New NHTSA, same as the old NHTSA?

Hey listeners, welcome to all the news about Jeffrey Epstein’s client list. We’re gonna get to the bottom of it. This is a, the wrong show. Sorry.

Fred Perkins’ World Tour

Anthony: Hey, welcome for some more auto safety news and back with us from his world tour. Mr. Fred Perkins, welcome back. Thank

Fred: you. It’s great

Anthony: to be here. He’s he spent a world tour traveling to tobacco company headquarters and Scotch distilleries.

Yes.

Michael: And now he’s searching for lozenges across America.

Anthony: He was in a John Lee Hooker tribute band for a minute too. Muddy

Fred: Waters. I used to smoke [00:01:00] camels ’cause I was a tough guy. Oh wow. Filter, filter list. Filter list, of course.

Anthony: Yeah. Who

Fred: used the

Anthony: filter? You don’t want z

Fred: filter fibers clogging on my lungs.

Anthony: Yeah, he still rips out the cattle outta converter in his car.

Fred: Anyway. It’s only been 50 years since I’ve stopped smoking. You’d think it would’ve cleared up by now, but some things persist.

Anthony: Your doctors lied to you. All right, let’s get into the show.

Senate Committee Hearing on NHTSA Nominee

Anthony: Michael, you sent off this first one, the top of our notes.

It’s something, honestly, I looked at it, my eyes glazed over. This is a press release from the US Senate Committee on Commerce, science and Transportation titled Nominations Hearing for Modal Administration of the Department of Transportation. Oh my God. Even Phil Koopman’s no longer listening to us.

That’s how boring this title is.

Michael: It’s basically just an announcement by the Senate Commerce Committee that they’re going to be holding a hearing that includes the nomination of the MITs administrator, Jonathan Morrison. So they’re gonna be considering that next Wednesday, [00:02:00] the 16th.

And so we’ll get to hear on the record answers from the nominee about, how he plans to go forward with NHTSA. Even though some of their duties, have apparently been. Next from consideration.

Fuel Economy Regulations and NHTSA’s Challenges

Michael: I just I, while we were out the last couple of weeks, the big beautiful bill passed, which while the thing that we were most concerned about in that was the AI preemption provision that was roundly defeated in the Senate by vote of 99 to one and thrown out of the bill.

There were also provisions that effectively destroyed NHTSA’s ability to regulate fuel economy. There all the fuel economy regulations still remain in place. However. If you violate those regulations, you can no longer be assessed a civil penalty, which essentially means there are a lot of regulations with no teeth that manufacturers can routinely [00:03:00] ignore in many respects.

So that’s a problem. That’s gonna be interesting to see how that impacts NSA’s budget and NSA’s personnel going forward. The agency has indicated a lot of its time to fuel economy work during the past 40, 30 years since it, those standards came about and NSA started administering them. A lot of interesting questions.

Automatic Emergency Braking and Tesla Concerns

Michael: Some of the ones we’re more concerned with will be, NSA’s approach to. Automatic emergency breaking, which is still an issue despite the fact that it, the rule was issued well before the new administration took over the industry. And its friends that are being placed inside of NHTSA might be opposed to, and that they could do a lot of damage to that.

We’re also concerned about enforcement activities, or it when Tesla, a Tesla robot Taxii crashes in Austin how tuned in is the agency going to be? Are they going to, if they see a clear safety issue, which I think there are a number of them [00:04:00] that we’ve discussed ad nauseum over the past few years, are they going to be able to jump on it fast enough to prevent more carnage from happening?

Are they really going to evaluate what Tesla’s doing in Austin? And then just, there, there are a number of issues that are going to be presented in front of the committee when they’re considering the nominee. This is a former NHTSA chief Counsel, so he does have some experience within the agency.

But he spent the last few years at Apple, is the chief counsel at NHTSA. Now also comes from Motional, which is an autonomous vehicle group. Are they going to be biased in favor of the industry in those areas? There’s a lot of questions that need to be asked and we’re hoping they actually get asked next Wednesday.

Anthony: NSA’s job is to ask regulations like things we’ve talked about in the past and have a budget to enforce these things when people don’t do what they’re supposed to do. And it seems the Trump administration is saying, Hey, let’s defund this [00:05:00] regulatory agency and let’s put people who are. Praise fealty to the orange man.

Is that what’s gonna happen here? Is this our concern? Am I overblown?

Michael: I think our concern generally is that the industry is going to push back against safety. And you already see it and we will get to this in the notes from the hearing that occurred a couple weeks ago in the house.

But the industry is essentially going to get its way on issues where safety had been winning. Automatic emergency braking is a main one there, but there are literally, dozens of outstanding rulemakings that NHTSA still has to act on as mandated by Congress. And all of those, involve things like alcohol detection, technology technology and cars to protect children from being left in vehicles.

The list goes on and on. And industry doesn’t want to put any of these more expensive technologies into their vehicle ’cause they, like [00:06:00] a, essentially industry wants a playing field that is, that doesn’t change. So the more certainty they have in regulatory environment the better they can continue to build the same thing and keep their costs going lower and lower that it doesn’t upset their apple cart with new safety regulations coming to play.

In fact, they’re already trying to get rid of older safety regulations that have been on the books for a while that, our. Of, at least in their mind, are useless and just force them to spend money testing and certifying to standards that they don’t believe should apply anymore. Industry’s already getting its way.

If you see what happened with fuel economy, if you see some of the hesitancy to regulate some of the pretty clearly unsafe practices in autonomous vehicle development, particularly with Tesla right now industry it’s industry’s time to shine. And NHTSA is essentially instead of being an overseer or a true [00:07:00] regulator, they’re being positioned by Secretary Duffy and probably by the new MIT mitts administrator, nominee to be a cheerleader for industry.

And to relax regulations to, quotes, help the industry beat China to whatever the next goal is, whether it’s autonomous vehicles or electric vehicles. There’s a lot of China talk going on and competitiveness and you a lot about, a lot more about economics from some of the people in power when you talk about vehicle safety these days than you do about actual safety.

Anthony: Let’s get into this hearing you mentioned. There’s an article from CBT News, which is the Auto Industry News Content Coaching Analysis. This is hilarious titled automakers Demand Urgent NHTSA Overhaul. And from the from the article, the industry also urged n NHTSA to repeal automatic emergency braking rules and ease restrictions on deploying au autonomous vehicles without human.

