Name this Podcast… and dummies

Anthony: but it’s, it’s getting people to type that in.

I don’t know. I, I at names, I’ve got no idea. Hey, listeners, welcome to the show. Got a name for us? Great. If you want us to really take you seriously, go to auto safety.org. Click on the donate button. The more you donate, the more wills. Listen to your, uh, name idea. That’s not true, but we’ll like you more.

Maybe

Fred: that’s not true. Why should we throw out a couple of suggestions? Lemon Squeeze, I thought was good. That too. Oto was good. Okay. Um, crash test. What else? Crash Chest Dummies. That might be good. Crash test Lemons. I,

Anthony: I think, uh, a, a rock band has that name trademark, but, .

Michael: Yeah. Anything with dummies in the title is gonna be semi accurate, so yeah.

Not to start Anthony.

Fred: It might be thought dummy to be too political, might not be thought to be too political as

Anthony: well. Right. Uh, anyway. Hey, let’s, uh, let’s kick it off now that we’re speaking about dummies. Uh, is this week the government account? Is it the general No, it’s the government accountability office Or is it the general accountability?

No, it’s the government accountability office, uh, released a, a study, uh, basically not saying, Hey, we need better crash test dummies. We need newer crash test dummies. Um, not that they’re necessarily. Bad. They’re very complex, interesting machines. But the hybrid three, which is the most commonly used crash as dummy uh, and dates back to good old 1986.

Um, it only represents the 50th percentile of adult male, which is five feet nine inches and weighs 171 pounds. So it does not capture someone of my massive frame . Uh, and they only started, including Nitsa, only started including, uh, female crash death dummies, um, in the early two thousands, uh, to reflect that recall requirement, which is again, and the hybrid three female dummy represents the fifth percentile of adult females at four feet, 11 inches and 108 pounds.

Um, but it’s a scaled version of larger dummy. It does not reflect a lot of the, uh, physiological differences. It lacks sensors in the lower legs. Um, , we, we lack a lot of sensors around this stuff, but how, uh, so I’ll, I’ll just throw this out to the dummies. Um, how likely is it that these are gonna be updated and, and who mandates what dummies are used?

Fred: Well, it’s mandates the dummies, which dummy? Uh, dummy one and dummy two. How are we gonna do

Anthony: this, Michael? Oh, don’t have to decide which one’s. One or two. Uh, it’s too much pressure.

Fred: Well, well, let me, lemme start then with, uh, you know, dummy tool will start . So, uh, , there’s a lot of problems with these things.

For example, there’s only one point in the hybrid three dummy in the chest that records the compression of the chest. Um, so if you want, and that’s right in the middle of the chest. So depending upon how you put the dummy in with the, you know, exact location of the seatbelt, um, all of those, all of those different perimeters, you’re gonna get a very different result for.

How the dummy responds to the forces of the impact. So it’ll have a very poor response if you have a side impact because the particular sensor only looks at longitudinal compression of the chest or straight on compression of the chest. There are other dummies in development, uh, that have been tested that have a much wider range of sensors in them that can look at lateral as well as longitudinal compression.

Uh, that’s just one example of also, you know, how it sits on the, on the hip, whether or not you’ve got a big belly sitting over it. There’s, you know, a lot of things going on. And you’ve also gotta remember that a, uh, 10th percentile female is pretty small. It’s a four 10 woman. And, you know, that’s not representative of, of most of the people that I’ve met, but so, you know, there’s a lot of technical limitations there.

Much more advanced dummies in development and available, uh, the only reason to not use them is the political will. And I will turn that over to dummy one .

Michael: Well, I would say there may be a another few reasons that they’re having some problems using these other dummies that we can get into, but I’ll back up a little and say, um, this was, you know, a report that was mandated by Congress.

Um, basically due to, you know, a lot of questions that were being asked around whether females were being protected enough in crashes. We’ve also asked questions about, you know, whether incap should include something like a silver star scale to better protect older drivers who may have, you know, less muscle mass, uh, more brittle bones and other factors that complicate crashes for them, and in fact probably result in more injuries and, and lower speed crashes for, for elderly folks.

Um, Kind of stepping back, you know, there’s a, this is a, it’s a, it’s a tough area. I mean, functionally we are asking manufacturers to build, you know, a one size fits all protection system for, you know, , 7 billion differently shaped people. You know, people are kind of like snowflakes. Nobody’s identical. So it, it is a challenge to do that.

Um, and what, you know, I think the report really found is that NHTSA has not been doing enough over the years to respond to the risks that have been proven, um, in these other categories and other demographics. Um, they’ve missed certain milestones and, um, things they needed to get done earlier. Getting smaller dummies, getting may, maybe even larger dummies, getting dummies into the backseats.

You know, there’s a lot of issues here. Getting female dummies into the driver’s seat is something that took a really long time to do. Um, and that’s actually shown some benefits and some side crash testing and impact and incap. So there it is a complex area, but you know, there’s also some, some, uh, data problems here.

We have a lot of data on how traumatic events affect male. Athletic young bodies because there’s a lot of cadaver testing that’s gone on in the past related to military service and, and other things. There’s not a comparable data set for, you know, older adults, females, and, um, children for example. And so that really complicates, you know, how you take the information you get from these dummies to apply it to how the human body actually works in reality and come up with some type of, um, information that allows you to make cars safer.

So there is a lot of catching up that Nitsa and other agencies need to do. And also, you know, a lot of catching up that science needs to do, uh, with the different types of human bodies out there because, um, there’s just so much variation that Nitsa is not currently crash testing for, that it’s leaving some populations, um, less protected than.

Anthony: So real quick, what is NCAP again?

Michael: NCAP is the new car assessment program and it’s basically how Nitsa test vehicles rates them in a way that incentivizes manufacturers to build more safety into the vehicles. Okay.

Anthony: And now does, so Nitsa mandates the use of the hybrid three dummy. Uh, does the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, do they use the exact same dummy, or do they use more advanced dummies with more sensors?

you

Michael: know, they’re not limited by, they’re not limited by regulations. I believe they probably use, um, differently instrumented dummies in a variety of different dummies. And I know they’ve made more efforts recently to get dummies into the backseat to represent things like children and other things so that they can get some good rear seat ratings to start pushing manufacturers to focus a little more on the rear seat as we move forward into a world where more people are riding in the backseat.

Hmm.

