Self driving trucks, Tesla’s and trains and let’s end arbitration

Introduction to the Center for Auto Safety Podcast

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

Hey, listeners, welcome. Good to have you back. You look great. You’ve been hitting the gym. It is today. Yeah. Thanks. I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to our listeners. Damn it. Yeah. Anyway, it’s a September 17th, 2025.

Self-Driving Trucks in Texas: Regulatory Challenges

Anthony: Another day to talk about self-driving trucks. Wait, what? Huh? Weird translation transition.

We’re gonna start off on the piece in the Dallas Morning News called driverless semis are taking over Texas roads, but regulation struggle to keep pace. The funniest title I think I’ve ever come across and I’m gonna quote from this article ’cause it’s [00:01:00] fascinating. Quoting the absence of standardized incident reporting systems also makes it difficult to track crashes or assess safety on a statewide scale.

That’s an, according to analysis from Texas a and m Transportation Institute. Response plans will serve as a guide to law enforcement, to the general operations of AVS being operated by these companies, including how they respond to mechanical malfunctions, crashes, traffic stops, and other interactions with law enforcements and other first responders.

That’s what the Department of Public Safety of Texas has said. So all of these autonomous trucking companies love Texas. ’cause Texas goes, Yee ha laws are dumb. And now the regular, the lawmakers like. Oh I drive on these roads. Maybe we what did I vote for? I took their lobbying dollars, but so is this so now they’re gonna scramble the last minute and try and put in some sort of regulations, [00:02:00] or at least some standards?

Michael: Yeah. This is a, this was the bill that, took effect on September 1st. I don’t think the rules are officially released yet by the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Department of Motor Vehicles there. But essentially what it requires is that the AV operator submit safety response plans to law enforcement across the state.

It’s one small step towards safety, at least as a, when it comes to the law enforcement interaction with these vehicles. There’s a we. Discussed many times, all the different little things that law enforcement has to consider when, approaching ticketing, pulling over dealing with crashes involving autonomous vehicles.

And these are basically this law basically required the companies to submit some type of guidance to law enforcement on a lot of those, on, how the AVS work just to give law enforcement a heads up in, in case there are problems, or I should say when there are problems, as our experience has led us to believe.

Safety Concerns with Autonomous Trucks

Fred: [00:03:00] One of the common things that happens to trucks on the highway is a police will pull them over and they will check on the functionality of the control system by talking to the driver. If the driver’s drunk, then their control systems are out of kilter. One of the problems with these semis, and it’s not addressed by the Texas legislation.

There is no way for a state police trooper or anybody else to check the functionality of the safety critical features that are inside the computer and all of those safety critical activities that human beings do, watching, listening, feeling, interpreting, right? Those are all embodied in a computer, in a self-driving truck.

The police are pretty good at figuring out whether or not the driver is incapacitated for any reason, right? And if it’s a human being, but there’s no way in the world they [00:04:00] can know if the control system and the self-driving truck is operating within safe bounds. So this is a persistent problem. It’s not addressed by the legislation in Texas at all.

And as far as I know, there’s no initiative anywhere. To find an effective way for third parties to test the safety functionality of self-driving trucks.

Michael: And then that leads into, another part of that law is that the Texas regulators do have the, they’ve been given the explicit power to, cancel an AVS permit or revoke operation privileges. If it’s not in a safe operational condition and the operation of the vehicle on a highway or street end danger to the public, they’ve got that power. Now the question is how, and going to Fred’s point, how do they exercise that power?

How do they make that determination of whether the vehicle’s not in safe operational condition [00:05:00] prior to it actually killing or hurting people? I don’t know that there’s a way to do that and, given the problems that Federalist has, actually looking at the trucks on the road and saying.

We need to take a deeper look at this and consider whether or not it’s gonna experience some operational problems. How do you do that? The law doesn’t mandate reporting of crashes. The nitsa standing general order still mandates federal reporting of this type of thing.

