Moral Crumple Zones and the Magic of Autonomous Vehicles

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

Hey, listeners, welcome to 2026. Holy cow.

Fred: Man, that was fast. Wow.

Anthony: I know.

Consumer Electronics Show 2026

Anthony: It’s today is Tuesday, January 6th, and we’re all basking in the glow of the Consumer Electronics Show. Is that what it’s still called? Maybe? I

Michael: think so.

Anthony: Yeah. Basically it’s this trade show full of nonsense where the future is now and it never comes and auto companies get sucked up in it as well.

But first let’s talk about, we’ll get to some of that, but first let’s talk about an auto company that’s just a. Always living [00:01:00] in the future. That’s right. I’m sorry.

Tesla’s Controversial Self-Driving Claims

Anthony: I hate to start off a new year. You wanna be optimistic and hopeful, but Tesla still exists. So Tesla it is The BBC has this great article titled Is Texting Behind the Wheel of a Self-Driving Tesla.

Crazy. It managed to write an entire article on this ’cause the answer is just yes. Yes it is. The writer of the. Car. The article basically says, I tried it, it was wonderful. I want it for my 85-year-old father, and it’ll make his life better. But I’m not fully confident in some of this stuff. So it’s this very kind of the worst part of liberals type response.

Wow. I’m really,

Michael: yeah. You’re tripping.

Anthony: I was 26 starting off. Yeah.

Fred: 10,013 year olds in Los Angeles. Can’t be all wrong.

Anthony: I know, but I’m gonna quote down to my favorite part of the article as a quote. And, but basically, lemme back up.

Legal and Safety Concerns with Tesla

Anthony: So Elon Musk is saying, yeah, you can go ahead and text and drive, essentially.

It’s solved, it’s safe. [00:02:00] Essentially. He always likes to do that Little caveat. But then replying to that is a great quote. Tesla doesn’t always seem to have full grasp of what the consequences of its technology changes would be, and I think this is a very big example of that says Michael Brooks, executive Director, director of the Center for Auto Safety.

Oh. Essentially what Tesla is saying here is they’re going to allow their drivers to break the law. I agree. Michael Brooks, any relation to Michael Brooks?

Michael: There are a lot of Michael Brooks out there, football players, basketball players. This one, how many of them? This one was right on point though. And it’s is, look we talk about this ad, nausea with a Tesla and the features that they’re adding and, there’s a long list of them now that are problematic from, autopilot through the sum mode through their door handles that don’t allow effective escape from the vehicle through any other number of things that we could point out here.

But this is a, this one is particularly bad. We, first of all, I’m just gonna have to point out the title of the [00:03:00] article, is texting Behind the Wheel of a Self-Driving Tesla Crazy? Nobody knows because there are no self-driving Teslas at this point. But moving forward from that minor point that I have to make about the article.

It essentially, we are in a world where none of this technology is regulated appropriately for safety. And for a long time now, and we’ll talk later in the episode about how this wall has starting to break down. But for a long time now, Tesla has been one of the few automakers who’s willing to take the type of, frankly, legal risks and, put this technology on the road knowing that humans aren’t going to be able to safely operate autopilot. And now on top of that, they’re claiming, oh, the system’s now good enough to allow you to text and drive. Which is completely not true. If you have to remain. Attentive to your vehicle’s operation at all times.

When you’re behind the wheel, [00:04:00] then, taking your eyes or your mind off of the act of driving and putting it into, texting your I don’t know your Anthony, you’d be texting your trainer about, your weightlifting routine that you’re going lay on me. You just can’t do that.

It’s a complete it’s completely incongruous with the act of driving it, it doesn’t work. Tesla has clearly not put forth enough independently verified data. None. But even their own data, which is aspirational, still doesn’t bear out that drivers should be taking their attention away from the driving tasks to operate, phones or, to, even if you have, texts that don’t rely on, pushing physical buttons on the keyboard.

Your cognitive, the cognitive disparity that’s gonna create when you’re, thinking of what to say or interacting, cognitively with. The texting, your, whatever texting machine you’re using is going to cause problems and direct your [00:05:00] attention away from supervising the vehicle as it makes decisions that you should be making.

About your driving pattern, essentially, so this is a huge problem. And the reason we’re here is, both because Tesla has been putting technology into its vehicles and selling it and promoting it in a way that doesn’t give drivers the full story, doesn’t allow them to protect themselves from these systems inherent flaws, but also because.

Legislatures and regulators simply are not able to pass laws and regulations that can help, ensure that safety is built into these types of systems, and that these systems are having to comply with safety regulations before they can be set loose on the road. So there’s a multitude of failures going on here at the same time.

Anthony: Michael, let’s assume that I, my lifestyle changes. I get hit on the head, I join the [00:06:00] proud boys, go out, buy a Tesla, find an extra eight, nine, $10,000 for their full self-driving. And I’m in my Tesla going off to, my hate rally. And I’m texting while doing it and I’m like, Hey guys, who are we gonna hate today?

And I get into a crash now, Elon told me I can text and drive. Can I hold Elon liable for my crash?

Michael: I highly doubt it. You’re already going to be facing, just under your own state’s laws, depending on what state you’re in. Lots of states have different laws around texting and driving, but you’re going to be committing a criminal infraction that is going to be charged to you, not.