Fred: The, uh, the, they do use a wider array of dummies and, uh, uh, encourage our listeners to go to the humanetics website, H U M A N E T I C S website cuz that’s one of the leading manufacturers of anthrop anthropometric test devices, which is the official name for a crash test. Tommy. Um, I was very pleased to learn that they have a 95th percentile elder.

crash test dummy in the progress, because that’s the kind of dummy that is closest to me. So I, I do have a dummy analog out there. Hey, you

Anthony: said it first. , that was actually the last question I had there. Is it just one company that manufactures these things? Is the, the design of these dummies, is it open source or is it all proprietary?

I can’t imagine there’s a huge market for these dummies.

Fred: The design is, is, is proprietary. Everybody’s got their own, but the anthropometric or the,

Anthony: take your time, excuse

Fred: me. The , there are specifications for the ATDs or the test dummies that nitsa can use in the NCAP tests. So compliant test devices have to be, be built according to those.

test devices have to be built according to those specifications. So the specifications have to change before a wider array of test dummies can be brought in. But there are multiple companies, uh, doing this work both here and in Europe. And I suppose in Japan too, though, I’m not as familiar with the Japanese.

Hmm.

Michael: Right. Although I think Humanetics probably, I would say, dominates the US market as far as I.

Fred: Okay. I think that’s right.

Anthony: Yeah. Well, speaking of older drivers, uh, there was a new study published at the Journal of American Geriatrics Society, uh, researchers at John Johns Hopkins University study, the IMP study.

The, uh, speaking today is difficult study. The impact of a 2012 Japanese law, which required motorists over 75 to be retu, retu, , and Anthropometric, uh, routinely screened for cognitive impairments. I think based on my own performance, they should start it at a much younger age than 75. I agree. And actually, and, and so in 2017, that law in Japan was amended so that law enforcement could use those medical results to revoke the licenses of people diagnosed with dementia and other conditions.

Now, I’m actually not kidding. I think they should be screening everybody at every age for some sort of impairments. Um, because I, I think regardless of age, there’s a lot of people that shouldn’t be on the road. Uh, and I’m including pedestrians in. , but Right. I mean,

Michael: we, we know how, we know how much the human mind body can change just within a matter of days versus months.

So, I mean, I was just talking about this with an elderly driver who emailed the center the other day. She was looking for a way to, um, determine whether people have the cognitive skills to continue driving at advanced stage. And there actually is a lot of tech that’s used in the area of driving rehabilitation.

It’s for people that have been injured or had, um, uh, brain injuries and other things that require them to, to relearn their driving task. And these systems are, you know, I I, I, the one I saw in California, it’s like a $350 test and you bring your grandfather or your, your kid or whoever is, is trying to be is, is being evaluated.

Um, and they can test them and say, you know what? This person has. , you know, some issues with driving and perhaps shouldn’t be allowed to be on the road, but I, I, I don’t know how advanced what’s going on in Japan is, I’m assuming it’s something similar. But what they found was that when they started removing licenses from the older drivers, that the, the rate of old, um, pedestrians being killed went up because they were walking mower.

Um, now, so there was a, it’s, it’s kind of a, it makes you wonder, you know, if, if we, if we implemented, for instance, in every state in America right now, a driving test that required people to go in every year and take it to ensure they’re good drivers, would we see a corresponding increase in pedestrian deaths?

Because more people are being forced to walk. I don’t know. .

Anthony: That is fascinating. I remember it was, I think it was the late nineties where 2020 did a special on older drivers, and they weren’t, I don’t think they focused so much on cognitive, it was more of, uh, vision issues. I guess. As you got older, there’s blind spots that essentially happened in your field of view and they were showing this, you know, guy in somewhere in Florida, um, and they did a vision test on him and like he had massive holes in his vision and, you know, he’s out there driving and like going through an intersection and not seeing a car approaching from the left and not seeing until it’s too late slamming in the brakes.

But I, I imagine that kind of testing’s is something that should be happening. I mean, right now, you know, just in most states they make you take a, you know, read this line of an eye chart. Um, why couldn’t they just update that to be like, to look for these blind spots? Am I being

Fred: aging Well as Michael, as Michael pointed out, there are hi hidden consequences of that testing and in communities.

You are reliant on automobiles, which is where most of us live. If you’re denied access to the automobiles, you’ve gotta find some other way to get around, or you’re just going to be alone in your, in your house. So, uh, I don’t think it’s as straightforward as just having a test that you can do in the, uh, you know, in the, um, department of Motor Vehicles to determine whether or not it’s the best solution to take you off the road.

Clearly, clearly an alternative transportation mode would be a, a big help, and those initiatives should, as a minimum be coupled.

Anthony: Hmm. So definitely expand out if you’re gonna remove this driver’s license from people. Make sure they actually have another way to get around. Um,

Fred: sure. Yeah, that sounds great.

And in many European cities, as you know, and people have pretty well guaranteed access to public transportation and had reasonable intervals, uh, where I live, uh, you know, gee, you’d, you’d be standing by the road for six months before a bus comes by, if at all.

Anthony: Well, hey look, uh, as we all know, cars drive themselves, so I don’t see what the problem. Oh, good point. Good, good point. Thank you. Thank you very much. Um, okay, let’s jump into tires. Cuz this week I, whatever reason I kept running across articles on tires. Uh, so I’m gonna start with the one, the more interesting one.

Whereas the woman, uh, ABC seven Chicago, uh, this unfortunate customer, she bought tires that she assumed they were new, but they’d been sitting in the tire shop since 2012. Uh, and as a consumer, which was kind of neat, is there’s, uh, codes on all of your tires. So you see this little embossed writing kind of above the rim where your tire is.

The last four digits show the week and year. Uh, your tire is manufactured. So if it says 37 12, that means it was manufactured this 37th week of 2012 or 1912. Who knows how long these tires been sitting around? . Uh, so this is something I never thought about, but tires will expire because the rubber and they’ll, they’ll dry out and rot.

And from reading this article, like they’re saying, what tires should only last nine years before you have to automatically replace them? Or is it 10 years? How old can my tires be before they’re a hazard?

Michael: You know, I, I’m, I’m gonna say it varies based on who’s manufacturing the tire and what they’re using in it.

Um, but I don’t want to purchase, you know, 10 year old or nine year old tires and put them on my car, and I don’t think that any consumer really wants to take that risk. Um, I did chuckle a little in the article, Goodyear’s saying they, oh, that we really don’t know anything about this age thing you’re talking about on tires, , which has to be, has to be a lie, right?

Anthony: Yeah. A Goodyear definitely doesn’t have, you know, rooms and rooms full of chemists that have studied the degradation of their own products. So no, they, they’re completely naive and tires last forever. Uh, so, hey, maybe shop around folks and see if there’s some other manufacturer that maybe, uh, can accept responsibility.