But the law doesn’t mandate the reporting of crashes or safety incidents. And that’s a problem. How do you how, as a regulator, when you don’t have any crash reporting to rely on, do you then make a determination that a, a vehicle should, permit should be suspended because it’s unsafe?

It’s an unanswered question here,

Fred: right? It’s gonna, it’s gonna reside in the legislature, because right now they’re just looking at basically the game of chicken. Have you killed enough people lately for us to revoke your license to operate in this particular state? [00:06:00] That’s all they’ve got.

There are ways of monitoring safety. Performance indicators or key safety indicators, however you wanna call them. But you’ve got to articulate that you need to do that. And that’s the only way to monitor the safety performance of these vehicles. Short of just counting up the bodies. They’re not doing that.

And they could, and,

Federal vs. State Regulations for Autonomous Vehicles

Michael: and then ultimately, these are semis, which are essentially built to travel long distances across state lines. So we, the article brings up the fact that, there is no federal regulation involving, this. What, when you leave Texas and go into Louisiana and then into Mississippi, and then into Alabama and then into Georgia on your way from Dallas to Atlanta what different safety standards or permitting requirements are gonna be required?

Is there an easier way? Is should the federal government step up and create a federal regulation? That covers the, these type of, this [00:07:00] type of permitting or at least covers a basic minimum standard of safety that all trucks on interstate highways have to meet.

Speaker 2: So I just looked into it.

Commercial Driver’s License Requirements for AVs

Speaker 2: What does it take to get a commercial driver’s license in the state of Texas?

And it requires a lot of things that I do not imagine that Aurora or Kodiak have gone through their computer systems. So you have to hold a class ACL P the permit, commercial learners permit for at least 14 days before taking a skills test. Do these software programs, are they taking the skills test of any sort?

Because every time they change their software, I would wanna run that through this process again. And if they’re updating their software over the air continuously, that’s gonna be a nonstop issue. They’ve got a pass required knowledge test, including general knowledge in any app, applicable endorsements.

They’ve gotta enroll in a trading program. From a registered provider take a driving skills test using a commercial motor [00:08:00] vehicle. And then this is great. Provide your application, proof of identity and metal medical search and medical certification at the local DMV. What’s the requirement here?

’cause we know, they make the claim that AVS don’t drive drunk, and then we see videos of Waymo’s essentially driving drunk.

Michael: There’s a lot of issues that I’m assuming that all of, I think pretty clearly all of those regulations and requirements were written with the idea that there’s a human there that’s part of, the, part of the 14 days, part of the medical Sure.

Background. I think we understand obviously that they’re not going to be able to directly apply those rules to computers or computer drivers, but there are, there could be analogous things like the medical background, what’s analogous to that from a computing standpoint, and is there malware.

Are you gonna be able to pass muster with this driverless system in, in that way? But what I don’t think there are right now [00:09:00] are rules that do that, right? That Texas has rules for human drivers, but there aren’t really any rules out there that can do similar tests on the computer driver.

And I think those are needed just to establish at minimum a basic level of safety before these vehicles are deployed.

Speaker 2: Because one thing in here that I think would prohibit most of these companies is, one of the requirements, again, in the state of Texas to get a commercial driver’s license is you must have a clean driving record.

How do you get this with these systems that are beta software? How do you have this at all? But even stepping back from that, the problem I think that everybody has seen with semis down the road is they blow a retread. Like we’ve all driven past on highways seeing tread. From, an 18 wheeler on the side of the road, or sadly, sometimes in the middle of a lane, there’s a human driver on board.

They can physically feel that pull off to the side of the road and resolve that issue. What are these computer systems [00:10:00] doing? They’re not jacking up their car and replacing a tire. It, what do they do here? What do they do when they have to go to a way, an inspection station? How is the, who is the human there talking to, to say, Hey, open up the cab.