Controls. So basically it looks like a fan of the [00:08:00] show, John Bozella and Mr. Farra, these industry shills. Fair enough. They’re lobbyist, you’re a shill fall lobbyist. They got in there and Hey, look safety like, I don’t know. So I I read into Mr. Farrah’s testimony.

Autonomous Miles and Industry Claims

Anthony: And the thing that got me, which I loved, and this is my gaslight, this is one of my gaslights of the week, is they keep quoting in this saying how autonomous vehicles are the safest things in the world.

And this is a report they put out and they say they’re tight. Their, the name of the report is actually called New Report AV Industry Surges passed 145 million autonomous miles. Which is fascinating. So I read this report and I looked for, where’s the source of this 145 million autonomous miles? And what exactly does that mean as an autonomous mile?

Is that Tesla full self-driving supervised, which is not autonomous? Does that mean there is a safety driver involved? I don’t know. And you know [00:09:00] what the report says? Anyone guess? Come on. Anyone? Anyone? Nope. Fred looks like he’s gonna fall asleep. Asleep.

Michael: Does simulation count?

Anthony: We don’t know.

’cause there’s no source. There’s absolutely no source. And you search for this. Where does this 145 million autonomous miles come from? And it just re returns back to this report that says, Hey, we did this with zero data. Now I figured this would be the easiest thing in the world to do. You call up, like you represent these AV companies and be like, Hey, Waymo, how many miles you got?

And they’ll be like, we have 48 million miles or 50 million miles, however many it has. Call up the next company. How many miles do you got? And they’ll tell you but they can’t even provide a source for their report material. There’s no footnote, there’s no there’s no there. I don’t know what an autonomous mile means in this case or how they acquired that.

Michael: It sounds par for the course. It’s assertions [00:10:00] without any backup. It’s like everything Tesla puts out when it comes to autonomy, they’ve been only recording crashes that involve an airbag deployment, which is I think about 19% of actual crashes.

And then using that, that data as a basis for asserting that their vehicles are more safer than humans when they’re not including 80% of the crashes that they’re involved in. So it’s without. Putting on miles and miles driven without a clear reference to where those miles happened, who, who was in charge of the vehicle.

Is it a truly autonomous vehicle? No one’s in the driver’s seat. And very importantly, no one’s sitting behind a computer monitor with a steering wheel connected to the vehicle and driving it remotely. That’s not autonomous. You really need to know that before you make that type of assertion. And, and I guess we’ll say it again, humans drive 2.9 trillion miles to the United States every year and have a lot of [00:11:00] crashes and deaths, 145 million miles over, the last what to eight, 10 years of operation by these autonomous vehicle companies in very limited environments.

It’s just not the, not a good basis for comparison to anything that humans are doing. And, I think we’ve talked about that a lot and dissected just how much, autonomous miles mean versus human driven miles. And it’s not statistically significant, I guess overall there’s, there, you can’t make the type of claims that a DIA is making based on the data that’s available, specifically the data that’s available to the public.

Fred: So if you were involved in an accident investigation and you came in with the kind of data that these people are putting forward under 45 million miles or, 27 miles, whatever it is, you would just be laughed out of there with prejudice and you would lose whatever credibility you might have once had.

[00:12:00] It’s, there are a lot of sophisticated analyses and need to support any kind of claim like that. Is it, what is a software configuration? Is it a stable configuration? Are you looking at the same thing every time? What is your basic definition of safety, which is lacking? There, there’s just absolutely nothing behind this.

Gaslight of the Week: AV Industry and Safety Regulations

Fred: And I’m gonna jump into my gaslight because this hearing that’s about to take place is a little different for me. This is a preemptive gaslight because, ooh, I think that the things that should be discussed in this hearing are Morrison’s lack of technical credentials and his previous tenure as general counsel at NHTSA, which did not produce any regulations despite congressional direction.

So he seems to be an expert at skating around whatever landmarks con Congress puts in a way. The hearings will likely not address the technical gaps that are [00:13:00] currently under development at nsa. And are probably not going to be developed at all in the next four years. So adoption of a EB is one.

The development and approval of built-in inebriation detection, adoption of adaptive speeded controls. How to address the bullshit surrounding a VC to confidence proclamations and the need for meaningful F-M-V-S-S for both automated driving assistance systems, a s and avs, not just promotion of safety by neglect.

You know what the industry is saying is just get out of the way and let us drive. And anybody that I know of with any technical competence says this is not the way to go. You need to have requirements in place so that you can compare your performance against those requirements. If you send your kid to the store to get an ice cream cone, then they come back with a Tesla and [00:14:00] say you haven’t met the requirements for this particular excursion.

We are hoping for much more in this hearing than a discussion of Tesla’s business prospects in Texas. And please, senators try to expand the hearing that you’re going to have on the nomination of Mr. Morrison to the things that actually matter, to the things that are promoting the ongoing slaughter on America’s highways and things that could prevent that slaughter the trajectory’s in place.

All you need to do is follow that trajectory and let the technical people, and there’s a lot of good technical people involved, let the technical people do their jobs and come up with the solutions that are actually going to address. The deaths of 40,000 some odd people a year in the United States.

Remember, over the last 20 years, [00:15:00] more people have died on the highways and have died in all the wars the United States has been involved in put together. They need to do more than think about the business problems of the AV speculators. End of ran. Thank you.

Anthony: The AV industry. Continuing with my gaslight, the AV industry complain basically says that humans are the problem that accidents happen because of human error, which I love that because.

Okay. All crashes are human error. Like no matter what, it could be the driver behind the wheel. It could be somebody stepping out in front of a car, not seeing it. It could be the person who painted the lines on the road. So that’s a nonsense thing. They’re ignoring the fact that computers will make errors.

They just won’t be human errors. They’ll be computer errors and they’ve already made these things and they’ve already injured people and they’ve killed people, but they’re not human errors. But further down, so the AV Industry Association, they produced, and their report that I referenced looking for that 145 million autonomous miles [00:16:00] nonsense.