To the vehicle that’s gonna be persuasive to any jury looking into it, whether it’s a civil or a criminal matter that you were responsible and that you were violating the law at the time of the crash. That’s essentially how Tesla has operated. An escape. Escape liability or escape blame in a lot of these situations, [00:07:00] something we’ve talked a lot about on the show before, the moral crumple zone, you’re essentially shifting all blame onto the human wherever you can, even though the only reason that human was put in that position in the first place is because this technology has been allowed to operate unsafely on the roads.

Anthony: Okay, but what if I buy a different car?

Mercedes’ New Drive Assist Pro

Anthony: Because now at, I believe it’s CES, Mercedes has announced their wow. Look, I don’t know if that audible groan of Michael just came across, but Mercedes has come out with their own S-Class drive Assist pro, which is they’re playing this game. We’ve talked in the past about these SAE levels, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and Mercedes kinda it’s not level three.

’cause level three allows you to take your hands off the wheel, not pay attention. This is level two plus.

Michael: Whatever the hell that means and it’s functionally meaningless. Honestly it’s really just the reason manufacturers are calling it is because [00:08:00] the SAEs system of levels of autonomy simply doesn’t capture what’s going on in the industry.

It’s both outdated and it was never. My personal opinion was never really a great way of classifying vehicles from the start.

Anthony: But some lawmakers have put the SA levels into law, or they’ve just proposed

Michael: that in some circumstances they, they referenced them in either legislation, there haven’t been any.

Formal adoption of that. And it’s not a vehicle safety standard so much as it’s simply a classification guide. It’s not California has used it. California, that’s the whole reason that Tesla and now Mercedes. Are able to evade being directly regulated by the California DMV is because they are classifying these vehicles.

The manufacturer has the choice here to classify these vehicles as a level two, which is interesting because you would think that.

The Flaws in SAE Levels of Autonomy

Michael: I always struggle with [00:09:00] the SE levels when you get to the level two, three area, right? Because in both circumstances there is a CAA, a time at which drivers, need to take over the vehicle.

Because it might be operating unsafely. It’s both of them are conditional automations in some respect, and yet, level three is regulated and level two is not. And so it becomes really easy, I think for manufacturers to say, oh, we’re just a level two. And to get away with putting this technology on the road.

Look, if I was gonna choose an automaker to mimic Tesla in this area, it might be Mercedes-Benz. As the article notes in the byline they say that, this is like Tesla autopilot, the Mercedes system, but made by a company with a culture of safety. And that’s not something I can completely disagree with.

I think we’ve mentioned a number of times going through recalls and other things on the podcast how proactive [00:10:00] Mercedes-Benz is on some certain safety problems related to other manufacturers. So while that is true, I would also suggest that Mercedes dipping its toe into this area shows that.

That culture of safety may not be as strong as we thought because while Mercedes has promised, with their level three vehicles that are, operating at low speeds and traffic jams in very specific circumstances and I think in Nevada and maybe California, now they’re not you. They’re clearly putting a, another vehicle on the road or another system on the road.

In this driver assistance system where they’re promising almost all the same things as Tesla is promising, at least in the, their aspirational CES announcements. They’re basically saying, you’ve just gotta keep a little watch over this thing and everything’s gonna be fine.

They don’t really. Go into the fact that with the level three systems, they said they would accept some of the liability coming [00:11:00] along. They didn’t say, necessarily criminal or some of the tort liability that comes along with that. But they, and it would be great if a manufacturer came out and said, we’re gonna put this on the road, but anytime our driver assist system is operating and it gets in a crash.

We are going to take legal responsibility. We’re not gonna shift that off onto the driver. We’re not going to allow for this moral crumple zone to prevent us from being held accountable for our mistakes. Mercedes is choosing the Tesla route here, which is, the route that sees human beings blamed for their failure and their predictable failure to properly monitor these systems.

So I’m a little confused by this announcement from Mercedes. I am a little, disappointed in the company for going down this rabbit hole, but. I think that this is, they’re just the first manufacturer in, dozens that are about to jump the safety ship and follow Tesla [00:12:00] down.

This what is ultimately not development of new safety features, but development of convenience features that, that don’t really have anything to do with safety in it, and perhaps in the end will only degrade it.

Fred: I wanna remind everybody, all of our listeners and our esteemed colleagues here, that at the heart of J 30 16 standard is what word, Anthony?

Anthony: The,

Fred: it rhymes with bullshit.

Anthony: Bullshit. No, that’s not in the J 30 16. Come on.

Fred: I gave you the clue because I call it J 30 16 standard. It’s not a standard.

Michael: Yep.

Fred: It’s just a note and it’s a, defines a nomenclature. It has never been assessed for its safety characteristics or safety defects. And there is no standard definition by any governmental authority of what level?

2, [00:13:00] 3, 4, 5. Anything else is so a manufacturer can call. Their operational capability, whatever they want, and anybody who relies on that is really putting themselves in a world of jeopardy. So that’s part of the reason why we establish the checklist for regulators. That’s freely available on our website.

We’ll talk more about that later. But really everybody should know that references to J 30 16. Our references to no standard whatever. There is not a single requirement in that document that says you shall do something or you shall evaluate in the following manner. You’re free to do whatever you want and refer to J 30 16 in any way you want without fear of contradicting it.