Like what happens in these situations? Everyone’s

Fred: done. Not much. By the way, in the trade, those higher treads that you see by the side of the road, they’re called g. Because they look like alligators.

Michael: They look like alligator. Oh, I

Speaker 2: guess maybe Ffy. I, okay.

Michael: I’m assuming that on the detection of the A blowout they’ll have systems in place for that.

Most vehicles or all vehicles now are required to have tire pressuring, monitor, tire pressure monitoring systems that do something similar for drivers. Gotta think that with the importance, especially when you’re carrying, 50,000 pounds of cargo, that the importance of having all your tires there is pretty obvious to the manufacturers.

I’m sure that’s something that’s been taken care of. There are some, there’s a lot of debate around, very [00:11:00] specific things that trucks have to do. There are certain state laws or federal motor carrier safety or highway administration laws that require if you do have a blowout, you and the vehicle’s parked on the side of the road, you need to set out certain warning markers behind the truck.

Well, an autonomous vehicle can’t do that. That’s been a big bone of contention between the autonomous trucking industry and regulatory authorities around, around that issue. So there, there remains some things that, only a human operator can do. I’m not sure if human operators are getting out and re repairing the tires on semis.

Generally either. I’m sure there’s gonna be, have to be some type of wrecker service or repair service that’s called out to do those repairs. But it’s a good point.

Speaker 2: Yeah I just think what we’re talking about with, in terms of the, physical requirements with the computer system, part of that is checking, does your tire pressure monitor work?

Because we’ve seen these recalled on commercial vehicles, on passenger vehicles. What, how often are these checks happening? I don’t know. [00:12:00] Get off my lawn and that’s it With Texas and they’re nonsense.

Autonomous Vehicles in Las Vegas: Zoox’s New Venture

Speaker 2: Hey, let’s talk, let’s move a little further west to a lovely little place in the desert called Las Vegas.

Ah, it was a bummer ’cause I was out there recently and then a few days after I left, Zoox started allowing people to take free rides. Ah, and God, I wish I was there for that. That would’ve been so much fun. For those of you playing the home game, Zoox is Amazon’s vehicle that is a level five vehicle, I believe.

And it is weird in that there’s just two bench seats, people facing each other on the inside. It’s adorable. It looks like something out of a Pixar movie, so it’s adorable. So before now there’s a very restricted operating design domain that these are available in Las Vegas. Yeah. It’s a very limited area,

Michael: which makes it level four, right?

Speaker 2: Oh, you’re right. Level four. Thank you. Eh, minus one from me?

Michael: Yeah. The yellow level, fives of the unicorn,

Speaker 2: right? [00:13:00] Yeah. It’s an article from the Washington Post, and I’m gonna quote from, it says they’re talking about how, hey, we need to convince the people of Las Vegas to go for this boondoggle.

And like, how are you gonna convince the people of Las Vegas to go for a boondoggle? Come on. Quoting from this article, questions that came up included, what can first responders do if the nearly 6,000 pound vehicle is blocking a runway? Holy, the zoox is 6,000 pounds. Like what? That blows me away.

Better to pull, not push it. What happens if the vehicle loses its connectivity? It’s designed to pull over. It’s designed to pull over. Oh, that’s my gaslight. And can first responders manually shut off the vehicle? Not yet, but Zoo says it’s working on it. Oh, this is my, I didn’t have a gaslight, ladies and gentlemen.

I didn’t have one, but now I have one. There we go. This is just horseshit. Okay. I like that they’re saying, Hey, let’s sit down with first responders and show them how to move our 6,000 pounds. I can’t believe it’s 6,000 pounds. This [00:14:00] box.

Michael: That’s, that’s the size of, large SUVs on the road all over our city.

So it’s But the Zoox looks much smaller. It looks, it does. I wonder if there, it’s just, they’re, I wonder if it’s a lot of battery involved there or what, but maybe it’s not as small as you think you should stayed in Vegas a little longer.

