. Isn’t how things work. Now,

Fred: if you listen to our nor current national politicians, one of the worthless things the United Nations does is provide national, international standards for [00:18:00] safe operation of vehicles that also extends to autonomous vehicles and a lot of other aspects of vehicles that people all over the world buy.

So part of your dollar that’s not being spent on the UN is keeping the United States from harmonizing with world standards. By the way, this also harms. Us businesses because if you are producing an automobile consistent with US standards only, you can’t sell ’em in Europe. You can’t sell ’em in Japan.

You can’t sell ’em in a lot of other places where people tend to buy a lot of cars. So another example of politics shooting the industry in the foot.

Anthony: Ah that’s how we like to live here. Personally, I don’t like to use turn signals ’cause it’s none of your goddamn business. Which way I’m going.

Okay. Don’t be following me.

Michael: Privacy advocate.

Anthony: Yeah. And no, that’s just nuts to people who do that. Drives me nuts as a pedestrian. Makes me crazy. Okay, so [00:19:00] I wanna get into another one. ’cause we were just talking about the, that there is a motor vehicle safety standard around the color of the lights and that you can apparently point arrows Anyway, can you just have anything appear?

Can I just have smiley faces appear and blink on and off.

Michael: I think there, there are some standards around I think we talked about this a while back, some standards around the shape or the size of these things,

Anthony: but it can be an arrow pointing the wrong direction. I think they

Michael: have to be, the light has to be connected somehow.

You can’t have, a, a pointillistic big, wild design going on with your brake lights because it needs to convey information, it needs to convey that you’re going left, even if it’s pointing right. So I, I don’t know that, I don’t know that smiley faces or any of the other crazy illustrations we could think of right now would be appropriate and pass muster of the federal standard

Anthony: because my question leads into a new feature, an Apple CarPlay Ultra unlimited caffeine free.[00:20:00]

Customizable Dashboard Displays

Anthony: That is Aston Martin is putting out, and it’s allowing the driver, to have customized dashboard displays. So normally your dashboard displays got like your tachometer, which is pointless to most people. The, your speedometer, which is hopefully helpful and it’ll have an indicator of what gear you’re in helpful if you need to stop and get a cup of coffee.

So this, it seems, it allows, like they’ll throw all sorts of stuff in there. Users from the article in Gizmoto, users can change up various gauges on the dash and bring up apps like Apple Music or maps in between your temperature gauge and speedometer. And it seems, it allows like you to do a whole bunch of things.

So my question to Mr. Brooks is what is required to display in front of the driver Is anything, or is it just like anything, anything goes free for all,

Michael: There, there are some, there’s a lot of different. Telltales I’ll say that we have in our cars that are [00:21:00] telling us about the state of the vehicle, what’s going on, whether you have, the right oil pressure, their temperature of your vehicle, everything from that to, is your airbag working properly?

They do have some. Regulations around, what happens in a common space when a vehicle is going to display multiple messages. And really, the rule starts out by saying, a common space may used to show message for many sources. That would include, your apps that you’re using by Apple and other things because these rules were all written at a time prior to when we even considered.

What apps were, we certainly weren’t considering the ability to customize the dashboard at the time these rules were created because dashboards were a fairly fixed component. Your tachometers here, your speedometers here, your oil light is here, and some of your other messages are in very particular places.

So these rules are somewhat archaic and can’t really apply to a [00:22:00] lot of the things that are coming out. Now, there are some, areas where you can’t screw around, right? You can’t screw around. In, in some of the color for some of these things, you have to have red telltales for things like brake system malfunctions, airbag problems, low tire pressure, your tire pressure monitor warning, electronic stability control malfunctions your, whether your high beams are on your turn signals and your seatbelt things, those all have to have their own place and they’re pretty well regulated. However, anything outside of those is kind could, I think could be at the whim or be able to be moved around by the driver depending on what, how much you really want to customize your dashboard, which

Fred: I do.

I need to, I think that, no, this is great news actually, because I’ve been trying to come up with a good rationale for treating in my Subaru and buying an Aston Martin, and I think this will push me over the edge if I can move my icons [00:23:00] around. Yeah, I’m very happy to hear this news.

Michael: Yeah, really one of the only base requirements is that, the, that these things work depending on what the lighting is.

You want to be able to see this in sunlight as well as. Nighttime. And also they’re required to be visible by a belted driver. And that’s it. Oh, but if I’m

Anthony: unbelted, anything goes

Michael: If you’re unbelted you could be in any position and it’s hard to say, that this should be visible to you.