You go through it and have, they have all of these people talk about how great AVS are gonna be for blind veterans. That was my favorite one. That was like, oh, double whammy. Blind people end who were veterans, this is great. But to go further down, not the top one, like the sixth testimonials from Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

You’re like, oh. Others, again, strength driving says, Hey, autonomous vehicles hold an exciting promise for preventing death and injuries caused by behavioral factors including impaired driving. But basically saying, Hey, it’d be great if you put in things in place like breathalyzers and a whole bunch of things that have nothing to do with autonomous vehicles.

Instead of wasting money and time on all this bs, there’s all these other things we can get in there that Mothers Against Drunk Driving actually want you to do. So that would be straight up gas

Michael: and they’re right, the nits is already stalling on a congressional requirement that they get alcohol detection devices into vehicles to stop one of the number one killers of Americans on our roads.

So it’s, the technology in [00:17:00] that case is not perfect yet, but it can certainly detect and, prevent drivers that have an, a high alcohol level, maybe not 0.08, but maybe 0.15 and higher, which are the alcohol levels where we really see the majority of crashes take place involving drunk drivers that can be stopped.

Those are already going to be going into vehicles in other countries as well. Once again, the United States is behind here. And the industry’s actions really are only going to serve to keep the United States behind. They talk a big game when it comes to competition. What they really want is competition that enriches the industry versus competition that saves lives.

Anthony: Oh boy. Alright, Michael. Fred and I have done our gaslights

Michael: my gaslight came from the other group that was participating in that hearing a couple weeks ago. Our friends at the Alliance for Automotive Innovation put out testimony that suggested something that I have a bone to pick with.

They say that essentially in a nutshell, they say [00:18:00] that behavioral regulation by law enforcement is something that you should focus. NHTSA needs to make a primary mission of it of its operations. Because behavioral change can be done immediately and doesn’t take 30 years to enter the fleet like technology.

That’s. That’s bullshit. If you look at even the rate of adoption of seat belts, which as we’ve said many times here, the number one lifesaving device in cars and these gold standard for safety essentially in vehicles. In 19, in the early 1980s, I believe only around 14%, somewhere in that area of our population was actually using seat belts.

And it has taken us virtually 40 years to reach levels of 90% adoption of seat belt use. So behavioral change to suggest that behavioral change can be accomplished immediately is absolutely false. I think all of us who have [00:19:00] interacted with our fellow human beings know that behavioral change.

Sometimes it may be impossible and often takes significant efforts and work and, frankly it, it may take people experiencing bad things, like being in a crash without a seatbelt is what’s going to convince someone to wear their seatbelt, not a commercial during National Seatbelt week.

So I take serious issue with the idea that and frankly, NHTSA has already been funding law enforcement and these behavioral change efforts for many years now in the areas of distracted driving, which has not helped at all with the overall numbers from what we can tell. That’s a, that’s an area where it’s.

We’ve had people riding around using cell phones for 20 plus years, and the numbers on distracted driving are not going down. They’re going up. And so it’s, I think it’s a fool’s errand to think that law enforcement or behavioral change, or these, [00:20:00] various, awareness campaigns that NHTSA spends a lot of money on every year to push through the radio and television to Americans.

I don’t see those working nearly as well as, for instance, a vehicle that turns off the driver’s phone. When they’re operating or, they’re, that may be a little draconian, but when the vehicle itself can take a drunk driver out of the equation versus relying on that drunk driver to learn over time that drunk driving is wrong and change their behavior, I think most of us understand that the technological change is going to be the most effective.

And for that, I’m gonna give Mr. B my gaslight of the week.

Fred: Thank you. I’m gonna back that up. With a couple of recent studies, there was a study that was performed by the New York Times that said only 50% of murderers are actually cleared. So 50% of the time, murderers get away with it. Now it’s my [00:21:00] understanding of the law that murder is illegal is, can you confirm that, Michael?

Yes, I can confirm that. So you think there’s evidence based on that. Illegality of something is only loosely related to whether or not that illegal activity will occur. There’s three factors that need to be addressed in any kind of behavioral regulation by a law enforcement, right?

So the regulation efficacy is directly related to the probability of enforcement. So is Illa advocating for a police state where every infraction is in fact detected? And people are arrested for that? Not in my wishlist, but maybe in his. The second is efficacy is related to the certainty of adverse consequences from enforcement actions.

So every state that I know of has got laws against crosswalk, intrusion by cars. Anthony, you live in New York City. Have you ever [00:22:00] witnessed a car intruding on a crosswalk with people in it? Yes. It’s the only way to travel. So the illegality of that is unrelated to the action occurring because nobody ever enforces the damn law, right?

Yeah.

Michael: The only time you see that enforce is when it’s a subtext for pulling a car over that they want to investigate for another reason.

Anthony: Yeah. Yeah. The New York police tried in the late nineties for a weekend to enforce jaywalking as a ticketed crime, but that was just hilarious. It’s

Fred: well and the other, yeah, public safety consideration is that the efficacy for public safety is related to the direction of the consequences to the party of the cause, the infraction.

So if you have a systemic design or design feature that is encouraging illegal or unsafe actions, the only way to correct that is to go back to the source. That built the damn car and say you gotta fix this. So [00:23:00] Zel is not addressing any of those things. And so I am vigorously reinforcing Michael with your gaslight this week.

Thank you.

Anthony: Wow. I don’t, I feel like you guys had a secret cabal meeting and you teamed up and you’re like, Hey, if we work together, maybe we’ll get the points this week.

Michael: Oh, so you’re being left out. I,

Anthony: This is my phone. There’s a secret, there’s a meeting before the meeting.

I see how it is guys. I get it. Fine. You both win this week. You happy? Fine. I’m happy ’cause I never win. You’re softening up Anthony. You did one. It’s 900 degrees right now, so I’m just melting. Not really softening. Speaking of driving through intersections and crosswalks, so actually in Manhattan you have to do this.

Cars have to intrude in crosswalks ’cause times. In the past, the congestion is so intense. That’s the only way to navigate. You’re not doing it to hit pedestrians. Pedestrians aren’t getting mad at you. Maybe a little bit, but that’s how you have to keep traffic flowing. Good luck, autonomous vehicles in Manhattan.