Michael: Yeah, and there’s just not enough distinction in in, in J 30 16, I don’t believe, to allow [00:14:00] for you to discriminate between what’s a level two, what’s a level three vehicle? What’s, where does the regulation or safety regulation of autonomy began in there? States like California have chosen to begin at level three, which I think is a mistake.

I think you, they, at a minimum, you should be looking at level two. In fact there are automations that function at what would be a level one. On the SAE scale that I still think should be regulated in some way as though they’re autonomous. They should be subject to restrictions on their operating design domain.

Because even at level one, there are some sensors and things that have their limitations.

Fred: The safety consequences of levels two and three are exactly the same. In both cases, you have a vehicle operating under automatic control that will abruptly transition to human control with the expectation that the human will safely take over all of those driving functions.

There’s very little [00:15:00] evidence that can in fact happen, usually takes 10 seconds or so. Still. Billman has talked about a different way of classifying the. Vehicles. And in fact in our documents recently, we referred to computer driven vehicles rather than levels one through X. I think that’s a much better way of talking about them because they all have similar safety characteristics.

If they all require human intervention with no warning at any particular time, when there’s a unanticipated hazard.

Michael: Yeah. And also point out that if you want a a, probably a more concise description of this Mercedes issue. Please check out Phil’s su substack posts from this morning where he goes through the this problem as well.

Anthony: So the takeaway is no matter what the marketing materials say, if you’re in the driver’s seat, you’re always in charge, right?

Fred: You always should be.

Michael: Yeah, I think you always should be. Be

Anthony: safe. [00:16:00] Okay, so what I suggest to people is you do what that Tesla driver did a few years back and you sit in the passenger seat and then you let the car drive itself.

So you give up all responsibility.

Michael: Yeah, that’s not gonna work.

Anthony: Ah, you’re less fun than I’d hoped.

Michael: It’s technically, whether where you’re sitting in the car, if you start the car up and you’re allowing it to operate, you are the operator, whether you’re in the trunk or not.

Anthony: Who from the trunk? Hey listeners, before we continue, we’re not gonna tell you to go to donate ’cause it’s the start of a new year. We wanna, I just wanna thank everybody who donated last year. I think it was a record year. I don’t know. I didn’t run the numbers. I, we appreciate everybody who’s donated.

Thank you so much.

Solid State Batteries: The Future of EVs?

Anthony: Let’s go into a positive story from CES. Shall we do that? Michael sent around this story and I thought the way he wrote it was he was being very cynical and it was this great story about this battery startup company that’s doing solid state batteries. And so solid state batteries are they’re lighter, they’re more energy dense, they’re less.[00:17:00]

Prone to fire, you can charge them quicker. They, as Fred Perkins would say, everything in the future will be better. And I’ve always been like, solid state sounds amazing. And Fred kinda looks at me a little cynically. Let’s not deny it. Don’t deny it. And so this article talks about this startup called Donut.

I should have just known right off the bat. So Donut says they have a solid state battery. It’s already on the market in some company called, I believe, Burge. Is there an electric motorcycle company? And this sounds great, and I’m reading this whole thing and I’m like, this is awesome. The future is now.

Until I got to this one part of the article, and this is from inside evs.com, I’m gonna quote the new model, which is powered by Donuts. Solid state battery is also capable of 217 miles and standardized, but a larger battery option, which fits the same cradle, can increase the range to 370 miles, but the charging time has been dramatically reduced the less than 10 minutes with verge.

This is the motorcycle company saying that has, it has deliberately designed the new bike to take longer to charge so that [00:18:00] rider can enjoy a coffee while waiting. And this is why it’s my gaslight. ’cause that is horseshit. There is no. Hey guys. The biggest complaint people have with electric vehicles takes too long to charge.

This one charges so quick that like you, before you even plug in, it’s charged. It’s magic. We want people. We’re really known for our coffee. Like really? When, that’s the reason people, you’re out riding your electric motorcycle. People that are like, yeah, I gotta, I got a tap on my battery. But damn that coffee they have there is so good.

This is a gaslight. This is horseshit. There’s no, all no

Michael: consider. A couple things here though the Verge company’s making motorcycles, right? So it’s not as though you can stop and get a cup of coffee and hop back in your car and drive and drink the coffee, right? You can’t drink a cup of coffee.

At least I don’t think you can. Maybe, I’m sure someone has done it, but can you drink a cup of coffee, riding a motorcycle? It sounds like your coffee’s gonna get cold real fast. I don’t know. I didn’t find that quote.

Anthony: Nope.

Michael: Quite as bad as you. You’re

Anthony: gaslighting me now. [00:19:00] This is hard ‘

Michael: cause this is a, this is something that since we started talking about electric vehicles and battery issues many years ago, this is a battery that’s a lot lighter.

For whatever amount of energy density it has, it’s much lighter than lithium ion. Any of the battery formulations that we’ve seen commercialized in the United States, it doesn’t have, the battery dent drape problems, the squished cells, the thermal runway potential. That the batteries that are we’re putting in EVs across America have now they’re not using rare metals.