Fred: Uh, well I did have a, uh, I do have the experience of one aggressive gas station owner and trying to sell my wife a new set of tires, claiming that she had dry rot on all four tires. Um, so, you know, may, that’s a sales technique. Uh, she did not have dry rod on and all four tires. By the way. There’s an awful lot of tires that have been sitting in the high, in the rivers around the country for a very long time.

They don’t seem to degrade very rapidly, so I, I don’t think there’s any extensive set of, uh, experimental data on how long tires can last before they’re hazard. And, and you asked the question, how long? . How old do the tires have to be on your car before their hazard? I haven’t seen the way you drive, so I don’t really know how to answer that question.

It could be the no tire suitable Anthony, but you know, if you give us a sample, if you’re driving, maybe we can answer that better. I’m

Anthony: a very safe driver. Okay. I, I think I’ve pointed out many times that it’s other drivers on the road that scare me. It’s not me. I’m not the problem. Uh, but okay, so, so what you’re suggesting is if you need a new set of tires, get some scuba gear, jump into the nearest river, search around for tires that fit your car,

Fred: pull ’em out.

Well, you can save some money that way, I think. Yeah. Alright.

Michael: That’s lip. Potomac River is absolutely full of them. If you need a. Oh yeah.

Fred: Well, I’ve also read somewhere that 85% of drivers think they’re better than average, which is an interesting statistic.

Michael: I think that applies in areas beyond driving just to how humans think of themselves in general.

Yeah. Yeah.

Anthony: I mean, excellent driver and I can dunk a basketball if the rims really low. Uh, but, so anyway, in this article, some tire expert, I don’t know what it means to be a tire expert. Excuse me. Uh, I’ll edit that. Um, in this, uh, article they mentioned a tire expert. Uh, there’s no certification to become a tire expert.

So, uh, but he says that, uh, you should definitely take, uh, tires out of service at 10 years of age. Um, just, you know, tire experts, , you know, uh, guess you gotta believe it. You put the word expert after it must be true. Um, but interesting. .

Michael: Oh, I’m guessing he’s probably a, uh, forensic expert, uh, maybe a, uh, legal, legal expert, uh, in some sort of manner.

But, um, you know, that sounds reasonable to me. Uh, 10 year old tire, I mean, unless there are tires that are manufactured to be, to have the tread replaced and other things. So there are tires that could go longer or designed to go longer, but, um, I don’t want car, I don’t want tires older than 10 years on my car.

Do you?

Anthony: I don’t know. Tires are. So reading this article, I was like, oh, how much would tires cost to replace on my car? And you go to some website and it’s like, where do you live? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it’s like, a new set of tires on this car was like, it’s over $500. And I was like, I don’t want tires anymore.

This is insane. I don’t need, you know, and they’re recommending some crazy ass tire. And I’m like the, like Goodyear defenders or something. I’m like, that sounds a little aggressive for the way I drive. Well, and you know, more of the, the Goodyear passive aggressive, they don’t

Michael: make those, they don’t, they don’t, they don’t make those specifically for New York

Yeah, I don’t

Fred: think they have, I don’t think they have a pa rating on the tires. Could be. They have a he rating. I know, you know, if you ever gone into a tire store though, it has a, if you have, you’ll notice it has a distinctive odor. Yes. And, and that distinctive odor is from chemicals evaporating out of the tires.

So, you know, there are organic compounds in the tires that do leach out of the tires and go into the atmosphere and, and whatever. But as those chemicals leach outta the tires, it does change the tire chemistry. As I, I have no reason to think that 10 years is the magic number, but there may well be a magic number that.

is consistent with the typical tire chemistry. It’s also worth noting that different tire companies have different rubber chemistries. So, you know, a cheap tire is, is not going to become a good tire over time. Um, a good tire may last a lot longer than a cheap tire. It’s just a, a lot of variables. I think the, you know, I, I think the message here though is to check your tires, make sure that they have good tread on them and they look okay, and they probably are okay if they look okay.

Anthony: Hmm. So you can judge a tire by its cover. Got it. Uh, other tire news is, I came across something called airless tires. I know I’m not the first person to come across this, but they’re tires that they’re, they’re, well, they’re airless. They look really cool, I think. And the, the big selling point behind them is you can roll over nails and glass and they won’t deflate because there’s no air in them.

Uh, the downside from reading these articles, they keep talking about, oh, these will be ready next year, next year, next year. And apparently they’re like, at least a decade away.

Michael: It sounds like an AV doesn’t it? ? It

Anthony: does, it does. My AV will come with airless tires. Um, uh, but one benefit I think that we’d all enjoy is that, hey, it reduces vehicle weight, but apparently it increases vehicle friction.

Um, and you have to learn how to drive differently because we’re all used to pneumatic tires and the way they feel on the road, whereas apparently these feel very different. They, the way they, uh, sit on the road is more flat compared to the more concave way that tires sit, convex, eh, you know, on the inside it’s concave.

On the outside it’s different. .

Michael: So yeah, there’s, I mean, like I said earlier, these, these have been promised for a number of years, um, but have never quite made it to market. And a, a lot of the reasons for that are, um, they’re actually heavier than the tires with air in them noisier. And, um, you know, they look just to give the listener an idea.

They, they’re kind of like a wagon wheel on an old Conestoga wagon, but with flexible spokes. So the wheel can flex as it encounters, you know, as it rotates, encounters the road and encounters other objects. It’s able to flex, uh, with its environment. So it’s, it, you know, it looks cool. I don’t know. It’s

the noise and the weight and probably the cost of these, I’m not sure if it’s, you know, an appreciable, you know, benefit over, you know, your average tire with Aaron at these days. Uh, and if they wait more, . Yeah,

Anthony: they weigh more. Oh, see, I thought they’d weigh less. Hmm. Oh, well, I mean, I think they look cool, but hey, with the noise, with everyone going to electric vehicles, you know, you’ll hear the car more.

There you

Michael: go. You know, that would be a benefit Now, and it maybe electric cars need tires like this so that they’re not, uh, causing the problem. We’re seeing all over the place where tires, uh, chemicals are leaching off the roads and into the environment. Um, if EVs are going to way more, they’re obviously going to be producing more of this, more of those chemicals that come off the tires.

But maybe, maybe, maybe an airless tire could be the solution to that problem. Who knows?

Anthony: Hey, that’s a good name for this podcast, the Airless Tire vote. Now, ,

Fred: the, uh, it’s important to remember that in the future, everything will be better. Yes, we’ve, we’ve talked about that before. So these are still on the development, and I think that it would be, Probably imprudent to predict what these will ultimately be like based upon their current state of development.