Congestion Pricing in New York City

Anthony: But [00:24:00] related to that, I didn’t send you guys this article because I had my own private meeting in the guardian. They have a article titled New York City’s Congestion Pricing has Cut Pollution and Traffic, but Trump still wants to kill it. And this is just an update on New York City’s congestion pricing and how great it’s doing.

And just from the article quoting, carbon pollution meanwhile has dropped about 2.5% with air pollution, such as soot that can vary deep in people’s lungs also down, despite faster traffic, fewer people are being directly hurt by car accidents too. The experiment has been a reminder that cities aren’t intrinsically noisy, even if cars are one of his favorite.

One of the person’s favorite stats is that noise complaints along Canal Street, a key artery in lower Manhattan have been reduced by 70%. Look at this charge people nine bucks, they say, oh, we’ll take the subway or the bus or walk and life is better for everybody. How amazing is that?

Michael: Have you noticed anything, specifically?

It’s a part of the, I [00:25:00] don’t

Anthony: really travel to, but when I do go down there yeah. Traffic is, there’s less honking, there’s less it is definitely less chaotic. I had to go down and meet friends the other day and I realized, I was like, wow, this is, this walk feels safe.

I was walking in the middle of Fifth Avenue, but I was like, woo and no. But yeah it’s definitely, it’s completely noticeable.

Michael: Yeah, and I’m not even sure what, I’m sure there’s some bullshit political reason why the Trump administration is, a opposing congestion pricing, even though it’s working.

I’m not sure what it

Anthony: is. ’cause a Democrat pushed it. If,

Michael: When you see Secretary Duffy saying that the charge is unfair to drivers and is classist against the working poor, it makes you wonder just how, that doesn’t sound like a very a party line thing to be tdy.

Anthony: Yeah.

It’s funny, the governor of New Jersey has been against this thing. Oh, this is gonna hurt my, my, my constituents in New Jersey. This is ridiculous. Now he’s softened his tone. ’cause everybody seems to like it. He’s look, you just it’s still a little [00:26:00] unfair me. We get a little piece of the action here.

You guys. Send us some of the revenue and we’ll be okay. Real gangster level shit here. Alright. But so

Michael: far, it’s working and the people who were bitching about it their complaints really aren’t panning out the way that, that they thought they would. So they’re people, it looks great, right?

Anthony: Yeah. The people complaining of the people who complain about everything, they don’t live in the area. They have nothing to do with it. They’re sitting in the villages in Florida complaining about why it’s too damn humid.

Yeah.

Fred: If they’re really concerned about it, they would complain about the $20 fee on the George Washington Bridge.

Anthony: God dammit. You’re right. That’s a, that’s classist, that’s ridiculous. But that’s a New Jersey. ’cause it’s free to take the bridges and tunnels into New Jersey. But if you wanna leave, everyone wants to leave, they’re going to reach into your pocket.

Fred: That’s right. There’s always a price to be paid to get to New York.

Anthony: We’ll never reach into your pocket. Just go to auto safety.org and click on donate and you can reach into your own pocket if you like Things like this and other things [00:27:00] coming up.

Distracted Driving and Touchscreen Dangers

Anthony: We talked about how distracted driving and distracted driving bad. We’ve all driven down the road and you’ve seen the lunatic in the car next to you texting and it’s upsetting.

But cars have been designed this way. And this is an article from Cars and horsepower.com. No articles about horses at all. No articles about equine steroid abuse, nothing. This article is titled Why Your Car’s Touchscreen is More Dangerous than Your Phone because My car’s touchscreen’s moving at 60 miles per hour in a school zone.

Quoting from this article, studies now show touchscreen vehicles require up to four times longer to perform basic functions than their button equipped counterparts creating a distracted driving crisis that automakers refuse to acknowledge. I don’t know if they’ve refused to acknowledge it. ’cause it seems like a lot more car companies are realizing that consumers are asking for buttons to come back in.

It looks like they’re all slowly adding [00:28:00] buttons back in.

Michael: Yeah, I think they’re mostly, saying that we’re going back to buttons because our people don’t want to buy our cars that are loaded with all these non button applications. Not that there’s a safety issue there.

Anthony: Oh, I get it. So they’re doing what people want, but they’re not gonna accept any sort of liability.

Michael: Yeah, and they’re not gonna say, oh, we’re going back to buttons because, we’re finding that our touch screens are distracting drivers and killing them. I don’t think that’s a good way to advertise.

Anthony: But I think big thanks to former guests of the show, Jennifer Gitlin, because his articles, he talks about, Hey, thank God this car has put buttons back in.

I see that in a lot of his reviews of automobiles, which is nice.

Michael: Yeah. And that was a study, I think this was a, the study referenced here was a Swedish study where they basically took a dozen cars or so with touch screens and all the new types of ways to change your radio station or your air conditioning and measuring [00:29:00] the time it took between for someone with a, like a button based system to, to.

To complete those kind of tasks versus how much time it took when you had an infotainment system where you might have to scroll through a menu or something else to complete the task and found that, these touchscreen systems really are complicating the driver’s task while they’re also supposed to be focused on the road and driving.

And also taking their eyes away from the road where they should be. And, that’s a problem and it’s gonna have to be addressed. And, NHTSA has been looking at, in-car based distractions for 15 years now, I believe. And put out some guidelines around that. But there has never been a concerted effort.

And I, it’s gonna be really hard to get a conservative effort to do this under the current administration, but a concerted effort to make sure that the cars we’re building aren’t. Distracting [00:30:00] drivers, within the vehicle. We often think, oh, that guy was distracted by a phone, by a cheeseburger, by, a pretty lady walking down the street by all these other things.

But the car itself as a means of distraction is something that just shouldn’t happen. And it’s something that I think there need to be actual regulations on, not just these guidelines that NHTSA has promoted around distraction.

Anthony: So let me get this straight. So NHTSA, the regulators there, the people who do the day-to-day work at NHTSA, I think we can all agree, are good, hardworking people.

They’ve seen that distracted driving is an issue. And now it looks like the new head of NHTSA is gonna be a guy who worked at Apple. How’s that gonna work out? Death comes to the highway.

Michael: Who knows? There just, there has not been much done. I think the MTSB, even just a week or two ago when they were looking at [00:31:00] a really bad crash involving a heavy truck, I.