They say that they’re only using geo geopolitically safe materials. This avoids. The heavy vehicle problem that we’ve noted incessantly that’s produced when you add massive batteries to vehicles that are in many cases already too large, doesn’t have the fire issues that we’ve seen in the EVs on the road today, and it doesn’t have a lot of the social and [00:20:00] geopolitical consequences that might lead to us taking over another country next week.

Anthony: I’m all for all of that. Is

Michael: this really a bad thing?

Anthony: No. See I am all, for everything you just said, I am, I’m with you a hundred percent, but them saying we slowed down the charging so you can enjoy a cup of coffee. This is where Yeah. I call bullshit because you’re right. No, people are gonna, most people are not gonna grab a cup of coffee, get back on their motorcycle and try to drink it.

Instead, you and your gang of vegan leather wearing ev bike riders. You go out in a convoy, there’s only four charging stations. How about there’s 12 of you? I gotta wait for Barry to drink his coffee before I can plug in. No,

Fred: I’ve seen a lot of biker movies in my time, and I gotta tell you, in every one.

They all sit down and have a nice cup of coffee before they go off and do anything.

Anthony: Yeah, but are they still

Fred: plugged into the gas pump? That’s why they spend so much time in Canada because the Tim Horton’s, it’s everywhere,

Anthony: but they’re not sitting there drinking their coffee while they’re still occupying a gas pump.

[00:21:00] No, you go in, you tap up your fuel, Hey, you can come off to the side. Then we sit down on a picnic blanket. We can look and go, okay, where are the proud boys? Let’s avoid them.

Fred: Yeah. That’s, they’re very deliberate in their actions typically.

Anthony: Yeah. I if anything they slowed down the charging of this ’cause they’re like, oh, we’re putting a lot of power into this small little box in a really short period of time.

Let’s be safe. And if that’s what it is, I am all for that. I’m all for them Airing towards a safe charging environment, that’s fine, but this is horseshit.

Fred: Donut says they’ve achieved the holy grail, they found the Holy Grail, right? Everything is perfect in the future. Everybody’s gonna do it.

And it’s great fodder for an announcement. I think the future’s gonna be a little bit less glittery than the Holy Grail appears right now. But lemme tell you what’s gonna happen if in fact it’s true, if they have found the Holy Grail. Tess’s going to get a couple, gonna take ’em apart and they’re gonna turn their gigafactory inside out to produce them.

And our friends of donut are [00:22:00] gonna wave their hands and say but we have patents in intellectual property. And Tess is gonna say, guess what? We’re big, you’re small and catch us if you can.

Anthony: Alright.

Fred: But it’s a wonderful thing. I hope it’s true. But but time will tell I wouldn’t buy stock in it just yet.

Anthony: Yes. I, again, my gaslight is not focused on their technology at all. It is posted on, it’s all about the cup of

Michael: coffee.

Anthony: That line saying we slowed down charging for coffee. No. Alright. Yeah, I

Michael: don’t really, but I don’t know if that was tongue in cheek or what. It’s hard to tell.

Anthony: It doesn’t come across that way.

Michael: The company’s name is Donut Labs. You gotta expect a little yuck. Yuck. Yuck going on. Who knows?

Anthony: I love it. Michael, what’s your gaslight?

Michael: My gaslight. And you know what? I’m not even sure if this is a gaslight.

GM’s Seatbelt Reminder Controversy

Michael: It’s it may, it could be a gaslight in the sense from gm, but there’s a, there was a story in the Detroit Free Press yesterday, the title of which is GM Nitsa Want people to Wear Seat Belts.

A Detroit family Does too. It, it’s a, [00:23:00] it’s an article that goes through a family’s really bad experience with a crash. And it goes into how Nitsa and Ford are addressing this, the seatbelt wearing issue. But it neglects some a really important point, GM and is, looks like a, it looks like a puff piece for gm.

I don’t think it was intended that way. But one thing that’s noted in the article is that GMs releasing seatbelt reminders into their vehicles. Now these are, basically this was a law that was passed in 2012. That required a rear seatbelt reminder in American cars required a rule doing that by the mid 20 teens, 20, I think it was October, 2015, may have been the final date for that.

In fact, that rule did not come out until the very end of the Biden administration. And either I think it was either the. [00:24:00] December, January of this past year. We’re still not sure. I think that rule is still being held up in, in the OMB office of Management budget in their OIO ira, OIRA office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Division.

So it’s still not, we’re still not sure that it’s going to be required even by 2028. We’re looking at a, a 16 plus year period from the time the law was passed until the time these are actually gonna see this technology going to cars, which has always been really troubling for me because, moving a seatbelt buzzer to the rear seats where it’s already been in the front seats since for god knows how long.

The eighties, I think is when that happened. Doesn’t seem to be all that big of a technical or regulatory lift and. If auto companies are, able to delay simple safety standards like that 20 years, then what does that say about some of the more complex standards that we’re always [00:25:00] talking about here, such as, standards around crash prevention tech, and even more so standards around autonomy.

They, what they ignore in this article is that GM behind the scenes has been one of the major forces, them, and, the Automotive Alliance, which they’re a member of in pushing alternatives to effective seatbelt reminders. What they’re pushing for is a system that basically watches your doors and, it’s simple.

Cheap software that will, if you open your back door and then you shut your back door and there’s not a buckling taking place in the back, then you’re going to get the chime.