So I think that’s why that’s included there. ’cause drivers who move around a lot or someone who’s driving from the passenger seat isn’t going to be able to see some of these telltales.

Fred: Ah, no. But another reason is good, is because it will relieve the driver from an ab boredom of actually driving and they can instead, fiddle with their video display and screw around with where the symbols are located to try to get the one that’s just right.

I don’t, there’s a lot of reasons to be distracted from driving and I think having won more is certainly a great way [00:24:00] to relieve the boredom of actually having to drive your car.

Anthony: Are you gaslighting on Fred? I. Could be, ah, let’s get into gas. I’m not

Fred: getting paid for this diversion, so I’m not sure that it’s a good gaslight.

Anthony: Fred only gets paid if it’s good, if the things that he says are interesting and good.

Gaslighting of the Week

Anthony: With that, I’ll let you lead off on gaslighting reminder from last week. Fred is up one Michael Zero. I have 3 million points still.

Fred: Okay. Michael since you’re younger and beautiful, Larry, you wanna jump in

Michael: here?

Sure. I’m gonna rewind back to something we talked about earlier so that, my guess line of the week is going to DOT Secretary Sean Duffy, who is, is quote, under President Trump’s lead leadership, we are making life more affordable with cars made in America. Again. That could be the Gaslight of the week.

I, I, but I’ll leave that to one of you guys if you want it. What I and objecting to in this statement is. The Biden Buttigieg [00:25:00] administration illegally used cafe standards as a backdoor electric vehicle mandate, driving the price of cars up resetting cafe standards as Congress intended, will lower vehicle costs and ensure the American people can purchase the cars.

They won’t. And I really question that from, we, I already discussed earlier why it’s not really an EV mandate. It’s definitely a way to improve the way that, that ice vehicles are and then fuel economy on the road. But there’s also, hybrids that really need to be talked about here.

Hybrids are still even of as of last year, I believe only around 10% of the market of vehicles and hybrids could met the new fuel economy standards. Running away from it. In fact, I think Toyota announced yesterday or today that. They are, I think they’re switching their RAV4 to all of them are gonna be hybrid now.

They’re not gonna make any more ice RAV fours. That’s their most popular selling vehicle. And [00:26:00] that’s a big step that’s really gonna help them meet fuel economy standards. And there’s still a lot of room for growth in, in the automotive history and hybrids, which could have easily met cafe standards.

And that in itself disproves the what Secretary Duffy is claiming here is that the CAFE standards were a backdoor EV mandate. Simply not true. There’s plenty of space in the market for, hybrids to. To continue to be made. I know that’s not what electric vehicle advocates want because they’d like to eliminate fossil fuel dependence.

But as an interim step until EVs get to a place where the majority of Americans can incorporate them into their lives, hybrids are a great solution to increase fuel economy, reduce emissions, and keep the prices of vehicles relatively stable. Hybrids can be a little more expensive than an ice vehicle, and because of the combination of electric and gasoline propulsion, they [00:27:00] may be subject to some more quality issues.

But I think a lot of those issues could be resolved if we only made more of them and incorporated them into the market better. So I’m gonna give secretary Duffy my Gaslight of the Week, primarily because of this insistence that cafe is somehow an EV mandate.

Anthony: That’s a pretty good one. Michael, did you say that Secretary Duffy said to make it so consumers can afford the vehicles they want?

Yeah,

Michael: And there’s a lot of choice there. There’s a lot of this driver choice. No, I jump in here because this is, go for

Anthony: it because he’s now my gaslight of the week. Okay. Because this is nonsense because the car I want is an Aston Martin Vanquish and that’s a half a million dollars. It doesn’t matter what the fuel standards are, there’s no way I can afford that.

Even the used ones go for a quarter million dollars. He’s my gaslight of the week. That’s it. Show’s over go home.

Michael: Yeah, vehicle choice is a, it’s problematic. There’s a, even AAA uses that sometimes when they’re defending people’s right to buy whatever [00:28:00] size pickup truck or whatever they want.

The fact is, you don’t have true vehicle choice and you never will. You can’t buy, if you don’t want electronic stability control, you’re gonna have to go back and buy a vehicle from 2006, right? They’re, the vehicles made today do not give you a choice about a lot of things.

They do not give you a choice about, whether you’re gonna, whether it’s gonna come with a spare tire in the trunk, God state. There’s just so many things that, that. You could object to almost every modification that’s ever been made to vehicles for safety or other reasons as an infringement on your vehicle choice.