Told dsa, we’ve told you this before, I think maybe five years ago, we’ve told you this before, but you need to mandate some type of technology that turns off the cell phone for drivers when they’re in the midst of the driving task. That’s something we petition NSA for. God, probably 20 years ago, it was quite some time ago.

And we submitted a petition that was denied that, that was basically requesting the same thing. So there’s clearly a need for that. There are some technical issues there, right? How do you turn off the driver’s phone or without doing it to the passengers?

Regulatory Challenges in Vehicle Safety

Michael: That’s a really tough thing to navigate and also allows for people to exploit the system.

There’s some there, there are a lot of issues there, but it’s something that the agencies should be working on and should be working on in a way that leads to actual regulations that are going to save lives and not guidelines that manufacturers can ignore. And [00:32:00] part of the problem there also is that NSA could do a much better job on the touch screen and infotainment type distractors because they’re part of the vehicle.

NHTSA can’t do a whole lot, NHTSA can’t tell Apple how to design its phones or Android or Google or whoever else is whoever Samsung, whoever else is making phones, they don’t have that authority. So they can really only tell the car manufacturers what to do. And so that poses a jurisdictional issue for the agency when they’re trying to attack this problem.

Tesla’s Controversial Robo Taxi

Anthony: So this article points out that the touchless, the buttonless problem really started with Tesla and listeners I’m getting tired of doing this, but we have to talk about Tesla. So last couple episodes we did a deep dive with Phil Copeman, very great stuff. But during that period, Tesla released their world famous stupid taxi, robo Taxii.

And we’ve all seen videos by now of it doing [00:33:00] 35 in a 30 mile per hour zone, fail of driving onto the wrong side of the road of dropping people off. It. It’s a non thing. It’s not a real, it’s light years behind the competition. It’s a bad idea. But we’re gonna get into some of this.

Ford’s Autonomous Vehicle Strategy

Anthony: And one, we’ll start with future guest of the show C of Ford Jim Farley.

He talked about how he was in talks with Google to maybe license their full self-driving technology, and then he said, no, he can considers LIDAR to be an important part of the picture for autonomous vehicles, noting that where the camera will be completely blinded, the lidar system will see exactly what’s in front of you.

So that’s one less possible customer for the neo-Nazi full self-driving autonomous vehicle. Nazi company. Oh God. Yeah. Look, you can never have too many Nazis when you’re talking about Elon Musk.

Michael: Look, Jim Farley sounds like us on [00:34:00] that.

Tesla’s Autonomous Claims Under Scrutiny

Michael: That’s something that, here’s what I’m interested in right now on the road in Austin, are these robo, there’s a couple of things that are interesting here, but are is the Tesla robot taxi in Austin operating at night in thunderstorms, in high glare environments?

Or is it just operating in the middle of the day when there’s nothing, when there’s good weather because we know that the camera systems are going, they’re going to fail, and you’re going to have that guy sitting behind the steering wheel back in the remote operations office watching the video and controlling the vehicle in those conditions.

So how, there’s a huge question here as to whether these vehicles are actually operating autonomously, given that, they’ve got a fleet of. People in front of monitors with steering wheels back at headquarters who are able to control their every move, right? That’s something we’ve seen from Tesla in the [00:35:00] past.

It looks like that’s the basis for this Robo Taxii rollout is that they’re just going to have these vehicles operated remotely and say, the computer’s doing it. None of us will ever be able to know, because none of us will ever be able to get the information required to make that assertion one way or the other because Tesla’s very good at operating in the shadows.

So it, it’s a huge question here though of whether I. Whether that’s possible. Farley noted, and Farley has done a pretty good job of speaking up on Tesla where other American manufacturers and other technology companies haven’t. So I think he’s completely right, like there.

And it’s not just lidar. There are a number of other ways that Tesla could probably help solve these issues. I think that infrared cameras, other types of sensors could help them get around some of these problems that they have with this just camera only operation. But to have it pointed out by the CEO of one of the largest manufacturers in [00:36:00] America, it probably stings a little.

Anthony: That’s right. Ford PR department, you heard it, Michael Brooks said your CEO is a hundred percent right. You’ve got his contact information. Reach out, join the show Fred. Red is muted, but he’s

Fred: very thoughtful. His hand is on his chin. Too many damn buttons. So there’s only one, one problem that Tesla’s trying to solve right now, which is they’re collapsing sales.

And they’re, they’ve gotta be completely focused on that because things aren’t looking good for them from a business perspective. But another thing to wonder about is whether or not Tesla’s declaration that full self-driving is now autonomous contributed to the surge in self-driving or autonomous miles that Bozel was talking about earlier on.

Yeah. We don’t know because Tesla like claims

Anthony: a billion miles. Tesla goes even further and they’re not part of this group, surprisingly.

Fred: We just don’t know. But Tesla might be included in it. They’re, the A VIA is really [00:37:00] scratching for validation and, I think Tesla involved in that.

I’m just not sure or not, I don’t, they’re not, I don’t

Michael: think Tesla issues kind of those type of affiliations, from what I can tell. I don’t believe they’re members of the Alliance or of the A VIA, but I could be wrong. I’m pretty sure though, that they’re not using Tesla’s numbers in their autonomous calculation about 145 million miles, simply because Tesla has reported, very inflated numbers.

That wouldn’t, millions. That wouldn’t, yeah. They’ve, like Anthony said, they’ve reported billions of miles. Of course all those were with human supervision, so they don’t really count.

Fred: No. And also noted that their AV operation in Austin is also one-to-one with safety drivers, or at least people in the passengers and the passenger position in the front seat who can take over an emergency.

So there’s the autonomous [00:38:00] vehicles in Austin. That are operated by Tesla are in fact not op, not autonomous vehicles at all.

Anthony: They’re arguably two to one because you’ve got the person, the safety person in the physical car, and then you’ve got somebody, at least one person in a control center remotely controlling the car,

Fred: right?

So this is just, another example of the persistent and ubiquitous bullshit that is behind the claims of AV safety.

German Road Safety Insights

Anthony: We could spend the next three months going into more and more Tesla stories, but, our friend of the show, Mr. Perkins, he was overseas and maybe you can relate to us how safety worked in ano in the old world.