Addressing Hot Car Deaths with Technology

Michael: They’re also pushing that technology to address hot car deaths. It’s not going to be completely effective in doing that.

They’re, just because you open up a rear door doesn’t mean there’s a child or any, an occupant going into the car. Using that to inform the vehicle that an occupant might be left in the car, unbuckled is obviously not going to [00:26:00] always be the correct guess, and that’s what it ultimately is just a guess based on the door being opened or closed.

GM has been pushing that as an alternative both to the rear seatbelt reminder, which you know, ultimately is what require the ability for the car to sense an occupant in that seat. The driver’s seat’s easy. Because you, when there’s an occupant in the driver’s seat, based on the vehicle being turned on with a key and all that sorts of thing, that, that gives you the absolute unquestionable presence of a human in the driver’s seat.

It’s, it gets more difficult when you move into other seats, when you have to confirm that there’s an actual human there. There is radar technology and other technologies that are available and whose price is going down every day that could detect humans in the car and be deployed to ensure both that seatbelt reminders are working and that you’re detecting occupants in the vehicle when they’re not supposed to be there.

Particularly children in hot cars. This article doesn’t get into any of that, or [00:27:00] GM and the industry’s resistance to just getting this very simple tech into vehicles. And for that reason, it’s gonna get my Gaslight of the week.

Anthony: Okay.

Crash Safety: To Stay or To Go?

Anthony: Before we move on, ’cause this article I wish we could link to it, but it’s paywall it talks about a family of four.

They’re all buckled in and they hit a patch of black ice and it caused their car to crash into a barrier. Now what they did is the woman to drive in the car said, I didn’t feel safe staying in the car while waiting for emergency service to come to them and seeing all these lights come with them.

So they got out of the car and started walking on the street, right? Which unfortunately they were then hit by another vehicle that I assume hit the bl same block ice or for whatever reason. So what the question I have for you, Michael, is. Did they make the right choice by exiting that vehicle? In this situation where there is that icy condition, are you better off staying inside the crash disabled vehicle or getting out?

Michael: God, that’s completely dependent on circumstances I would say, [00:28:00] because if you’re on a rural road and you hit a patch of black ice and you know that there are more cars coming towards you on that road. It depends on, do you have a place to escape? Are you surrounded on both sides by, there I’m sure we’ve all driven on roads where there’s literally not really a spot you can go to get away from the road, in which case you certainly might be safer in your car buckled up and with your car owned so that you might still have airbag.

Protection and that sort of thing. Also, if you’ve looked at, on interstates, I’ve seen a, I’ve seen a number of videos of heavy trucks that are hitting black ice or just icy patches, whether it’s, black ice or not, and causing massive pile ups that result in fire and injuries and deaths to lots of people who remained in their cars, plus people who had gotten out of the vehicle.

So I would say it’s incredibly. Situationally dependent. Okay. Whether or not you want to exit [00:29:00] your vehicle after a crash, there are lots of bad things that can happen after a crash. You can, if it’s nighttime, you can lose all of your lights in which, at which point you’re sitting, in a vehicle that can’t be seen by approaching.

Vehicles and is certainly a hazard. For me if there is an available exit to get as far away from the road as possible, I think that is most likely your best choice in these circumstances. Just completely remove yourself from the possibility that an a following vehicle is going to be able to strike you or hit ice and lose control and maybe run off the road.

30 yards and strike you. I’m talking get completely out of the situation while you wait for emergency responders.

Fred: This is just part, as a reminder, this is just one of the millions of events that happen each year, which would be called an edge case. And because it’s called an edge case, it would be [00:30:00] completely dismissed by the AV manufacturers, is something that’s unreasonable to design for.

There’s millions of those things happen every year and every time I hear about this. I try to put a Waymo into that situation and say, what would Waymo do? And the answer is, who the hell? Nos. They never designed for it.

Gaslight of the Week: Self-Driving Car Myths

Fred: So my turn for Gaslight, right?

Anthony: Yes. It’s your turn. He’s all excited.

Fred: Yeah.

’cause my Gaslight is titled Gaslight Waiting for Fred, which I think was I was able to figure that out so far. But, the other title, the subtitle is, Self-Driving Cars Can Prevent Over 1 million Road Injuries.

Across the US by 2035 and by San Juta Mondal. And I’m not even gonna read into this ’cause it’s so stupid.

It’s amazing that it got published, but I, what’s interesting about it to me is it’s the third generation bullshit, third generation gaslight, because this is based upon a study that, waymo did. It just made up numbers [00:31:00] and it was, they called it a peer reviewed study. Of course, the peers were all either employees or clients of Waymo, so that’s not exactly typical of peer reviews to establish a credibility of a document.

But anyway New York Times picked this up and said it’s peer reviewed, so it’s good. And apparently now, what’s his name again? San Juta. His or her San Juta. Mondal has picked up the New York Times article and transcribed it into this article that is appearing today and text tech explore.

So it’s very interesting how this urban myth is now being propagated. It’s the same technique that right wing journalists you can see my quotes if you look closely. Pass bad information back and forth to each other. When they do that, they build up the Google references and get a higher priority for the reference.

It rapidly becomes a fact as far as Google is concerned. And this is trending in the [00:32:00] same way. It’s published on MSN and it’s.