So it’s a meaningless statement, and we shouldn’t, frankly, if I were the king, we wouldn’t allow vehicles like the Hummer, like the cyber truck, like these gigantic battery powered vehicles that weigh 10,000 pounds or giant pickups that don’t have batteries that weigh that much. We wouldn’t allow for people to choose that kind of crap because it’s killing people.

And so I’m highly opposed, I do think Americans [00:29:00] should be able to choose what kind of car they want, something that fits their budget and there’s a lot of vehicle choice things that make sense. But when it comes to being able to choose something dangerous, I don’t think that people should have the option to choose to put other people at risk.

Primarily, they can put themselves at risk all they want. But it’s a really problematic statement. The whole vehicle choice thing.

Anthony: Agreed. Fred,

you’re on mute, but you’re animated. We like it. I’m

Fred: sorry. I was just saying this whole argument about choice is so goddamn stupid, but I forgot to chuckle when I had the microphone muted. So anyway, I’m just gonna swing right ahead into my nominee, which is of apparently a publication called Carson Now Carson, Nevada.

Oh, the Johnny Carson Fan Club newsletter. It might well be that. I don’t know. Is John Rickles part of that? They’re quoting somebody named Jeff Farra, who is pretty good pretty good stand in [00:30:00] for those guys ’cause he has a assertion in this article that these human errors are responsible for overwhelming majority of roadway crashes and deaths today.

Man that’s like Don Rickles that’s going back over 10 years. Same old line. It’s it’s very nice. But the best one here in this mix of both aspirational and delusional statements is this one sentence that says, simply put, AVS are held to the highest safety standards and transportation today.

That’s pretty good. That’s pretty good. And if you accept, if you make exceptions for certain things like aircraft, buses, trains, ferries, transportation except for all of those which have orders of magnitude, higher safety standards in the trucking industry and put together the fact that there [00:31:00] really are no safety standards for avs that are any different than the AV standards in the trucking industry for human powered trucks than.

I’ve gotta say congratulations, Mr. Fowler. You’ve won my nomination for this week’s Cash later of the week award.

Anthony: That’s a pretty good one. But today’s answer was Sean P. Duffy. But thank you for playing. We have some lovely parting gifts for you. You can pick them up at your local gl dam it.

I know. So my original Gaslight was gonna be a company called Aurora. So let’s talk about Aurora. Aurora Innovation. We put driverless semi-trucks on the roads of Texas because Texans have a death wish. I’m not sure. So Aurora made this whole case saying, Hey, we will not put vehicles on the road without drivers unless we are confident they are 100% safe.

Absolutely no way. And this was three weeks [00:32:00] ago. They put these semi-trailers on the roads of Texas and what do they have now on it? Human safety drivers. Uhoh. What happened? Yeah, from this article in TT News, what is the transport topic News? Everyone’s a subscriber, driverless vehicle developer.

Aurora Innovation is putting a human back in front of the wheel of big rigs operating in Texas reversing course than less than three weeks ago after the co company began commercial autonomous service. We are confident this is not required to operate the truck safely based on exhaustive testing and analysis that populates our safety case, says the CEO of Aurora.

But hey, the people that are actually building the trucks, they’re like we want a safety driver in place, which I find we’re totally safe, is just our customer who’s using this. They don’t think we’re totally safe and they realize, hey, maybe we need somebody inside the vehicle. A road.

Fred: Yeah it gets better because it does.

I know they [00:33:00] stripped all of the insignia off the truck so that people wouldn’t be able to identify it as the pack car truck that it was. And there was an analysis we read of the finances of the industry in particular of this Aurora. And they’re definitely on the ropes. They’ve gotta come up with multiple buildings of dollars, liquid or diluting all of their current stock and potentially bankrupting all of their stockholders.

Or not bankrupting them ’cause they’re stockholders, but, wiping out their value. So there was a lot of speculation last week about why the founder. Aurora had abruptly left the company. And if you read these financials, apparently it’s a, it is a case of something to do with sinking ships and wanted to get out before his stock was so diluted that it wasn’t worth very much or speculating, [00:34:00] of course, but that’s just case of putting one-on-one together and suggesting that it might possibly be two.

Packer’s Concerns About Liability Risks

Michael: Yeah, I got a, my first reaction when I saw this was that Packer’s uncomfortable with the potential liability risks of not having a driver in charge of a semi-truck on the road. We’re not sure how much information Packer and Aurora sharing on the operations here. Maybe there was a significant safety issue that Packer saw, and they’re like, we gotta get the driver back in there.