Fred: I’ll be happy to do that. I was happily in Germany for a couple of weeks in the Mo Valley, and if you’ve never been there, and most of us have not been there, of course it’s a.

Serpentine Valley [00:39:00] that runs for maybe 150 miles between tri Air and Koopmans in Germany. These are all just words that meant nothing to me till I went there. But I was biking there with my brother and made a lot of observations about the driving. Now this has had nothing to do with the auto bond.

No auto bonds there. Okay. But what I observed is that drivers stopped for pedestrians and crosswalks, even the big trucks with nasty looking drivers in them. There’s an extensive network of paved paths for bikers and other vulnerable road users that essentially goes everywhere. It goes all the way along the valley, and it’s really a nirvana for bikers.

It’s because, number one, it’s an absolutely beautiful spot. Interesting. There’s very few mosquitoes and we wondered about that until we saw the helicopters consistently spraying all the vineyards that [00:40:00] line both sides of the valley. So it may not be the safest place in the world for your progeny, but that’s a different matter.

But we did see that extensive network of paved paths, and we found that when they retire a rail line and the rails go basically everywhere, they turn ’em into a paved pedestrian path. So it’s it’s really neat, really very nice. But that doesn’t extend everywhere. So there are areas where the bike path butts the highway.

Whenever that happens, there’s a physical barrier between the the automobile portion and the bike portion of that. Of that passageway. They’re also using different composition for the bike path and the roadway so that people can tell visually very easily. In addition to the physical s in addition to the barriers where the cars are supposed to be and where the bikes are [00:41:00] supposed to be they have relatively low highway speed limits of the order of 50 kilometers per hour, which is 30, 30 to 40 miles per hour connecting the cities.

They have some things that, some features there that would be really difficult to replicate in the United States. For example, the settlement patterns in the Valley are that there are basically small towns or bigger towns, every 10 or 20 miles. And we don’t have the vast expanses of space there that we’ve got here.

So maybe that’s part of the reason why there are. So well connected by buses and trains. People there don’t pay attention to the schedules of buses and trains because they come so often and they’re so ubiquitous that you don’t need them. You know that the trains gonna come every hour that connects you to the bigger cities.

You know that the buses are gonna come every half hour. They’re connected [00:42:00] to the little town and to the shopping center that they put way up on top of the hill so that nobody could see it from the Ello Valley. That was an interesting thing. Protect the preserving the view scape.

Anthony: So I gotta ask real quick, Fred, so you said the bike path is next to the highway, but there’s a physical barrier in between them.

Yeah. Okay. So there’s a physical barrier protecting cyclists and pedestrians, and they also have free healthcare. Talk about belts and suspenders. That’s,

Fred: one of the dangerous term. Customs that our senators protecting us from. I guess this might also come up in the hearing next week, but yeah it’s, they seem to have no shortage of money for that and taxes.

I’m not sure what the tax base is that supports that, but but it works and people love it. And because they’ve got all of this readily available, public transportation, they don’t need to buy these giant cars and trucks and, be ready for any contingency if the [00:43:00] sky should fall and, have to rely on themselves.

They rely on the public transportation. Very few SUVs, very few pickup trucks over there. And the ones that we did see were all small and associated with people who actually need them, rather than people who just kinda liked big things to drive around when, even when you saw at Tesla, they seemed extraordinarily big compared to the other cars that were around there.

I only saw one Ford pickup truck in the two weeks I was there. And it, boy, they really looked outta place.

Anthony: But come on. Let’s be fair. It’s not like the auto industry is any part of the German economy.

Fred: Alright. German Germany doesn’t know anything about building cars, does it? Oh, cars

Anthony: are minute, like it’s a rounding error.

Wow.

Fred: The thing is that they protect the public and they make it possible for the public to not have to rely on their own prior automobiles. And they make sure that the public has, [00:44:00] public safety, has priority and everything that they’re building, at least in the Moel Valley. It’s also very cool because you got castles there that protected people against medieval invaders.

I’m not sure why they’re still there, but yeah, very nice place. And some of the wines are very good too. Oh. That was my trip. It’s it’s possible in a civilized industrial country to both develop the automotive industry and promote public safety at the same time. The accident statistics and collision statistics and fatality statistics for Germany are much better and much more benign than the United States.

It’s not zero, but they’re working towards zero. And their public investment goes towards that, both in terms of their settlement patterns, their public transportation, and the regulations that they put into the cars. They have type certificates, for example, to [00:45:00] make sure that the cars are safe before they go on the road, or that the cars conform to safety standards before they go on the road.

That’s my summary. I hope everybody gets a chance to go there. It’s really well worth the trip.

Anthony: Alright. This segment of the show brought to you by Germany, come visit us. No, go to auto safety.org and click on donate and click subscribe and give us five stars and all that stuff. Hey, before we go

Fred: there were, yeah, there were, by the way, no Piggly Wigglys at all in the Mosa Valley.

Anthony: ’cause they’re called a tragic defect something. I got nothing. Schnitzel Shakers. Oh, that’s bad Crowd House. Look again, it’s the Crowd House. Crowd House was a style of music that was really popular in 1978 though. Crowd House. Really? No. No, not really. That’s wrong with God. You get a guy fix his microphone and he falls for anything.

Waymo’s Legal Troubles

Anthony: Ah, before we go into recalls, let’s let’s hit on some Waymo News. [00:46:00] This is from Silicon valley.com. Oh yeah. Titled San Francisco Bicyclist Sues Over Crash involving two Waymo cars. Quoting from the article, the passenger of the first Waymo car. Oh, God. Wait. So what happened is, I gotta back up. A cyclist that was in their, the bike lane.

A Waymo car pulled into the curb adjacent to the bike lane. Passenger got out without warning. Open the rear door right into the cyclist path. Cyclist attempted take, Eva asked

let’s try that again. The cyclist attempted to take evasive action and a second Waymo car also attempting to pull the curve crossed into the bike landing. Basically cutting off the cyclist’s ability to be safe. The bike hit the first car’s open door, ejecting the cyclist, and she was thrown into the passenger side of the second car.

Yeah. She unfortunately suffered serious injuries and was taken to a hospital, and this is the part that I just take away from the passengers of the first Waymo car. Left the scene without providing aid. Get in a Waymo, you’re a [00:47:00] dick. Like that should we ride at a Waymo’s ’cause we don’t wanna deal with humans.