Position of being defacto true because they say it is. And journalists have gotten very lazy. I think they just, they don’t go back to the source. Maybe they never did. I don’t know. I’m too young to have that history. Michael, what do you think? But.

Michael: Yeah, it’s a tough one. This

is

Fred: deplorable.

Michael: Yeah, it’s tough because, none of the journalists are operating with all the, the full deck either, right? They’re getting fed piecemeal. What Waymo and what other auto automated vehicle companies want them to believe based on data that hasn’t been independently reviewed and isn’t available for a full review by the public.

Fred: Isn’t there some document that’s out there now that. Tries to distill this into technical questions that they can use to challenge some of these positions.

Michael: I don’t know, is there,

Anthony: oh my God, guys, look, if you’re a journalist out there and you’re like, look, I’ve been fed two sticky sweet, [00:33:00] a story from Waymo’s pr, and I’m sure you’re getting a foot rub from them at the same time, stop for a second.

Think, all right. I need a little grit in my gravy. Then contact the Center for Auto Safety. You can just go to auto safety.org find contact information. Just go contact@autosafety.org and I guarantee one of these two gentlemen, Fred or Michael will respond to you and say, bullshit. Not your question, but way.

Fred: Not only that, but we’ll provide you with a document that provides you with a. Basis of critical questions that you might want to ask them,

Anthony: and then your story becomes a lot richer and deeper, and then you’re slowly moving up the ladder. And now you’re not just a PR cub reporter.

Fred: Your Pulitzer Prize is hanging out there, buddy.

Anthony: I’m sorry. It’s why it’s drafting here. Let’s okay, so I gotta, so I’m looking at our internal show notes here and on Gaslight section it says Anthony destined to win regardless of topic chosen. So do we even have to do scoring? Personally, I actually think Fred won there. His was right to the point and [00:34:00] good.

But second plays honestly was Michael. Not for your gaslight. ’cause it was a little wishy-washy, but it was for trying to gaslight me during my own gaslight. See this is, yeah

Michael: I’m just happy you didn’t make yourself the winner for once,

Anthony: oh,

Michael: it’s we’re working out. That’s progress, Anthony.

That’s progress. And Fred’s to Fred’s. Happy to Fred. Glad to see the

Fred: progress.

Anthony: My, my therapist said I should, be more magnanimous. Yeah. And I said that word sounds too expensive for this conversation. Let’s get into something.

Congestion Pricing in New York City

Anthony: Let’s get an update into something positive and great congestion pricing.

That’s right. People, we’ve all heard the political talk about that, that socialist little island, it’s not really an island New York City putting in congestion pricing. How dare they? It’s gonna destroy everything. The state of New Jersey wanted to St Sue the city of New York for charging nine bucks to head in below 60 street.

Anyway, this has been going on for a year now, and the New York Times has a great little overview of this. And I’ll just walk through the highlights real quick. Less traffic. Faster [00:35:00] moving traffic that’s there. Less noise complaints, less serious injuries. No restaurants are complaining. They’re saying, Hey, we have more customers now.

They were all worried saying, oh, there’ll be less cars. So overall congestion pricing, big win. Big win.

Michael: Yeah. Is there any negative here? The, just stretching for, to look for safety issues here. I would, I was noting that the increase in the average speed being great could have an impact.

On safety, higher speeds, more injuries or more severe injuries. But when you look at the average vehicle speed in the congestion zone, it’s eight and a half miles per hour. So I don’t know how applicable that is. And, they looked at. Areas outside of the congestion zone and inside the congestion zone.

And I think it was like there was an 8.6% decrease in injuries related to cars inside the congestion zone and only a [00:36:00] 1.6% decrease outside. So far it looks great.

Anthony: Yeah, and keep in mind, the speed limit inside New York City is 25 miles per hour. So they’re not, traffic’s not quite hitting a steady 25 miles per hour.

So from a safety point of view I’m feeling pretty good about that. The only negatives they found were a couple of random people out in Queens saying I’m not gonna go into Manhattan anymore for my doctors. Welcome to Queens. It’s the largest borough full of doctors. You don’t actually have to travel that far to find a good doctor, but hey, that’s

Fred: Any shoulder injuries from people reaching for their wallet too fast?

They solve that problem.

Anthony: Yeah. It’s a people getting carpal tunnel for getting on their internet and complaining.

Fred: Alright. This is the side effect.

Anthony: Let’s see, what what next do I want to jump into before we oh, there’s one here. This convoy. Yeah, let’s do this.

Autonomous Truck Convoys: A Good Idea?

Anthony: This is an interesting one from an article from an electric titled Convoy Electric Semi Brandand San [00:37:00] SANY, pairs with Autonomy with Human Experience.

So this sounds like the start of a Stephen King movie where it’s a convoy of semi. 18 wheelers essentially. So you’ve got four or five of them, and the lead vehicle is operated by a human, and the following vehicles are computer driven, following that person saying, Hey, this is safe for now.

’cause the lead vehicle is in charge and the other ones are just following behind it. Clearly this is a company that’s not experienced traffic on planet Earth because I’ve seen convoys like this all driven by humans, and then I’ve watched human drivers jump in between the 18 wheelers. What happens then?