They’ve really just started getting these out onto the road. Uh, all of the issues that we’ve talked about are, are, are in fact there, but there’ll be a lot of development between here and there. And who knows, maybe some newer chemistry will come out that’ll make these tires even lighter and, uh, track better than current tires.

We, but you know, it’ll be a while in the future. Everything will be better and this will be part of that future I suppose.

Anthony: Speaking of everything better in the future, you know, we think futuristic. We think Tesla, well, we think Tesla from five years ago. Five years ago. Tesla, we think futuristic now we think, eh, a couple years behind.

But anyway, uh, Tesla, uh, amazingly enough, a guy goes into a parking lot, he’s got a Tesla model three. It’s white. The car next to Hims, Tesla model three, it’s white. He uses his phone, locks the car, gets in, drives away, and turns out it’s not his. Not it’s, he, the app managed to allow him to unlock somebody else’s car, drive away with it.

And the other, uh, , the guy who owned the car, they drove with, got into his car and found his phone number and called him up and was like, Hey, yeah, you’re driving my car. And the guy was like, oh my God, I’m sorry. But the guy who got in the wrong car still went and picked up his kids , which I, I love. He’s like, yeah, I’ll be back in your car in a bit, but I’m gonna go pick up my kids and then I’ll come back and we can swap cars.

Uh, it is, it’s unbelievable. I thought it was, uh, one of the. Funniest stories I ever read, and it was great. The article, um, they tried to reach out to, uh, Tesla to find out how this happened. Uh, but Tesla’s North American corporate mailbox is apparently full .

Michael: Oh, I, I think they’re testing out a new program where all the Tesla owners just share their vehicles, right?

And you have to pay a subscription fee month if you want your own car. So, Oh, we’ll see

Anthony: how that works. . You want the new car smell or Bob’s car smell?

Michael: I like it. No, but really it’s, it’s a cybersecurity issue. It’s, it’s just another issue, you know, that why we think Nitsa and, you know, we’ve talked about it with the Hyundai Kia TikTok stuff and, you know, NITSA is way behind the D o t Nitsa, all of us, the, the industry’s way behind on securing these vehicles and, you know, things like this are just the tip of the iceberg.

You know, if you give a nefarious actor the ability to get into these Teslas and, you know, hack them, control them, that kind of thing that we’re talking about a lot different, um, outcome here, rather than happy guy picking up his kid from school and dropping off the other car off. So, It’s, you know, this is clearly a hole in Tesla system.

I mean, I, back in the day, I think that manufacturers had to have something like a thousand different key combinations. So there was always a chance if you put your key in someone else’s car, it might work here where that validation is occurring through an app, um, doesn’t, it seems like you could have an infinite number of codes pretty easily that would prevent these, this kind of situation from happening.

So it raises a pretty big question, I think, about what’s going on and what allowed that to take

Anthony: place. This is definitely an old problem just in new clothing, whereas cuz there was a, there was a car manufacturer, it must have been 20, 30 years ago, where their key combinations, it turned out they only had like six variations of the key.

Um, I think it might have been Nissan, don’t quote me on that, whereas,

Michael: And nits actually put a standard into place. One of the first parts of the theft protection standard was to ensure that manufacturers were making enough different keys, key, key code types, you know?

Anthony: Yeah. And you’re absolutely right with software controlling this.

Yeah. The, it’s non-trivial. It’s, it’s trivial to make it so that each car has a unique ID to

Michael: it. Yeah. There’s no physical design involved in a key, um, it’s code. So no one should have this issue in a Tesla. Yeah,

Anthony: they can.

Fred: Millions. I mean, there are some software issues that the, the, there’s a message that passes between the key fob and the car and that message structure, um, is probably, attached to, you know, like an eight bid word that has a numerical code or 16 B word or something like that.

So there are some, there’s, there’s a less than infinite number of combinations, just to be clear, but it could be very large number. This is actually kind of an APO story though, because this is the first cybersecurity story I’ve ever read that came out with a happy ending. Usually they’re catastrophic.

Anthony: Yeah. I mean, the kids were happy to go, Hey look, you cleaned up all the stuff I spilled in the backseat of the car. I mean,

Fred: yeah, it doesn’t stink anymore. Dad, what did you do? This

Anthony: is great. Ooh, we have a red interior now. Thanks dad. Uh, but my, my favorite takeaway was the, the owner trying to contact Tesla and of course there being no test phone number.

He sent an email and it got bounced back cuz the mailbox is full. That’s what I want in tech company. Can’t handle an email account. Oh boy. Um, more Tesla look is, you know, it’s, uh, Look, this is a podcast on auto safety and they just keep making headlines each week. Okay. It was Hyundai Kia of fires for a long time, but it’s just, it’s Tesla, Tesla Wednesday.

Um, so it was another Tesla firetruck autopilot issue, whereas US investigators suspect that a Tesla was operating the automated driving system when it crashed into a firetruck in California last. Killing the driver and critically injuring a passenger. Um, this is a crash that happened February 18th in Northern car, uh, Northern California.

Yeah.

Michael: And I think you brought it up briefly on the podcasts and at the time we had no, no idea whether or not it was autopilot related. It’s odd still that Nitsa is not really coming out saying, or the ntss B even is, if they’re looking into it, is not coming out and saying, yes, it was autopilot. There seems to be some type of question here as to whether it’s autopilot or not, even though nitsa suspects that it is, that suggests that Tesla hasn’t been able to provide them the data from the crash for some reason, which, um, I don’t know.

Sounds sounds odd to me.

Fred: Well, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve talked about this before. One of the key things that should happen in the, uh, event data recorders, is that the, they should be formatted so that anybody can read it. These data should not have to go through the hands of a manufacturer before they get to the public authorities who are investigating the cause of the accident.

They, you know, this is a, actually a very important issue, doesn’t seem to be getting a lot of traction. We’ve commented on this in the past, but, you know, there, there are open standards that would be perfectly satisfactory for the storage of the data and the formatting of the data that would allow people to have rapid access and, uh, open access to the data people being the investigators, right?

But, but that has not happened yet, and it’s something that our friends over at Nitsa should take into consideration.

Michael: Right. And then presumably even beyond the E D R, which is a very limited subset of data on Tesla’s, they’re beaming data back to the mothership. Every millisecond. You know, there is a lot of data stored in the cloud and it should be relatively simple to provide that to investigators, far simpler than what investigators have had to do in the past, which involves reading the data from what is basically a a u SB driver.