But the way this reads to me is that Packer is simply not as, willing to risk their future profits own the fact that, aurora has made the decision to use their vehicles in its testing and now what looks to be deployment on the roads of Texas and wanted to pull back from that whole scenario to avoid liability.

And I really haven’t moved too [00:35:00] much from that opinion since it first popped into my head.

Anthony: Yeah.

The Role of Drivers in Autonomous Vehicles

Anthony: Still listeners with avs, whether semis or your Waymo’s eliminating the driver doesn’t really save much money. Not really sure what the big push for that is. ’cause the human gets to monitor the system, be like, Hey, there’s a problem.

But hey, you’ll have people remotely doing that right? And everything will be better in the future.

Lightning Strikes and Car Safety

Anthony: So Hey, Fred, with that, let’s let’s spice things up a little bit. All so I’m driving down the road here. Oh, no. It’s starting to rain. Oh God. And then. My car’s hit with lightning. What do I do? Do I grab the, do I try to touch any piece of metal inside the car? Do I just do, I say, Hey, my tires are rubber, man, so I’m totally grounded.

I’m good to go. Or do I just not care and keep going?

Fred: It’s shocking that you would ask, see what they did there?

Anthony: Yeah. Yeah. That was good. Welcome to the task.

Fred: Very good. Yeah. [00:36:00] Okay. This is actually a very interesting subject for people who are really boring like me. Oh, it fills in a lot of blanks for me.

Understanding Lightning and Electric Fields

Fred: What is lightning Basically, lightning is a big spark, right? And lightning happens when the electric field strength exceeds 3 million volts per meter. So you can see a meter is about a yard, right? So if you’ve got a lightning strength that goes in ground to the vehicle or ground to cloud.

And you’ve got a lot of voltage working in there. And interestingly though, the 3 million volts per meter is only about 1% of the electric field generated inside of the mitochondria, which as you remember from your biology, are subcellular organisms that exist symbiotically within your body’s cells to drive electric excuse me, drive chemical reactions that keep you alive.

Anthony: Wait, I gotta jump. So you’re telling me the [00:37:00] mitochondria inside my body is more electric than lightning?

Fred: Yes. By about electric. About a hundred. Yeah. That’s why chemistry works inside your cells. ’cause it just rips the molecules apart. Now I could be a little lof, I’m not an expert on intracellular electric fields, but thought that was very interesting.

Anyway, your question is. Can you reach the metal inside your car if you’re getting hit by lightning and be okay? Number one, it’s unlikely you’re gonna do that. ’cause the lightning happens pretty fast. But number two, have you seen my

Anthony: reflexes? I’m like,

Fred: That’s where you aren’t an F1 fan, so I, you gotta be quick.

But lightning it turns out, isn’t just one thing. Basically what it is a pocket bunch of pockets of charged particles in the air, each of which are ionizing, and then eventually they touch their tyros together. Not too different from the sound state battery dendrites that we were talking about last week.

[00:38:00] So another kind of resonance there. But when lightning discharges from cloud to ground or ground to cloud, it can go in either direction. It’s actually not one stroke. It’s can be three to four individual strokes, sometimes as many as 30. The lightning can go either from ground to a nearby cloud or it can go actually way up into the stratosphere.

A lot of stuff, a lot of energy. And the reason it tends to linger is because the strokes are separated, the individual strokes are separated by a few milliseconds. So if you look up at the sky and see the lightning, it tends to persist here for a while because you get this ionized channel, which is conductive, that persists for a while until it gets blown apart by winds.

Now what that means though, is that it’s not a direct current kind of thing that could go through your car and heat it up and make it too hot. It’s this kind of discharge [00:39:00] tends to travel through the skin of the metal. Another interesting fact is that’s why you find twisted metal. We find strands of metal in cables that you take apart rather than just a solid wire because the charge of alternating current stents to travel along the skin.

So if you have a lot of little wires, you got more skin. So it makes it easier for the impulses to travel through. And that’s also why they tell you to unplug your electronics before you turn ’em on or off. Or I should say you should need to have ’em turned off before you’re plugging ’em in because there’s an electrical pulse that goes through and if you just pull the plug on it, you send an electrical pulse through your electronic device, which can destroy it.

I actually found that was true with Raspberry PIs. So rather than just pull the plug on, we have to go through this elaborative procedure, otherwise you corrupt the memory. So that was a lesson learned too. Anyway, getting back to cars. So you’ve got this plasma [00:40:00] basically floating over the surface of your car.