I’ve watched it when, and depending on how close these things are traveling. I’ve watched cars jump in front of 18 wheelers at a very unsafe distance. And is it just jackknife bonanza? What? What happens here? This is something that is a, it sounds like a good idea on [00:38:00] paper until you spend a thought on it and then you’re like, oh, this is not good.

Fred: If you think of it, what they’ve really done is they’ve reinvented the idea of a train, except it’s a very expensive train. Because instead of having inexpensive railroad cars, they’ve got these very fancy 18 wheelers or 20 wheelers or 26 wheelers, who the hell knows what they’re gonna be? Cascading down the road. And one of the advantages for the truckers, of course, is they don’t have to pay for the road. It comes out of taxes. And you and I are paying for it as well as they are, whereas the railroads have to pay for their own track. So really an unfair competition, but that doesn’t stop the trucking companies from wanting to skew the competition in their favor.

I think this is a really bad idea. Hopefully not a bad idea whose time has come, but. There’s just so many questions to be answered that aren’t being answered by the current AV trucks that are out there trying to generate a few miles. [00:39:00]

Anthony: Any thoughts, Michael? He agrees.

Michael: Yeah I think this has got a long way to go in, in looking at, first of all, how are humans going to interact with these convoys?

And also is this just, every time I see this idea, I feel like it’s just a very. Easy way to remove, if you’ve got a convoy of four semis and there’s only one driver in the front, you’ve moved, removed three drivers from your payroll and at the same time, the following vehicles are not autonomous vehicles.

They are functionally just. Programmed to follow the head vehicle. I don’t know if these, maybe this is system could work on, very non crowded, long distance stretches on interstates. But, I don’t see a world in which this is going to work, deliverying, goods inside of cities or anything like that.

AV Checklist for Regulators

Anthony: Alright, with that, let’s jump into the latest update in the Fred Len, which is the. Consumer [00:40:00] vehicle regulator checklist. Why don’t I know the name of this by now. I should. It’s a new year. I should know it, Fred.

Fred: It’s the AV checklist for regulators and people who have an interest in diving a little deeper than merely recklessly quoting what they see in the newspaper about avs.

We’ve gone through 28, 29 has a computer driven vehicle. Notice we don’t say AV here has the computer driven vehicle and certified to comply with all applicable federal motor vehicle safety standard requirements, or does that have a valid exemption? So we’ve we’ve got questions about that, Michael, especially with zoox, and it’s really questionable exemption for their current trials.

Michael: Yeah, we’re not even sure if that’s, they’ve gotten a demonstration exemption. I would argue that it wasn’t appropriate based on the language of the statute, but that’s another issue. But now they’re still awaiting confirmation. They’ve said they’re going to start charging for [00:41:00] rides this month.

But at this point they still haven’t received an exemption that would allow them to operate commercially in, in that fashion. So we’re not sure yet.

Fred: The next two are operat in tandem, but I’ve got separate numbers on them. Number third is has the applicant shown that the computer-driven vehicle collects and saves enough operational data to resolve root cause of incidents and collisions?

What we’ve seen in the past is that the AV manufacturers and Tesla whether that’s, whether or not that’s an av, will try to hide as much data as possible so that the. Question of liability is unresolved or can be pushed over onto the consumer, but in as association with that as number 31, has the applicant shown that operational data recorded before a reportable incident or collision is preserved and accessible to stakeholders proposed incident or crash root cause, engineering [00:42:00] evaluation, and or legal use by those with direct interest.

And that arises from the practice. That’s very common now for companies to withhold their data to obscure as much as possible and make it very difficult for somebody who’s injured by these computer driven vehicles, whether they’re inside of the car or outside of the car, to actually get to the engineering cause of this crash or injury.

We’ve seen that.

Michael: Yeah. And there’s a big question here. I think lying over this one when it comes to artificial intelligence, is it even possible to collect enough operational data to resolve root cause of a crash that could have been caused by, bad training of a machine learning module or something like that, right?

Anthony: Yeah. It gets on like why it made a mistake.

Fred: There is, there are techniques that can do that Monte Caral analysis in particular, but it’s very expensive. Takes a lot of thought and time [00:43:00] and it’s not particularly straightforward.

Anthony: Fred, when coming up with this list, did you just sit there and go, let me look at all the shitty things that Tesla’s done over the years and write down a list of say can the list just be shorter and be like, don’t be Tesla.

Fred: Yeah, that was inspirational, but there, but it goes beyond just Tesla.

Anthony: Okay.

Michael: Yeah.

Fred: Don’t forget our friend Kyle.

Michael: Oh, San yeah there’s, there are definitely some Kyle and some, Waymo, Foley’s material in here, as well as some other things that, that other companies have brought to the table.

Anthony: All right, continue.

Fred: Has the applicant shown that the subject, commuter driven vehicles, conventional mechanical equipment. Electrical and electromechanical components and passive hardware are inspectable by officials during required periodic and on demand safety inspections. Remember, when we go to computer driven vehicles, we’re taking a lot of the safety critical functionality that’s implicit in the human driver, and we’re sticking it in a machine.

And we’re assuming that safety critical [00:44:00] functionality is always available, right? Yes. They say they don’t drink, they don’t sleep, they don’t have sexual notions, they don’t, right? Yeah. You heard all that stuff. Alright, so prove it. Show the regulators that you got a way of understanding how close you are to the margins, and that you are far enough away from the safety margins so that it’s reasonable to operate the vehicle.