Speaker 2: I should have. I should have. But I love what happens if the vehicle loses connectivity.

It’s designed to pull over, ladies and gentlemen, it’s designed to pull over. I remember a company called GM Cruise, I think they were designed to pull over too. Instead, they all decided to say, Hey, let’s just stop in the middle of the roadway in San Francisco. And if you and can first responders manually shut off the vehicle?

Not yet,

Fred: which well cruises for. Remember, cruise was designed to automatically pull over. Unfortunately, they did that with a woman underneath the car, which is a bad idea. And one of the things that has long puzzle me with this AV community is that they refuse to show that [00:15:00] previous lethal and dangerous incidents associated with the avs are part of their test regime to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

You’d think that if. Vehicles pulling over because they don’t understand that there’s a person beneath them is a problem that subsequent generations of AVS would say, okay, this is something we gotta put into our test set on the track before we release these to the public. One of the things that we’ve talked about here is that this is the only class of industrial machinery that is inherently dangerous that I know of, that is being allowed to interface with the public without any physical barriers between the public and the threat of lethal interaction with the machinery.

If you’ve got a drill press, they have mechanisms and fences and whatever to keep people away from it, so you don’t put your hand under the drill press. Same thing is true with a lot of [00:16:00] industrial machinery, right? They put a fence up around. A construction site when they’re building a building so that people won’t get into, into the way of the dump trucks or what have you.

This, the avs are the only class I know of that is not responding to that. Just I don’t know if it’s just an oversight of part of OSHA or something that is somehow in the regulations that yeah, you’ve gotta regulate dangerous machinery and keep people away from it unless it’s got four wheels and somebody calls it a car, or, how did, how is that declaration that this dangerous machinery is a car, make it immune from regulations that apply to every other kind of dangerous industrial machinery.

It’s puzzling to me.

Speaker 2: It’s cool, man. Like I saw it in some sci-fi future movie. It’s cool.

Michael: I think that there, there should be some sort of manual shutoff there. That’s scary. That’s a scary part for a vehicle. It, if one’s involved in a crash or if one is for whatever reason, a [00:17:00] little out of control and needs to be, someone needs to hit the off button quick.

There needs to be some type of way for emergency responders to do that versus, dodging it or trying. How else do you accomplish that? Do you crash it? Do you pit maneuver on it? What do you do?

Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s ridiculous. ’cause the zoox is saying it’s not available yet.

The manual shut off, but we’re working on it, which makes me say, your product isn’t done. Like you should not release this. That’s a major safety issue. But.

Michael: There are, I and I’m assuming that Zoox meets some of the federal requirements around batteries and, isolating the current and things like that.

We don’t really know because the vehicle has been exempted by the secretary in a very fishy manner. Referring back to what we talked about, a couple months ago when that happened. But it’s, they’re launched in Vegas. It’s a gamble.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Further down in the article they’re talking about accidents and whatnot, and it says and if a police officer wanted to view the footage, a zoox vehicle captured on the [00:18:00] road, would the company be willing to share it?

Turning over footage will require a subpoena. A zoo’s official responded. Yeah. Here’s a little tour of our vehicle in an air conditioned environment. Not on the road, but you actually want, we. Shows. So subpoena and where Amazon,

Michael: yeah. I couldn’t, I couldn’t tell from that question. What, and this may be where Zoox might have been a little confused as well, are they talking about crash incidents or are they talking about, other crimes that the cameras on the vehicle may have witnessed?

There’s a privacy angle there, there’s some other things going on there. So I think the safe answer is, yeah we’d wait on a subpoena for that. But I would encourage zoos, to, certainly cooperate with law enforcement when it comes to crash investigations and those sorts of things.

And not requiring subpoenas for information sharing that could protect the public.

Speaker 2: Listeners, if any of you got to Las Vegas, please ride around on a zoox and just let us know. Dying to find out what it’s like. And I’m bummed I missed it.