And because it’s not just one thing, because these charges bouncing back and forth, it’s actually an alternating current that’s going through. And because it’s plasma, not just an electric current going through, you’ve actually got ionized particles next to your vehicle that are extending up to the clouds.

That’s how these things work. Rather than fascinate you with more tating details of electricity, I’ll just go to the bottom line here, which is you’re pretty much protected by the car body against any static charge. The problem with lightning is it’s not really a static charge. It’s bouncing back and forth.

So there’s other effects going on St. Elmo’s Fire plasma balls, electronic

Anthony: doesn’t, plasma balls, doesn’t he work in the Doge? Isn’t that plasma balls?

Fred: Yeah, that’s one of ’em, but, okay. Just checking. There’s others as well. They actually do sometimes [00:41:00] have been reported to roll downstairs, this little bottle of lightning, because again it’s collections of charged particles that create the plasma.

It’s not just a current going through it. So there’s, there is a lot of stuff going on there. So you’re protected against the static charge. You’re not completely protected against ENP because the electrical pulse, electromagnetic pulse propagates out from the source to a certain extent. Again, why you need to be careful when you’re plugging in electronics.

You don’t want that pulse to disrupt the electronics, batteries in the car, batteries in a battery powered vehicle are always, as far as I can tell, enclosed in a metal case. So these EMP isn’t really going to get into the battery. And cause a current surge through the battery that could cause it to short circuit or pop out, or, do any bad thing like that.

It can affect the control electronics because you may have a pulse flowing [00:42:00] through that. So if the electronics in your vehicle are not protected against electromagnetic pulse or not, lightning protected, if you will, then you could have a problem when lightning struck your car, but it’s unlikely to make your car go poof unless you had, for example, an exposed fuel tank and the plasma ignited the air around the vehicle.

Anthony: Okay? So if I’m driving down the street, sorry, and I get hit by lightning, what do I do? Do I a, stop the car, pull over b, jump outta the car, take a TikTok video and be like, oh my God followers, I just got hit by lightning, or do I just not care and keep going.

Fred: What’s gonna happen is you’re too slow to catch the lightning on your TikTok.

That’ll just be a lost opportunity and you probably have to go clean your underwear pretty quickly because it’s really loud and really bright flash. So I think that’s the sequence. Now, if cleaning your underwear can get [00:43:00] you onto to TikTok, and I suppose it might then might be able to combine those, that’s my anything can get you onto TikTok.

Anthony: That’s my only fan’s page. Okay. Hit by lightning. But to protect,

Michael: To protect yourself. I think the number one rule would be, make sure your sunroof isn’t open and your windows are closed, right? Because to an extent, having a sealed interior in the vehicle, you’ve got the Faraday cage of the metal around you, but wouldn’t you be allowing some of the the charged atmosphere into your vehicle if you have windows open versus plowing through it without,

Fred: It could be potentially, but conventionally, when you think of lightener protection, like for example, if you have a lightning rod up at the top of your house, you think of a 45 degree cone descending from that and expanding out as a zone of protection associated with that. So if you think of your car, even with an open window, you’ve got a zone of protection that is, radiating out from the car down towards the ground.[00:44:00]

So I think it’s unlikely that you’re gonna have any effect. ’cause remember electricity’s gotta go from somewhere to somewhere. So if you were to stick your hand on one window and attract the lightning and put your other hand on the ground at the same time, so the lightning goes through your body, then yeah, that’s gonna be really bad.

But I, I don’t know if that’s possible. If you’re just sitting in the car, then your entire body is basically the same potential. There’s no part of your body that’s grounded, so the lightning is not going to flow through you. So it the, you might get a sparkle at a fingertip in the days of sailing ships, people, you still talk about St.

Elmo’s fire, where they have sparkles at the end of the spars. You’ve probably heard about that, Anthony.

But

Fred: That’s caused by, the ionization of the of the air in the area of a strong electric field. But that’s pretty much static. You’ve also probably seen, when you’re in high school in a physics class, somebody, usually a [00:45:00] young woman being asked to put her hand on top of the globe that they charged up so that her hair would stick out.

The test, again, that’s

a,

Fred: that’s an accumulation of charge, but there’s nowhere for the charge to go. There’s, you don’t ask her to stick her finger on a cold water faucet at the same time. ’cause that would be bad. And you have a big spark coming off her finger. But, that’s a similar situation to what you’re talking about, Michael.