Anthony: Alright, can we save the final two for next week?

Fred: We can, except there’s four more.

Anthony: Oh, really? Wait.

Michael: Yeah. See? Anthony needs to update the website. Add.

Anthony: I had, wait, did you get me new ones? We, Fred and I had a whole back and forth on this of wrong files and stuff. How, what’s your total number?

I have.

Fred: My total number is 36.

Michael: 36.

Anthony: Okay. You

Fred: got a, like the documents that I’ve sent you, Anthony?

Michael: Yeah. So

Anthony: we’re okay

Michael: and we’ll be back with the final four next week. Anthony May or may not be here with us.

Anthony: Oh here’s my final

Fred: one but thanks folks. I, any feedback on these is [00:45:00] appreciated. Love to hear from you.

Anthony: Alright, let’s do some Lamborghini talk.

Lamborghini and Porsche Recalls

Anthony: Recall talk. And the first one is Lamborghini. That’s right. The 2019 to 2024 Lamborghini URIs. And the situation here is you may not be as good looking as the salesperson who sold it to you, said you are. Is that the issue? No. Ah, it’s our rear view camera image that does not display.

Oh. In certain situations, a software issue may prevent the rear view camera from displaying, and if you spend a half million dollars on this car, I’m guessing, I don’t know how much that cost. You’d want that to work, right?

Michael: Yeah,

Anthony: it’s a rear view camera. This is how we start off a new year, Michael, come on.

Michael: Actually, this was filed on December 21st, 2025. So it’s, we’re not, we may be starting out the new year with it, but it is a recall from last year. Although owners, it doesn’t look like they have a final date for the repair facility, they must still be working on it because they’re sending out an [00:46:00] interim owner notification to their owners sometime in mid-February.

Anthony: Alright, next up Porsche 173,538 vehicles, the 2020 to 2025 tycon, 2025, Panama E Hybrid and E 2024. 2025 Panama. Oh, there’s a bunch more in this Cayennes and nine elevens and there’s a lot. Yeah, it’s a lot of horses. Come on. In certain rare instances, a software issue may prevent the rear camera even from displaying.

This is a two in a row. This is, I’m a sensitive man.

Michael: Yeah. And the reason I put these in this week was mainly because at the end of the year we don’t see a lot of recalls reported to Nitsa and Nitsa may not be processing them fastly. So there weren’t a lot to choose from this week. However, these two did bump the number of rear view camera recalls for the year up to 60, which is a record.

No, Ford’s not the only one breaking recall [00:47:00] record. This year rear view cameras and 60, I think is, I think the last highest year we had. We might have ventured into the forties. I haven’t done the tabulations on that, but this is a problem that is. Been growing every year and enough to the point, we even did a special episode about it a few months back.

And it’s something that the industry really needs to get a handle on now that these recalls make up, a significant percentage of overall recalls around, what is it, 7% or so of all the recalls this year involved rear view cameras. So

Fred: I don’t think it’s gonna get any better because the cars are getting older.

Michael: Yeah, these cars are getting older, but. The recalls have already applied to these older models. I guess what we hope in the future is that they’re going to incorporate their lessons learned from this. At this point, hundreds of recalls that have happened over the past few years on rear view cameras into the newer vehicles that will have fewer problems.

That might sound overly aspirational to you, Fred.

Fred: I admire the [00:48:00] durability of your optimism, Michael.

Anthony: Yeah, that’s impressive. Wow. Gaslighting us again. So 60 rear view recalls if my math’s correct. That’s almost one a week.

Michael: It’s more than one a week.

Audi Seatbelt Recall and Conclusion

Anthony: So last recall Volkswagen 27,768 vehicles. The 2025 Audi SQ six E-Tron, the SQ six Sportback, the A six, the A five, a whole bunch of Audis, the S five.

And, the certain seatbelt assemblies may not comply with F-M-B-S-S 2 0 8 and 2 0 9, as the automatic locking regulator may fail to prevent the seatbelt webbing from being extended more than the allowable length after locking when a seatbelt is used to secure a child restraint seat. This sounds dangerous.

It sounds very specific too. So I plug in my seat seatbelt with a child res, I don’t understand it.

Michael: Essentially, you’re gonna have to have a [00:49:00] tight, if you’re using a seatbelt, on most modern cars, and probably all of these vehicles were manufactured using the latch system, which you’ve probably seen in your car.

So there should be a, somewhere around your backseat. Depending on whether you’ve got a hatchback or a, normal sedan, you’ll see a hook that you can attach that puts the, you can basically take the car seat and plug it into your vehicle. Versus the old school way of doing all this was to actually use your seatbelt and thread it through the base of the car seat to keep it.

Fixed. And essentially there is a locking pin that’s malfunctioning, that prevents a strong connection between the seatbelt and the car seat that prevents the, that holds the seat in place in a crash in these vehicles. And so Audi’s going to have to go back and it looks like, replace it with a component, with a, a spring cassette that’s not damaged, [00:50:00] meets the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards and can keep the car seats secured.

Anthony: And with that’s the end of our show. I hope everyone’s enjoyed it. We’ll be back next week for more exciting auto safety news.

Fred: Thanks everybody. Thank you. Bye-bye.

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