Michael: It’s the vehicle that goes forward and backwards.

Fred: I gotta say, please do not [00:19:00] ride in zoos until they prove that it’s safe.

That’s the other side of fun,

Speaker 2: hey, I did my Gaslight of the week. Who’s up next? Who looks excited to go? I think Fred looks excited to go look at this. He’s adjusting his his little vest.

Michael: Let’s go. Let Fred go. ’cause mine is gonna lead into another story, I’d be sure.

Fred: Alright. I’m happy to do that.

Waymo’s Safety Practices Under Scrutiny

Fred: There’s a guy named Trent Victor, who’s the director of Safety Research and best practices at Waymo. He recently made a presentation in Sweden to a community of safety advocates and and safety experts. And he’s my man this week. So if you listen to it, he chastises the community for being skeptical of Waymo’s.

Of Waymo’s self-published analysis, which is interesting. He really was whining about, gee, why don’t you guys believe us? He went through the decision process that Waymo goes [00:20:00] through before they release a version onto the highway, but he didn’t release any content about what they do.

Said there’s five people and they were all way more employees, that they have authority for way more de deployment approval, but didn’t state what they’re using as criteria for safe approval or how they do that what the criteria are, what the compliance with the standards means, and how the public interest is represented because there’s no public representation on that group, as far as I can tell.

And he certainly didn’t cite any. Let’s see. He does cite the articles that are self-published on their website, but even cursory review of those articles reviews some striking shortcomings. There’s no peer review of the studies, reject any facts that have been reported to the authorities, and they rely only upon insurance reports [00:21:00] or insurance claims as the basis of their safety.

So this is a great example of the moral rumple zone at work, where people can hide behind legal constructs to obscure their engineering responsibility for dangerous vehicle performance. And summarizing evasion of responsibility is not the same as proof of safety. If Waymo is transparent and safe and really wants to be a good corporate citizen, they should have no trouble opening their kimono.

To independent review of their operational data for unfettered third party auditing of their safety processes and history. There are mechanisms and standards for doing that, like UL 4,600 easy enough for Waymo to just say, okay let’s go, let’s do it. If on the other hand, they just wanna pump their stock before dumping it onto some naive investor before killing so many people that they’re forced to collapse, then keep on driving down the current AV highway.

So that’s [00:22:00] that’s my candidate this week for the Gaslight of the week. Trent Victor, director of Safety Research and best practices at Waymo. I

Speaker 2: mean, that’s a pretty good one, Fred. Open up their kimono. Yeah, that’s the rum zone. Waymo, where’s the kimono? You’re, Hey, it’s really

Fred: hard for me to win the gaslight, award each week.

So I gotta try hard.

Speaker 2: I like the fact that you’re sticking to Waymo. I honestly think you just have an org chart for Waymo. Just each week. You just go down the list here. Hey, here. These are the people I’ve responded to on LinkedIn when they published Nonsense at Waymo. That’s what the military

Fred: guys call a target rich

Speaker 2: environment.

Oh, look at this. Oh, Michael, A tough competition. What can you do?

Tesla’s Electric Door Issues

Michael: I’m going this week with Nitsa generally regarding a Tesla investigation. They just opened so. We’ve discussed ad nauseum. I think the problems with electric doors and Teslas, both the problem with [00:23:00] firefighters or emergency responders, some good Samaritans gaining access from outside the vehicle during and after, I mean after crashes.

And the problem for owners, operators, occupants getting out of the vehicles when they’re, when there’s a, when a crash occurs because if the battery fails, the electric door latches don’t operate. And that prevents the door handles from that are flushed on the vehicle from popping out and allowing the vehicle to be open from the outside.

It also prevents actuation of the interior door handles. You have to use a manual door release that’s typically either hidden in a compartment or kind of stylized into the vehicle’s interior in a way that makes it hard for people to discover it. Nsa, to their credit, opened an investigation.