I mean, it’s basically a, uh, small memory chip that’s embedded in the occupant restraint controllers of these vehicles. So, um, that’s not easy to access. But you know, right now I’m assuming here that Tesla has all the data on this crash on their servers cuz it was beamed to them. Like most of the vehicle data they collect is.

Um, so there should be an easier way to get that information to safety investigators and immediately.

Fred: Right. Well, there’s no standard right now for how the data is stored or what data is stored outside of the E D R. So, uh, there are different systems, different formats, different ways of recording it and different ways of transmitting it.

It’d be nice to have at least one standardized approach to these so that investigators, uh, can find out what the hell is going on as people are dying.

Anthony: I, I know we’re not touching on this issue, uh, this week, but later on we’re doing the AV Bill of Rights and is, uh, standardized data storage and transmission.

Is that part of the AV Bill of Rights? . No, that’s, I think it is a great v oversight. Think, oh, look at that. We’re gonna add that on. All right.

Fred: Um, we have a winner. We have

Michael: a winner. Woohoo. Look at that. Fred is, Fred is moving quickly to get his notepad .

Anthony: I need some notes. And while he does that, we’re gonna do, uh, this is from the National Transportation Safety Board.

Um, I’m just gonna read the whole thing. It’s just one paragraph. It’s called, uh, electric Vehicle Runoff Road Crash and Post Crash Fire. This is, uh, coral Gables, Florida, September 13th, 2021 On Monday, September 13th, 2021, about 8:54 PM uh, 2021 Tesla Model three, long range dual motor electric car occupied by a 2120 year old driver and 19 year old passenger was traveling north in Corals Gable.

The weather was clear, the road was dry and the area was illuminated by street lamps. As the car approached the Signalize intersection with Coral Way, it accelerated shifted into the southbound lane to pass another car and then reentered the northbound lane. After this passing maneuver, the car continued to accelerate running the red light.

The driver then lost control the part of the roadway and struck two trees in the center median. Both the driver and passenger died. A post crash fire engulfed the car. Firefighters face challenges in extinguishing the fire and reported the car’s batteries reignited at least once. Um, this is horrific. Uh, and it’s also just pointing out that, you know, on essentially perfect road conditions, uh, a quote unquote self-driving car, um, uh, you know, I, I think, uh, I, I’m not a lawyer, but it sounds like the car committed vehicular homicide.

Fred: This was not an AV issue. This the kid, the kid stomped in the accelerator to get through the red light. And so he was at, oh, okay. He was at, at 95 miles an hour as he ran the red light. Alright, so this is, this is not an Navy issue. I

Anthony: I, I was under the impression that the car from reading this, I thought the car did all of this stuff.

Fred: Okay. No, this is just a, this is just a stupidity issue.

Michael: Ah, yeah. This one we was really pointing out, uh, in many ways just the, the, the, that the NTSS V has continued to, to look at battery fire scenarios, and this is another one. Um, now this was a high speed crash and high speed crashes, you know, are always going to have a higher risk of fire because the , the vehicle’s going to be much more severely impacted than a low.

Low speed crash fuel systems in a ice vehicle are a big problem in high speed crashes. And we’ve seen over the years a lot of high speed crash resulting in fires. In this case, it’s, you know, it’s slightly different. It’s a battery, but damage to the battery is significant in high speeded crashes as well as we see with the ice fuel system.

So we’re continuing to see problems with emergency responders being able to put these fires out. We’ve talked about that, uh, in the past, and the N T S B has been pushing manufacturers to do a better job of that. We, we still don’t think we’re quite there, you know. emergency responders are getting to the scenes of these crashes and having to go through a flip book or get on the internet to figure out, uh, you know, how to approach the vehicle.

Whether, what type of configuration the vehicle has, how they’re going to put the fire out, protect the occupants. All of these different things aren’t standardized. And there’s something that, um, it’s a very big challenge for, uh, fire departments, particularly those that are, you know, volunteers and, and otherwise rural fire departments who don’t have the capabilities that some of the urban fire departments do.

So there’s, um, you know, Continuing to be issues in this area.

Fred: I think that, that, that the report said that in this particular case that the firefighters did not have to consult any particular guidebook. They just squirted water on it. So they either were familiar with the, the issue or they just ignored the special considerations.

Your, your points are well taken. There does need to be, yeah. Um, standardization and familiarity, but in this particular case, it doesn’t seem to have been an issue

Michael: being in the, uh, Miami area. I’m gonna guess that they just have a l significant experience with Teslas. That seems to be one of the areas of the country that it attracts a lot more investment in Teslas than others.

Anthony: Hmm. Hey, if you, uh, listener, if you happen to work for a f uh, fire department or know somebody who works for a fire department, we would love to have a guest on from a fire department to talk about parti in particular, these AV issues or not av so EV issues and battery fires and, and how each manufacturer has different systems for cutting off and disconnecting batteries and, and how they have any training to put out these systems, um, put out these runaway fires.

Um, but yeah, so cause we, this is an ongoing issue that’s not gonna. . It’s just gonna keep getting worse, I imagine. Uh, but speaking of baloney, cuz maybe I’m full of baloney, I don’t know. Uh, Michael sent us this great article, we’re gonna have a link to it. Uh, the auto industry is full of baloney. Uh, the article is called Stop the Spin, how to Spot Nine Types of Auto Industry Disinformation.

Uh, and it talks about, um, basically blame the user victim blaming, it’s your fault this happened, which I love. Um, you know, uh, and how to, it’s a great article. It talks about how to, uh, avoid, uh, the lies and the denial. So basically the manufacturers, which we’ve talked about a number of times, saying, Hey, there is no problem Hyundai Kia cars being stolen from kids off TikTok.

That doesn’t happen. No. Um, you know, so this is a, this was a good, Michael, what was your favorite parts of this? I

Michael: like a couple. Part, one of them is they talked about, uh, panaceas, which is. To me is the, the au uh, the industry’s fundamental approach to pushing autonomous vehicles on us. They keep talking about how they’re going to save the world, save the environment, uh, allowed disabled folks to go anywhere they want and all these things.

But they really haven’t proven out any of those things in the use cases, or at least in the vehicles. We’re seeing them put on the road so far. Um, so when you’re. , the panacea approach is basically something we’ve talked about in, in the area of AI too, where we’re pretending that these vehicles are going to be something perfect in the future without acknowledging that it’s going to take a significant amount of work to get there.