You’ve got everything at the same potential. There could be some static charge, but the static charge isn’t what’s gonna get you on these things. What’s gonna get you is the current flowing through you or flowing through the object. That’s what blows up trees. There’s, if a lightning strike includes the tree as a conductive path and you got all that energy from that entire lightning strike and there are return strikes going through the tree and it heats it up and blows the bark off, you’re not gonna do that.

’cause unless you’re standing under the tree, if you’re in a car, which can’t do both at the same time, probably, [00:46:00] but we did once see a mini Cooper somebody really didn’t like and he planted a tree inside the mini Cooper and let it grow. But

yeah,

Fred: unless you’re that, unless you’re in that particular car, I think you’re gonna be okay.

Again, the electronic, you might blow the electronics but probably not gonna blow up anything else.

Anthony: And you might need to change your underwear.

Fred: There’s that. Yeah,

Anthony: that’s good to know. But if I’m on a sailing boat, let’s say, and it gets hit, should I just go jump right in the water and be like, I wish I was in a car.

Fred: There’s a lot of good reasons to jump in the water, but trying to avoid the lightning isn’t going to be it because it, it’s gonna go way too fast for you to do anything except Marvel and soil your underwear.

Anthony: Okay, that’s good to know. Speaking of marveling and soiling your underwear, Tesla ha You like that for a transition?

That’s pretty good. I see what you did there too. You like that? Yeah. I don’t know.

Tesla’s FSD vs. Waymo’s Robotaxi

Anthony: Some, it’s an article in MSN whereas I was Business Insider. If you wanna get inside business, get inside us. They [00:47:00] have an article titled We put Tesla’s FSD and Waymo’s Roboto Taxi to the Test. One shocking mistake made the winner clear, and it’s not nazim, that’s not what did it.

Basically this is a little too fanboy on both sides from my taste. Yeah, they’re all great. They’re wonderful, and it’s a little gaslighting saying the Waymo’s not allowed to drive on highways. That’s just because Waymo is like, Hey, let’s stick to like an operating design domain, whereas the Tesla is free to roam on highways.

No, it’s not nobody. It is not. Don’t do that. Stop it. People running the article there’s a, the Tesla’s coming to a fairly complex interselection. I don’t know what that means. The Tesla’s console screen showed how the car detected the red light and came to a dutiful stop. Then, despite the traffic lot not changing, the Tesla drove ahead.

Because it was busy reading. Mcom. Ha. Oh yeah. Yep. There we go. And apparently this is a common occurrence with Teslas that they will see the [00:48:00] red traffic light and they’ll stop and then they’ll go, screw this man. Laws don’t apply to me. I’m Elon. Yeah. Yeah, the, their verdict is, the waymo is slightly better.

Fred: Your imitations getting worse. Anthony, I think you need head back, onion.

Anthony: Yeah. I don’t know who imitations are just fine. It’s the bear cock is talking. Now I don’t know. I again wish that all of these cars would take at least the Mercedes approach and make them teal on the outside. But that’s just wishful thinking, Michael.

Michael: Yeah, it’s just a bad comparison. You’re comparing a vehicle that’s intended to be supervised while it’s operating in level two to Waymo, which is presumably level four and has no human driver.

They’re trying to make a comparison here based on the fact that Tesla is saying that it’s gonna deploy full self-driving unsupervised in Austin next month. Which we are [00:49:00] so excited watching closely. But it’s so excited. It’s just a bad comparison. If I’m going to take a ride in a, a Tesla or Waymo and I have to choose right now I’m choosing the Waymo, 99 times outta 99, it’s Tesla’s not even in the conversation here.

Anthony: If I’m choosing, if I have to choose between a Tesla and a Waymo, I’m choosing the bus. That’s just me. Continuing with Tesla. Remember how back in the day that friendly little ball of hate Elon’s, like all of your cars I’m selling you, they’re all gonna become robox. And like at night, dude, you’ll be sleeping.

They’re gonna go around town having a good time. Tesla, this is an article in ours, Technica, one of our favorites.

Tesla’s Misleading Lease Practices

Anthony: Tesla has raised the ire of some of its customers who are accusing the car maker of misleading them. Until recently, it would not allow customers who leased its EVs to purchase them at the end of the lease.

Instead, the leases stated that it plans to use those vehicles in the Tesla ride hailing network. Ha. [00:50:00] Turns out, they that no, not a thing. So these people are like, Hey, you wouldn’t let me buy this car? I wanted to buy it. And you’re like, they’re gonna be awesome robo taxis and stuff. Turns out not true, but I don’t know why the customers will be upset.

’cause you, your lease is over. You’re free. You’re free. You don’t, you can drive down the street and people aren’t flipping you off. I’m not trying to set your car on fire. Go. You’re out.