However, the investigation was opened to a very small segment of vehicles, only the 2021 Tesla Model Y, and was only open to look [00:24:00] into entering the vehicle from the outside. These were basically reports from parents who exited the vehicle, and then when they went to get, go back into the vehicle to get a child out, or for other reasons, they were unable to open the door because the battery was dead or whatever was happening.

That’s a huge problem, obviously, but it is far from. Addressing what the real the overall safety issue with electric doors here. First of all, we know that almost every Tesla model that’s come out has, it’s very difficult as an occupant or passenger who hasn’t read through the owner’s manual to know how to escape the vehicle.

When the power goes out and the manual release has to be engaged, it’s very difficult to find. And you are often in situations, or I shouldn’t say often because, fire events are relatively rare, but you’ll be in situations where you don’t have time to go [00:25:00] look at the owner’s manual and figure out how to get out of the vehicle.

It’s just disappointing. I guess to me that, given the opportunity to take a swing here and do something good for egress safety involving Teslas, nitsa has chosen to focus on a very narrow segment of the problem, which is people not being able to re-enter the car after it’s parked, versus first responder access in emergencies versus people needing to get out of the vehicle because their battery is caught fire and they have seconds to escape and can’t find the manual release that Tesla has cleverly and stylishly hidden from them.

So Nitsa needs to be doing a lot more here. Nitsa. Needs to, and I’m hoping in the future that we may even petition the agency to put in some type of standardization for this process. How do emergency responders access the interior of a vehicle when door handles aren’t working because there’s an electric latch?

How do consumers and [00:26:00] occupants of these vehicles escape quickly in a standardized format for all models across the industry, not just Teslas? How do we make it easy for people to escape a car when there’s when the vehicle’s on fire or submerged or any other, any number of other situations where you might need to access the vehicle, but for whatever reason, the power failure is not allowing to, that’s something its a needs to address.

They need to do it now. Because obviously electric vehicles are on the population on our roads is only going to grow, and these problems are only going to grow unless quick action is taken. So that’s it for me for the week.

Speaker 2: That’s a good one. I have to give the wind to Fred this week.

‘Cause he had some very pithy statements. And Michael, you were bordering on treason there. ’cause it almost sounded like you were attacking Tesla. And we know that’s against the law now, but you can’t criticize Tesla. So for the powers that be, he was criticizing Nitsa, but in a gentle way.

It was nice. It was okay. Don’t deport him. But yeah, let’s continue with this. Let’s dig deep more [00:27:00] into Tesla and their problem. And I’m gonna criticize the hell out of them. ’cause ah, I’m not even located in the us You don’t know where I am anyway. You never know where

Michael: you are

Speaker 2: physically, mentally, emotionally.

Yeah. Here’s an article from MSN actually from Bloomberg titled Tesla. Doors Probed by US Regulator after Trapping Occupants. And this is just what Michael was talking about. According from the article. For now, the agency Nitsa said it’s focusing on the operability of electric door locks from outside the vehicle since there’s no way to manually open Tesla vehicle doors in this circumstance.

But the regular said it’s also on the lookout for incidents where occupants have trouble getting out of the Teslas using the company’s manual releases. So my naive head, I thought the exterior flush door handles things. I thought they were all mechanical. And as I say this, I realize this is stupid. I thought they were flush and you kinda put it pressed against one side and the door handle popped out and was a manual process.

But no, it, they’re all [00:28:00] electric and apparently the reason they’re electric is then you can make the doors thinner. You don’t have to have space in there from mechanical latches and release. But

Michael: that, and also there’s an argument that some people have made that it reduces drag and increases fuel economy.

I think it’s very negligible, the fuel economy increase you’re talking about there.

Speaker 2: But even that, I could see that, but you could do that as a manual thing. Like the version that I just imagined where you press it and this thing comes out. But who’s buying a car’s not like an iPhone. You’re like, oh it’s thinner this year.