Um, and that’s one interesting part of the article. And the other one was, um, they were pointing out how complexity manufacturers or automakers often use complexity to try to say things, to try to say that they can’t do certain things is my experience. For instance, in the area of seat back safety, where we see the front seats collapsing, hitting, killing, injuring children and others in the back seats.

Um, we’ve often seen them say, well, this is just too complex. We can’t build the front seat to protect both the passenger in that seat as well as the people in other ears in the car. And our response has always been, You know, that’s a lie. You can do it. You’re just not, you know, first of all, you’re not valuing the folks that are in the backseat.

There’s been a long history of backseat safety being ignored in the auto industry because, you know, most of us, most of the time, a car’s being driven, it’s the front seats that would be occupied. So the it, that’s just another example of the type of mis misinformation. Disinformation we’ll see occasionally from the industry when there’s a safety issue that they really don’t want to address.

There’s

Fred: a book that should be required reading for everybody. Uh, the title of the book is on Bullshit. The author is Professor Harry Frankfurt from Princeton. And it’s a wonderful, uh, discussion of the difference between truth, lies, and bullshit. And it, it, it, it really is very, very good and it helps the scales fall from your eyes as you listen to a lot of conversations.

And there is an awful lot of bullshit involved in, uh, as he defines bullshit involved in the, the, uh, promotion of any new autum automotive technology. So, uh, I, I just wanted to give a plug to Professor Frankfurt, and I do highly recommend the book.

Anthony: Alright, when you not listen. Yeah. So folks, you can go out and get a copy of on Bullshit or you can donate to the Center for Auto Safety.

You won’t get a copy of on Bullshit, but, or you can do both. Hey, if you, you know, you got deep pockets like that. I have no idea how much books cost anymore. I go to the library.

Fred: That’s a cheap one. But, uh, you know, maybe that’s a good name for our podcast. What do you think? It’s

a

Anthony: cheap one. .

Michael: I, I think that would be, my father would not be happy if we changed the name of the podcast to that.

Anthony: To On bullshit. Yeah. Oh well. .

Michael: Speaking of that, there was another article too I saw, I think it was just yesterday where, uh, I don’t even know if I put it in the notes, but Dodge, there was this vehicle put out in 2021. It was the Dodge Durango, Hellcat and Dodge basically told all 3000 people who bought these things and it was going to be a limited edition.

I mean, these are people buying SUVs for a hundred thousand dollars plus. So they were expecting these things to be worth something. And then, um, Dodge Chrysler, Lanis, whatever they are now, has come out with a 2023 model of the exact same thing. And so they are now being sued by all these owners who were hoping for a collector’s item, but were basically lied to.

Fred: I think anybody who buys a Dodge as a collector’s item has, has already made a big step away from reality.

Michael: That was in my thoughts as I read the article, Fred.

Anthony: Wow. I mean, you know, I wanna pour one out for the poor Dodge owner who spent a hundred grand on a Dodge. I, Hey, I, I’m at a loss for words. So, with that, I think it’s time to move to the Tower of Fred.

VO: You’ve now entered the Dow

of

Anthony: Fred. Uh, this week is a controversial one. This is one that I, I’m gonna disagree with to some extent. This is the AV Bill of Rights. This is AV shall not be programmed to violate motor vehicle laws. Uh, take it away. Thank

Fred: you. Uh, well this is, this is my forward-looking statement, but I don’t think avs are as good as people driving cars and, um, even if people are allowed to hedge.

The laws a little bit. I do not think AVS should be able to do that, because as soon as you enter that universe, you’ve gotta say, well, how far can you stretch the laws before it’s acceptable? I think the, the line in the sand should be, you cannot violate motor vehicle laws. And so let me, let me geek out a little bit here and give you one example why, um, let’s just think about speed limits.

Okay. Uh, robots can do a better job than humans in factory operations. Like if you, if you want to make a piston that has very, very tight tolerances, there’s nothing better than a wall program machine to do that. Human beings cannot do that. Back when I was a kid, the tolerances that were accessible were one, 1000th of an inch, or what we call a mill.

Now they’re, they’re routinely manufacturing, uh, production parts to one 10000th of an inch. Now people often tout high tolerance as, as equal to good. But somebody once pointed out to me that a good machine is designed so that you can make it work with loose tolerances. I won’t get into that, but you know that, that’s a good point.

But driving a car is not like making a piston in a factory. So there’s a lot of variables. And, and one of the things that is really important is, uh, if you remember your physics coefficient of friction, okay. Coefficient of friction relates to how much force in a particular case of cars can be, um, transmitted from the car.

To the pavement by way of the tires, right? So if the high, if you have a high co-efficient of friction, you have a lot of force, you have a lot of control. If you have a low co-efficient of friction, you have less force, less control. So let’s think of the example of hydroplaning. Now we’ve, many of us experienced drivers have experienced hydroplaning at least once in our driving history.

And what happens with hydroplaning is you hit water and because of your high speed, you’re actually floating on the surface of that water, no longer contacting the road surface. You’re coefficient of friction drops essentially to zero. You have no control over the car or you’re skating on the surface, and that’s not what cars are designed to do.

Once you’ve done that and you survive the experience, you get very cautious about approaching the situations where hydroplaning might occur, cuz it’s not a good thing. , but how do you do that? Okay. How does a human being do that? Well, you, you look at the cars driving ahead of you. If they seem to be unstable, then that gives you a reason to put on, to tap the brakes, right?

Slow down a little bit. You consider the, the weather you consider the road condition. Is it a gravel road? Is it a a, a pavement? Has it got ruts in it? Um, is it a muddy surface? All of these things affect the likelihood of your vehicle encountering a hydroplaning situation. Very complicated. Nobody’s ever demonstrated that avs are better than human beings at anticipating what might be a situation that causes your coefficient of friction to slip down to a very low and unsafe number.

Um, speed limits for roads are based in part on the expectation by the designers, that you have a reasonable coefficient of friction between you and. or your tires have reasonable coefficient friction, right? Which gives you adequate control of the car. You’ll often see signs and flood conditions that say slow down deep water, whatever.

That’s to affect hydroplaning. If your, if your AV is mindlessly exceeding the speed limit and it does not anticipate all of these things that come naturally to human beings, you can very easily put yourself in jeopardy because you have allowed the vehicle, the vehicle has allowed itself to exceed the posted speed limit.

Or in fact, the posted speed limit that may be on a sign that’s transitory or, you know, showing up only to the people who are, uh, able to read English language. Uh, so anyway, that’s a long way of saying that. There are a lot of examples where exceeding the speed limit. , which a human being might do given their awareness of the road and their experience on the highway and all those kinds of things would be a really bad idea for a self-driving vehicle to do because it couldn’t counter situations that is simply not designed to and could never be designed to anticipate.