They’re bad. And that cyclist drove into us continuing the complainant notes that the Waymo says its cars have a safe exit feature, which is supposed to notify disembarking passengers when cyclists or pedestrians are near the car. That system, it says, apparently failed to function as intended Waymo, go fuck yourself.

Wow. That’s my motto. Yeah. That’s just that nonsense of, oh, I guess it failed, is intended. And these people, like you’re paying for the privilege to not have to deal with a human. And then of course, when you injure a human accidentally or not, your response is baff Felicia. Like it’s,

Fred: It would be really interesting to know whether or not the safety support for Waymo was aware that a collision had happened and the people then drove away.

What was the role of the remote supervision in this? Because for [00:48:00] some reason, the first Waymo that, or they opened the door Otto, was okay to drive away. But it seems that something should have alerted the safety backup people wherever they are. And did somebody there tell the car to drive away?

Anthony: I don’t know if the car drove away. It’s the people, the passengers that got out of the Waymo that caused walked off the accident. They walked away. Yeah. I don’t know what happened to the Waymo. We don’t know if the Waymo was alerted that hey accident occurred. But

Fred: this points risk and hazard actually we’ve talked about this before.

The hazard was that somebody was going to get injured if the Waymo, by the way, why did it get into the bike lane in the first place? But that’s a separate issue, but the hazard was that it would open the door and somebody would get hurt, but the risk analysis said that’s really unlikely to happen, so we don’t need to put this in.

So the risk was very low, but the hazard was [00:49:00] very high. And the question is, why was the company allowed to convince themselves that the risk was low enough so it could be ignored, versus the government acknowledgement of the hazard that said you really need to accommodate this. So there really needs to be a set of hazards and minimum standards that AVS have to conform to rather than letting the companies determine what the risk is, because they can always just say the probability is really low.

This will happen. And in fact in, in, in San Francisco, this is probably the first time that it happened despite however many autonomous miles there are. But that was a digression. I let you get back to the

Michael: mainstream here. Yeah, one of the, one of the most interesting things about this situation to me is that there are dooring laws, and I believe around 40 states, which, place some amount of responsibility on the person opening the door into [00:50:00] traffic without checking on whether there’s a bicyclist or other type of pedestrian or other vehicle.

Who’s moving down the street before they exit the vehicle. Here, these, the folks in the Waymo walked away and it appears that the person who was injured is contemplating or has filed a lawsuit against Waymo, yet I. Under California law, the law says that no person shall open the door of a vehicle on the side available to moving traffic unless it’s reasonably safe to do it places the burden on the passenger or the person opening the door. Maybe this is another example where, laws haven’t caught up to autonomy. Where in this case, we might want to blame the Waymo, but the and it and it’s a, it’s, this is a quandary here. It’s a problem here because we’re seeing a lot of these al autonomous vehicles that have very limited ability for passengers in the vehicle to see outside of the vehicle.

We’re seeing [00:51:00] applications for vehicles that have no mirrors, applications for vehicles that have. A different type of window system than you would expect in a car where passengers may not be able to see behind the vehicle when they’re exiting the vehicle. And so in that case, is it fair to put the burden of legal responsibility on a passenger that has no real way to actually evaluate the traffic behind the vehicle?

That’s an issue and that’s an issue here. The folks who just left that person lying on the road, technically the one who opened the door under California law is responsible. And that may be a defense that Waymo uses in this lawsuit. So there’s a, that’s a, that’s probably the most interesting issue that’s come out of this.

And of course we hope that the bicyclist is doing better.

Fred: This is why we need to have a computer driver designated as the. Fic fictive entity that is operating the vehicle. We’ve had bill and Bill [00:52:00] on before to talk about the need for this legal fiction of the computer driver. And this computer driver should be responsible for that opening door and door the biker because that’s who did it.

Anthony: Anyway let’s jump into recalls. How’s that sound? That sounds great. Okay.

Ford and Nissan Recalls

Anthony: We’re gonna start off with a company here, and I don’t want you to get this wrong, Jim Farley, but we’re starting off with Ford 200,061 vehicles, the 2020 to 2023 Ford Transit, 2018 to 2022 Ford Transit Connect. Oh, the, and then 2020, it’s a lot.

24. Yeah. The Explorer, the Aviator, the navigator, the Expedition, the Nautilus. It goes a Mustang. Even Maverick. Every car Ford has ever thought of making it seems the Corsair’s still a car. Wow. Bronco Sport, Ford Edge. I’m on page 912. The Ford Fusion. Oh. Rear. Ah, come on. Really? Why do you gotta do this to [00:53:00] me?

Why a rear view camera that intermittently displays a blank image while in reverse can reduce the driver’s view of what is behind the vehicle. Boo. Come on, Jim Farley, explain yourself. Come on the show. We’ll have fun.

Michael: This one’s a yet another connection between the infotainment system and a safety system in the rear view camera.

Rear view cameras. We are continuing to highlight them on the show because as of now, I believe I looked at the recall numbers for the year the other day. And I think there were 36 or 37 rear view cameras recalls out of around 450 recalls that were documented by the agency in 2025.

So we’re looking at rear view camera recalls representing, somewhat over 5% and less than 10% of all recalls. So that’s a problem. When you see one component and a lot of manufacturers failing at it. And it’s a component that should be relatively simple in [00:54:00] modern technological terms. A camera on the back of the car that shows the driver what’s back there when they’re in reverse.

It’s, it doesn’t seem to be some overwhelmingly, over technical requirement for manufacturers to do this and drivers love it. I certainly love my rear view camera. I use it all the time. The next car I have, I want a 360 degree camera to look around the vehicle, but it just, it’s very concerning that manufacturers and Ford in particular seems to be having a lot of problems getting this system to work correctly.

And more often than not, we see some type of interference coming from an infotainment system, and we continue to wonder why. Yes, they both have to work through one monitor in many respects, but there should be some type of divide there that prevents all this infotainment software from screwing up the safety system.

So that one is going to be fixed, it appears [00:55:00] in the next month or so. It looks like dealers and owners. We’ll be getting notification sometime in this month maybe before August 1st. If you’re an owner, you’ll see a notification and the remedy will be available for you. I imagine it’s gonna be a software remedy.