I gotta get who’s looking at a door? I don’t want a door to be thinner. ’cause a door provides crash protection. If anything, I want a thicker door, big steel block.

Michael: I think that’s another thing that’s been reported is that inside impact crashes, these mechanical systems don’t fail as often as the power or electric door systems.

Which is, site impact crashes on your door are, in many cases, going to [00:29:00] limit the operation of the door. Generally, you’re not gonna be able to open the door because it’s been crushed and there’s no way to operate it. However, that has been reported more frequently apparently in vehicles with the electronic doors.

Speaker 2: But then I also have another door across from you, and I can open that one if it’s long as it’s mechanical. Yeah, I don’t, yeah. This more. That’s one of these aesthetic things where designers, it’s like they like the larger tires, even though larger tires are less fuel efficient. Yeah. But they like the way it looks.

Michael: I like, I think a lot of this junk is driven by the cool factor. I think you could make the argument that a lot of things in Teslas that are dangerous or driven by the cool factor. We have it brought up, autopilot, full self-drive, the summon feature the electric doors.

There’s a lot of things there that really seem to be, flash in the pan, ideas that they had to tweak their cars up and make them look cool and to, provide things that, that potential buyers could latch onto and say, ah, they’ve got this and nobody else does well, [00:30:00] and so there maybe a reason why other people don’t have that thing.

And, reading through, I think, I don’t know if it was this article or maybe it was the article from RS Technica about the issue that was talking about it may have been the video from Bloomberg where they were talking about JD Power as even poked fun at, the new electric doors saying that they’ve received, a significant number of complaints essentially during their process of reviewing vehicles, involving the electric doors that they never, or the flush doors that they never had before.

They’re, and then essentially saying, why is the industry creating a problem where we never had one before? And I think it’s primarily the cool factor or the, selling a vehicle that looks like a spaceship and making things different and zany and neat, but they’re not necessarily, safe or designed based on good human factors, principles that have been, learned by the industry over many years.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I don’t understand the drag thing too. ’cause I imagine [00:31:00] the side view mirrors create a lot more drag than a door handle, but they also wanna eliminate side view mirrors. That’s a different thing.

China’s Advancements in Vehicle Safety

Speaker 2: From that ours technical article you mentioned this, we learned that China. Is the answer.

China’s gonna eat our lunch on all of this stuff because yeah.

Michael: China is eating NITHA’s lunch at the moment on a number of safety issues. It’s and they’re beating. That’s where they’re really beating the United States. We hear a lot in the media about them beating us in in and on EVs, and yes, BYD and some companies like that look like they’re doing a lot better than some of the American auto automakers when it comes to elect electric vehicles.

But when it comes to safety, and, 40 years ago the United States was the gold standard. And now, the Europeans have certainly passed us. And, the idea that China would pass the United States that safety standards intended on protecting human lives would’ve been absurd to a lot of people decades ago.

And now, i’m not I’m not willing to come down on, whether it’s China or the United States has a better safety standards, but China has [00:32:00] been in the news a lot lately for putting safety into vehicles, both in the area of autonomy and and, just traditional design issues like this one.

Fred: Yeah. China’s trying to sneak safety technology into the United States market through the back door using Polestar. So I think we really need to be alert to the insidious and invidious spread of Chinese safety technology into America. Something for JD Vance to look into, I think, and along with JD Power.

Speaker 2: Interesting. Yeah. People, same name, any of your coworkers. Use their seatbelt. I want you to out them, okay? If any of them have their airbags enabled, we’re gonna go online. We’re gonna stop this. We need freedom of mobility in a high speeded crash. I need freedom people to go through a windshield headfirst.

Chinese Safety Technology and National Guard Involvement

Fred: That’s why the National Guard is in these cities, to check in the windows of cars and make sure, the people are not using Chinese safety technology [00:33:00] without permission.