Anthony: So let, let me jump in cause there’s a, there’s a, a couple spots where I’d want, where I think speeding is fine. One, and, and Navy will have to deal with a situation where there’s somebody on the road who’s driving erratically. You can’t tell if they’re drunk, they’re not paying attention. And so we all speed up to get away from that person.

Um, be or you know, cause they can be driving slow and erratically and you just try and get away from them. You’re on a highway. Uh, so you’d want AV to do that. And the second reason is I have to poop and that’s a serious situation where I need to get to the nearest bathroom as soon as possible. I need to poop.

Let’s go really fast.

Fred: Well, you know, that’s you, you’re accepting the jeopardy of, of your life versus dirty underwear. But you know, that’s a choice you are free to make. Um, let me give you another example though. As a counter example. Let’s say that you have a nail in your, in your tire and you see that nail, or you see the tire is soft as you’re getting into your car, you know, as a human being that that’s a situation you need to rectify.

You know that you can get the tire fixed. So you would probably limp into a repair station, get the nail pulled, get the tire repaired, do that, okay? If you are an AV that’s merely programmed to drive at the speed limit or exceed the speed limit you may have, uh, and you probably would have no awareness of the imminent hazard due to the nail in your tire.

Okay? So another situation where, Excessive speed. Even legally posted speed might present a real hazard to your operation or the safety of the operation of the vehicle. So yeah, there are situations where you need to get away. They’re very rare. I, I would suggest though, that often tapping the brakes is another way of getting away from erratic drivers.

Um, if they’re , you know, you can slow down and turn distance to, I know you’re from New York. I won’t get into all the, you know, I won’t get into all of that stuff about New York Minute, but, but, you know, one approaches to speed up to get past it, another approaches to slow down and let the hazard move away from you.

But,

Anthony: you know, well, sometimes they slow down their choice. But I, you also gotta keep in mind, I’m living in the future, so a nail in my tire, they’re airless. I’m good. .

Fred: Well, in the future everything will be better. We’ve talked about that. Okay.

Anthony: But, but but seriously, so you have a, a whole section on there.

Making sure they recognize and respond safely to signals, lights, railroad crossings. Cuz we’ve seen issues with that, with current avs where they fail at this. Right.

Fred: And we, and we do know that the, that, um, Tesla again, our, one of our favorite hope to be sponsors who was still waiting for the check, thank you very much, , um, did in fact program their vehicles on, uh, full self driving to roll through stop signs without stopping.

That was, they were called on that by Nitsa. And they apparently have since rep repair, uh, changed that so that you can no longer roll through stop signs. But, you know, there’s an incremental process where you, you put the boundaries, you. push against the boundaries. The boundaries yield, you push a little harder.

This is what is, what is that, uh, theory called the broken window theory. Right? Or the broken window principle. I think that that applies as much to the software developers for AVS as it does to any other human beings. Um, I think some red lines should not be crossed, and my opinion is that AVS should, shall not be programmed or to violate motor vehicle laws.

They should conform to the laws as should everybody else.

Michael: And I wonder particularly speeding laws in this case, because for, you know, for every mile per hour you’re going over the speed limit. Isn’t there a corresponding loss of ability to respond quickly enough in, in a crash situation or something like that?

Fred: Oh, absolutely. Sure. I mean, margins go down. The, uh, forces go up, energy goes up, uh, all of those things happen, but, you know, 85% of people are better than average of drivers. So 85% of people are going to exceed the speed limit perfectly, safely.

Anthony: Right. Exactly. And going back to basic physics, the faster I go, the closer I get to approaching the speed of light in which I can become infinite in everywhere.

Absolutely infinite. There we go. Great. I, I think AV manufacturers need to have not a WTF button. They need a, I have to poop button. Um, and that will guide you to the nearest toilet. But,

Michael: but hey, that’s, maybe we’re getting a lot of insight into Anthony’s car. You know, what goes on in his head when he’s in a go?

Oh, take

Fred: it. Take it easy on the coffee before you get in the car with Anthony. I think that’ll help a lot.

Anthony: Ah. Speaking of recalls, uh, , let’s go into the recall roundup

VO: strap in. I’m for the recall roundup.

Anthony: Um, we’ve got, uh, this is another strange one. Uh, I don’t know how this happens. This is from Kia, uh, potentially 188,000 plus vehicles, the Kia K five s 2021 to 23, uh, certain ones.

The side curtain airbags may have been installed improperly during assembly at the Kia Georgia plant. Um, basically they might have put in the side airbags upside down, or,

Michael: yeah, we, we saw this one, uh, I think it was last. November, they recalled the 2023 models where they’d found this problem of installing the side curtain airbags.

I don’t know if it’s backwards, but basically it’s, they’re installed in a way where they’re twisted somehow and they’re unable to deploy, to protect anyone. So they were made of wear in January that, um, there was a 2021 vehicle that had, I believe, been in a crash and had the same issue. And so now they’re going back and recalling two more years of those vehicles to check them, to make sure that the airbags weren’t installed improperly.

Anthony: Gra uh, here’s another one. This is one that we, uh, manufacturer we never touch on, really, Harbor Freight, um, potentially involve 41,000 plus, uh, hydraulic lifts. This is the high position motorcycle lifts. Uh, for certain units of the central hydraulics high position motorcycle lift, the welds may be susceptible to fatigue cracking, which may lead to premature failure.

Um, so what, what exactly is this part and why would I have a, a motorcycle lift and where would I keep such a thing? So this is,

Michael: I, I’m assuming this is used by guys who are doing maintenance on their motorcycles. Um, basically it lifts them off the ground a couple feet to get them up into an area where it’s probably a lot more comfortable to work on.

Um, but this isn’t the first time that we’ve seen this with Nitsa on jack stands. You know, we typically think of nitsa as covering, you know, cars, child seats maybe, and some other related things. But you don’t think about mitzvah as a regulator for something like a jack stand, but, um, they do have regulatory authority and they can issue and, and ask for recalls on these things.

So Harbor Freight is generally, I, I, I, they’re kind of like a discount, um, retailer. So we’ve seen, you know, a couple of Jack Stand issues, not just on motorcycles, but also with cars. They had to, NITSA had them, NITSA actually issued a special warning in 2020 something that’s kind of rare for a non vehicle issue.

But advising customers who had bought their vehicle, Jack stands to make sure they get them. Make sure they have the recall performed. So this is kind of unusual recall, but you know, it’s something that is really important to guys who are working on their cars and motorcycles in their garage and don’t want the vehicles falling on them.