Anthony: Jim Farley, come on the show. Tell us why rear view cameras are the bane of my existence. No, the bane of your existence too. This is embarrassing. Moving on Nissan 443,899 vehicles, which is a lot for Nissan Cheese. 2019 to 2022 Infinity QX 50, the 2021 to 2024 Nissan Rouge. Then 2019 to 2020 Nissan Altima.

Yeah, I’m having fun. 2022 Infinity QX 55. The worst names ever. Bearing failures, uhoh are not typical, typically instantaneous and tend to progress over time. Uhoh allowing so the bearings will fail.

Michael: [00:56:00] Basically this is an, this kind of reminds me of what we saw happening with the Hyundai ikea’s a few years back.

But still happening unfortunately to some owners of those vehicles. But it’s a bearing failure and the engine fails. In the case of Hyundai, there was a fire risk. It doesn’t seem to be a fire risk here, just an engine failure issue, but it’s the loss of motive power or the stalling in the middle of the highway that subjects owners to an elevated risk here.

So it looks like they’re gonna have to, I think they’re going to, they

Anthony: have to go in and

Michael: they’ll walk. Yeah, they gotta go into the engine here. They’re gonna do a test first to test for the presence of metal debris in the engine oil pan. What it says

Anthony: is specific metal debris. I imagine, Fred, if there’s any metal in your oil, that’s not good, right?

Fred: Metal fragments in the oil. Yeah, that’s generally bad. There, there will be some, inevitably when you just start the car up because the in [00:57:00] nearly miles because their cylinder walls are honed, which, okay, so I’m getting into the weeds here. But there’ll be some microscopic metal particles from time to time that are part of normal operation, but any massive particles or big particles are bad news.

Anthony: Okay. So this isn’t too crazy then. And then listeners, this is, it looks like it’s restricted to the turbo versions of their engines. Anything else you wanted to add, Michael?

Michael: Not on that one, other than no, nothing on that one.

Anthony: All right.

Honda and GM Recalls

Anthony: Let’s move on to Honda 65,115 vehicles, the 2013 Honda Accord. Oh, that’s just an old one.

Due to the application of assembly lubricant that accelerated in the deterioration of the drive shaft’s, protective coating de-icing agents used maintain to maintain the roadway in salt belt, states can accumulate and corrode the drive shaft. Oh, so basically if you’re driving this north of the Mason Dickson line in winter this could be a problem of [00:58:00] corrosion.

Michael: Yeah. And this is a, this is a regional or geographic recall. I’m not sure how this was an issue that we dealt with many years ago. Not really in our favor, but there’s a problem with cars and it’s that they move. If you have bought a vehicle and you live in Florida now, and that vehicle spent the first 10 years of its life in upstate New York and was subjected to all this ice, then you take it to a dealer in Florida and they’re gonna say whoa, you’re not currently registered in New York.

You don’t get this recall. It’s a huge problem that we have pointed out for years. I don’t know why NHTSA continues to agree to these types of recalls. They do it at the behest of manufacturers who are basically standing back there crossing their arms and saying, we’re not gonna recall these vehicles in all states in America.

That’ll cost us too much. We’re only gonna recall it in salt belt states. Salt belt states, are typically broader than the list, that NHTSA [00:59:00] provides. We get snow and salt on the roads and almost every state other than maybe Hawaii in the union at some point. And so there’s going to be some type of salt, corrosion in the environment going on, no matter what state you’re in.

Maybe they’re seeing much higher numbers in those states, but. There’s a safety defect here, and it can happen outside of salt belt states. It can certainly happen to vehicles that lived in salt belt states for a period and then moved out of the salt belt state to another state. And we think that recalls like this should be applied nationally.

And you should be inspecting vehicles for corrosion in Florida, just like you’re inspecting them in New York. So that’s the big reason I included this recall this week is so I could talk about that briefly because regional recalls, geographic recalls, whatever you want to call them are a problem.

We also see, heat belt recalls where, the excessive heat contributes to defects. Manufacturers tried [01:00:00] really hard in the first round of Tata recalls to. Because there were so many vehicles with TODA airbags, they wanted to reduce their exposure to those repairs and the money it would cost to do those repairs.

And so they tried to restrict the first few TODA recalls to, like Puerto Rico, Florida, Hawaii, these incredibly hot, humid states. And they were ultimately successful in getting nitzer to agree with that until people started being killed by ADA airbags in states that weren’t in those areas. So it’s a very sneaky way of manufacturers trying to limit their recall exposure and frankly not providing safety for all their customers.

And I just wanted to call Honda out on that for this one because it’s a practice that we disagree with strongly boo.

Anthony: Remember folks, if cars didn’t move, they’d be much safer. Alright, last recall, general Motors 40,233 vehicles. The [01:01:00] 2025 Chevrolet Blazer, ev 2024 Chevrolet Blazer. Ev why would you need a car blazer?

I just think it’s a sports jacket. It seems silly. They’ve decided that they need a redesigned electrical harness. Is that what’s going on here? They’ve there’s a defect that relates to motor vehicles.

Michael: It’s a parking brake issue,

Anthony: right? Oh, it’s a parking brake issue. So there’s

Michael: damage to parking brake wires that, where did it happen?

It happened at the area where the sharpest bend in the harness was, where the wires are subject to flexing. I think any one of us who’s ever. Bent a coat hanger until it breaks. Could have told you that would happen. There had wires severed or insulation worn away that makes them susceptible to corrosion.

So they found a lot of complaints on this and decided to conduct a recall so that these folks have working parking breaks, which as we all know, are definitely something you need if you ever park anywhere other than the Mississippi Delta.

Anthony: Because what, you just drive it right into the Mississippi. [01:02:00] It’s parking mud.

Michael: It’s flat. It’s flat. Oh my. It’s flat. And there are mosquitoes there that will carry you away.

Anthony: Oh, gross.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Anthony: Hey, with that, folks that’s the end of our show. Quick note on the F1 movie. It’s a lot of fun. The story is stupid, but the driving scenes are entertained. Until next week, bye-bye.

Michael: Bye everybody.

Anthony: Bye-bye.

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