Michael: Some people get attached to their cars. I, I bought my little Volkswagen off of lease.

So I, I don’t know that I’m attached to it, but it’s nice to How many people

Anthony: are flipping you off regularly? That’s a different, it’s not because of the car you drive, it’s because of the hat you wear. It’s ‘

Michael: cause I drive like a grandma sometimes.

Anthony: His hat says I love birds.

Michael: I could see them getting upset about this.

And plus, they’re being lied to. They were being told that that they weren’t allowed to buy their car off lease because these were cars that were then gonna be go into this massive right hailing network, which is still not here. And it, [00:51:00] it somewhat makes sense that they might be upset.

I don’t know. But at any rate, all this really is happening because Tesla has been promising its customers things for, almost a decade now that simply aren’t going to come to fruition, and now they’re having to back the truck up on some of their promises.

Anthony: All right, let’s hope that you don’t get deported to Venezuela for the things you say, but if you do, we can share a cell.

Yeah last Tesla thing. I’m not even gonna go into the article. It’s just the opening paragraph. This article is amazing. This is from The Guardian. The articles titled the cyber trucks are supposed to be apocalypse proof. Can it even Survive a trip to the grocery store? And the opening paragraph, just read this on your own is too good.

The cyber truck answers a question. No one in the auto industry even thought to ask, what if there was a truck that a chechen warlord couldn’t possibly pass up? A bulletproof bio weapons resistant road, rage inducing street tank that’s illegal to drive in most of the world. I [00:52:00] love that. A truck that a Chechen warlord couldn’t possibly pass up.

I’d also like to remind listeners that it is not bulletproof or bio weapons resistant. It’s just silly.

Ford’s Recalls and Safety Issues

Anthony: And with that, let’s jump into recalls. How’s that sound? Hey, Fred, give you a dollar, if you can guess who this is. May not be included. Who’s the first one

I’m flipping to that? Oh no, don’t cheat. No, don’t cheat. No, I just want you to guess who do you think it is of all possible oh. Our friends at Ford, of course. Ford. Our friends in Dearborn. Yes, Jim Farley. You’re always welcome. 273,789 vehicles. The 2022 to 2024 Ford Expedition. The Lincoln, the front brake lines may contact engine air cleaner outlet pipe.

This can cause a brake line leak. Aw. I don’t like [00:53:00] that. Michael. Thoughts?

Michael: Yeah, that’s bad news. Brake lines are important to your brakes. What it’ll, what happens here is that the brake line will leak brake fluid and then the fluid level in the master cylinder decreases. And at that point, if you’re having this problem in your car, you will, you should get a warning from your vehicle that the, the brake fluid levels in your master cylinder are low.

However, if you persist to drive, it looks like you will have problems braking, which you know, is why you had the brake light. Essentially this is caused by while they’re installing the engine, the radiator hose catches on the right front brake line and bends it. So this is a build. Problem.

It’s not necessarily a design defect, but it’s something that’s happening during the construction process that’s just not working out right for Ford. And it’s a large number of vehicles, about 275,000 of the navigator, Lincoln Navigator in Ford Expedition. So I think that the fix [00:54:00] is gonna be relatively clear.

They’re gonna inspect your brake line to see if your vehicle had this problem. And then they’re going to replace it with a new brake line if it is a problem. And they may even replace your air cleaner outlet pipe coming from your engine. And it looks like owners are gonna hear about this right around Memorial Day.

So get ready to take your car into the dealer soon.

Anthony: Perfect way to get outta that awkward family barbecue. Next up. Come on Fred. Take a guess. Who’s the manufacturer, I’m guessing? Ford. Ford. That’s right. 9,181 vehicles. The 2025 Ford F-150. The fastener used to attach the lower intermediate shaft to the steering gear may not have been torqued to the required specification.

So they just didn’t turn a wrench tight enough.

Michael: Yeah. Or maybe turned it too much. I guess that can happen as well. Over torque, essentially you’re, your steering gear is not attached to your wheel properly and. [00:55:00] That’s a problem. It only affects I think, 10,000 F-150. So it’s not the full line.

It looks like it happened at the Kansas City Assembly plant. So if your vehicle is built there, you might want to consider taking a look at it. And this is one that’s gonna come out soon too. They’re gonna be, basically, they’re gonna go in and make sure that your ice shaft is properly torqued to your steering gear.

And that’s gonna happen soon.