Fred: All right. There was a local story, there was a local story last week about a, um, catalytic converter thief who was crushed to death while trying to steal at a catalytic converter. Uh, I assume because the jack that they’re using to elevate the car had failed. So this is a, this is a real thing. I had friends in high school who were also killed, uh, or a friend in high school who was also killed when Jack failed and crushed him as he was working on his car.

So, yeah, this is a, this is a real thing. .

Anthony: Hmm. Make sure your jacks are okay then. And, uh, hey, who knew that nit ado and just, uh, cover cars. They cover, uh, things that hold cars and vehicles. Um, alright, so the last recall we have this week is one that I can relate to, uh, Ferrari. You know, they’re, uh, recalling 13 cars on the m y Oh no, that’s model.

You’re on the mci. What vehicle is this called? They have such strange names. I, the SF 90 Oh, the, yes, the 2021 to 2023 SF 90 . I have the SF 95 . I mean, come on. Uh, 13 vehicles where the, uh, the front. Uh, passenger seat sensor, uh, is not set up correctly, and if you have a child sitting there in a child seat, the airbag could go off and kill them.

Am I reading that correctly? You

Michael: are reading that

Anthony: correctly because there’s no backseat in a Ferrari, is there?

Michael: No, there’s no backseat in these models. So basically you’re, if you’re, I I, I don’t know why anyone who can afford a Ferrari would not have a separate vehicle for transporting their children.

They can clearly afford it. Um, I, you know, this, it’s an odd recall in anyways because, you know, technically they’re violating, you know, the law in many ways. .

Anthony: Yeah. I didn’t think you were allowed to have child seats in the front passenger

Michael: seat. You don’t want that. That’s what I say. They’re not violating a law.

They’re violating, you know, the NHTSA’s guidance to move kids into the back seat. Don’t put them in the front seat. But when you do put a child in the front seat, it is, say, supposed to have a weight sensor to determine whether or not a child is in that seat and turned the airbags off to prevent injury to children or to small female passengers and alike.

So that’s not happening here. And so Ferrari is having to recall these 13 vehicles that likely never would’ve had a child seat in the front seat anyway, but maybe

Anthony: so, uh, if you’re one of these 13 Ferrari owners, um, and you know, I’ll see you at the next, uh, meetup. Um, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll show each, we’ll trade our little Ferrari glasses, jackets and whatnot.

Uh, that’s it for, uh, recalls, but well, hey, this week we have listener. listener Tim Palmer asks, how about rodent damage to Toyota wire wiring harnesses Just had almost $16,000 spent on our 2017 Prius Prime advanced. Not only that, it took Toyota nine winter weeks to come up with a needed parts HV battery during which the vehicle sat on the dealer’s lot.

Um, hey Tim, I’m glad you’re a listener to the show. If you go back to, I think it’s episode three, maybe four, uh, we, we go in depth about rats eating your wiring systems. But, uh, do you guys have anything to add on this? Uh, at $16,000 for replace wiring? Sounds excessive to.

Michael: That is really expensive. That’s definitely the highest repair I’ve heard of related to rats.

Um, on any other road on, we’re talking about squirrels, mice. That was a, a rodent episode. There are a lot of different things that can get into your, um, vehicle. A lot of what we talked about episode was whether or not they’re actually targeting the soy based wiring, which there is not good evidence for really one way or the other yet, I think is where we came out on that.

Right. Um, but wouldn’t it be great if you could sue

Anthony: rats? Yeah, but I mean, I, I cuz a, a Prius Prime, I don’t know what a Prius prime advance is, but a Prius itself is not, not much more than $16,000 new is it? I thought they were like in the low 20,000.

Michael: The Prime is probably more closer to 40 or

Anthony: so. Oh. Oh. Is the prime the full, uh, EV version?

Michael: No, I think it’s a, uh, uh, uh, just a. What did they say? A Prius, I’m thinking of the RAV4 Prime. Yeah. No, this is a

Anthony: Prius Prime advanced.

Michael: I’m sure if it’s advanced, it’s going for more than 40,000. Anthony,

Anthony: come on. I, I’ve, I have no idea. No, I’m, you know how much

Michael: advanced

Anthony: costs . I’m gonna, I’m gonna take a quick look.

Uh, let’s see, a 2023. Um, oh, it’s, uh,

Fred: but while you, while you’re looking, I just wanna offer our, our sympathy to the guy. $16,000 is an awful lot to pay for a repair of any kind.

Anthony: Yeah, that’s, that’s what I’m curious about. Yeah. The, the 2022 Prius Prime starts at 28,000. So, I mean, 16 K for wiring. Um,

Michael: yeah, well it sounded like the, the whole, the battery and everything was damaged somehow.

Yeah. I don’t know if there was a short cause by the rats or what, but, um, that is a sig that is a massive repair. Yeah, well, it’s

Fred: probably, probably really difficult to reroute the wires and run the new wires through the frame and Ah-huh , you know, it is probably an i, I, my guess is that the cost of the parts themselves was only a small part of that overall charge to repair it.

Uh, I mean, what a nightmare. Trying to re rerun all those wires through all those frame members and just, just, just bad, just

Anthony: bad. Is this one of these things where you guys suggest, you know, you go into a shady neighborhood, leave all the doors open, leave the keys on the seat, and just walk away?

Fred: I would never

Anthony: suggest that.

No. No, and no, I wouldn’t suggest that. . Um, but hey, Tim, let us know how that goes and, uh, hopefully your insurance company’s not listening to the show. Uh, if anyone else has any listener mail, it’s free to write in. Go ahead, write in a question, a comment, a concern, anything all you want. Uh, and we will, uh, we’ll get to it and we’ll answer it.

And if you want to contribute money, you don’t even have to ask a question, just go to auto safety.org g click on donate now. I think it says Donate now. No, it says donate. Geez. Uh, and become a monthly donor. Five bucks a month. That’s it. 60 bucks a year. Five bucks a month. Come on, do it. ,

Michael: it’s advanced. And send

Fred: us your, send us your names for this orphan podcast.

We, you know, the best, most creative suggestions so far have come from me and I’m just a lunch bucket engineer, so I’m sure there’s better, better opportunities out there. Yeah.

Anthony: And he thinks his ideas are 85% better than everyone else.

Michael: And, and no, we’re not going with Kari Mc car face .

Anthony: There goes, there goes my suggestion.

Uh, 85% true. There we go. All right, thanks, listeners. We’ll be back next week. Thanks

Michael: everybody.

Fred: Bye-bye.