Anthony: It was Kansas City. We know what happened. Barbecue fingers just slipped. Oh yeah. There you go. Barbecue. Yeah,

Fred: we’re gonna have to change that acronym. We used to be Fix or Repair Daily, but I think we’re gonna have to go to fix or recall daily. Ooh. Yeah.

Michael: To that point, Ford has now this’s database has been screwy this week and it’s, you need to get that together.

I hope you’re not messing with our recall information behind the scenes and that’s what’s causing this problem. We did send them an email to ask what the hell is going on, but Ford is up to, I believe it was [00:56:00] when I checked the other day before the recall system started malfunctioning. They were up to 51 recalls at the start of May here for the year.

Keep in mind, that’s like a cyber truck. Wow. Yeah. They won the sweepstakes last year with 70 some odd recalls, I believe, for the entire year. So Ford is on track to blow all of the competition outta the water this year. Now, whether that’s because they are, if you look at their recalls for the past week.

Three out of the six that they’ve announced in the past week were for a very small number of vehicles, 3 5 46. So it does appear that they’re using these recalls as a way to get at fuel, safety problems in a small number of vehicles before they get much larger. I know they’re using all sorts of techniques to try to improve their quality these days.

Maybe this is a part of that. A recall isn’t always a bad thing. People always have a negative association, particularly people like Elon Musk who keep insisting that the word be changed and that as regulations, but [00:57:00] recalls can be good things. You could, if you do them quickly and effectively and you have good safety monitoring, more recalls might be, you’re just doing more due diligence as a manufacturer.

So there’s two sides to the coin here, and it’s, we’re still kinda watching Ford to see which side of the coin we is coming out here, because they’re obviously not providing us with the skinny on what’s really going on there. And we have to figure it out from the outside. That’s a lot of recalls

Anthony: nonetheless.

Let’s continue, Fred, who’s up next? Who do you think? Come on.

Fred: Officer Ford. Ford and Ford.

Anthony: Yep. Ford. That’s right. 2002 vehicles. The 2024 Ford Bronco. The left hand rear door may be open from the inside of the vehicle when the child safety lock is in the on position. Ah, so what you do is you put the kid that you really don’t like on that side and say, Hey Johnny.

Johnny, it’s fun when Daddy’s doing 70 down the highway. Just pop that door open. No, it’s locked. Oh,

Michael: [00:58:00] TikTok. TikTok? Yeah, this one is, I, there wasn’t really a good explanation for, it has something to do with door flushness and the location of the bracket shifting. There wasn’t really a good explanation for why this is happening, but safe to say it’s a pretty incredible concern for people who have children in the backseat of these Broncos.

It’s not all of the fleet, I believe it’s only, 2000 vehicles that were manufactured in a certain plant, but that’s still a problem. It looks like Ford’s gonna be able to get these done pretty quick. Again, they’re getting these letters out to customers by Memorial Day, so pretty quick turnaround on the recall.

And the repairs. If you’ve already gotten a repair for this and notice it you’re eligible for reimbursement.

Anthony: Alright, last recall, Fred, take a guess.

Fred: I’m gonna guess Aston Martin.

Toyota’s Tundra Recall

Anthony: No, it’s Toyota. It’s a

Fred: switch.

Anthony: Toyota recalling 443,000 tundra pickups [00:59:00] over faulty reverse lights. Let me guess the reverse lights point down.

They have arrows and they point a different direction.

No, that’s not what it is. We pull up the actual nitr report on this, but as Michael mentioned, the NSA database maybe got dozed. Whoa. Yeah,

Michael: It’s hard to tell what’s going on there, but this one I haven’t seen there and something’s going on.

But this one is essentially, we’re getting, we’re getting our information on this one from the media, but it’s because the taillights aren’t sealed. Properly moisture’s getting into them shorts out. And so when you’re going in reverse, people don’t know you’re going in reverse by the indicator lights.

They’ll have to actually notice that your car is going backwards. So that’s really the extent of that. Recall doesn’t have a lot of information on it looks toyotas will be owners will be notified by mid-July. And you can also check in the article says to use NSA’s recall lookup tool.

I’m not sure how that’s working for this recall yet, but you can probably check Toyota’s recall [01:00:00] website because they should have their information up and running.

Anthony: That sounds good.

Conclusion and Farewell

Anthony: And with that’s our show. We are off next week. So we’ll have a repeat of recalls. It’ll be exciting. So then listeners did you go to the site and donate?

You did. Oh, you’re the best. Bye-bye. Bye

Michael: everybody. How about it? For more information, visit www.auto safety.org.