Speaker 2: Quoting from the RS article it seems that the Chinese authorities have been concerned about retractable door handles for some time now, and are reportedly close to banning them from 25 7.

See, you see that’s what’s happening. I know. Damn them in their safety culture. Oh boy. All right. We have to continue with, tesla though. I’m sorry. I know. Look, if you need a break listener, put it on pause, go do some Tai Chi. Oh no, it’s China again. God damnit. They’ve come into my brain.

Go do Swedish massage. Oh, no wait. The Chinese own that Swedish car company. Now it’s everywhere. It’s too late.

Tesla’s Self-Driving Software Issues

Speaker 2: An article from NNBC news titled Tesla’s Self-Driving Software Fails at Train Crossings. Some car owners warn. Basically the article talks about how, the magic of Tesla’s full self-driving can handle that large arm that comes down at a railroad crossing with flashing lights and couldn’t be more obvious.

And the cars will regularly try to drive through and see, can we beat the train, [00:34:00] which seems very Elon to do. I bet we could beat the train crossing. So I don’t really see this as a bug, but a feature and quoting from the article. Tesla full self driving doesn’t mess, handle every railroad crossing, every time.

And some drivers have posted videos online to celebrate successful instances. How fucking stupid are these people? Yay. My Carr didn’t try to kill me today. Like what is wrong with people who bought a Tesla?

Michael: Apparently they also hadn’t heard that Tesla struggled to see fire trucks and emergency vehicles.

So large dangers objects are a problem here now. I, I think I would guess just based on what we’ve seen with some automatic emergency braking issues, we filed a petition on Nissan Rogues and that we’re having some phantom braking due to the automatic emergency braking system detecting obstacles that weren’t there in the past around train [00:35:00] tracks.

But these were vehicles that were stopping when they saw train tracks, because they thought there was an object or something in the road here even with Tesla’s, a camera system, which I am guessing is a little more developed than what Nissan was putting in.

Its automatic emergency braking systems in the mid 20 teens. They’re not even seeing trains. And particularly, when you see a railroad crossing I don’t think any of us would speed up or even continue at the same speed. I think, the. Traditional or the expected reaction for a driver approaching a train crossing crossing is to slow down.

I slow down. EE even if the lights aren’t flashing, even if I, there’s probably no chance there’s a train there just to check both ways before crossing. Maybe I’m just a weenie, but that’s what I do. But the autopilot, the full self-driving in these vehicles isn’t doing that. It’s just going straight through the crossing and not even seeing the train.

So that’s a huge problem. And that has to be resolved [00:36:00] because that, there’s no question that would result in a tragedy at some point. If it hasn’t already, and we haven’t just found out about it.

Speaker 2: But full self-driving is just a level two plus system,

Michael: I mean that that’s what Tesla calls it in all the states.

They’re operating supposedly autonomously in, in Texas, they drop back to basically saying, oh, we’re operating at level two so that they don’t have to qualify. That’s why they kept the safety driver in the vehicle in Austin and move him to the front, to the driver’s seat is because they wanted to be able to maintain that they were level two, so they didn’t have to comply with the obligations that level four vehicles would.

Waymo’s Safety Claims Under Scrutiny

Speaker 2: So a level four vehicle would be something like Fred’s favorite company. Waymo. Yeah. Okay. Nothing bad could happen with a level four vehicle. Waymo keeps telling us how we’ve driven 7 million miles. 50 million miles, a hundred million miles. We drove a hundred. They actually said we drove a hundred million miles without a fatality.

Turns out there was a fatality from AZ, central Waymo to other vehicles in Deadly Crash, near [00:37:00] a SU Tempe. There is a yeah, waymo basically saying, Hey, it was somebody else’s fault. And didn’t happen, wasn’t us. We were just happen to be there. There was no passenger in our car.

It was a, somebody else did it very GM cruise type response.

Michael: Yeah. And we don’t have a whole lot of information on this incident. Apparently, the Waymo was from everything we know, the Waymo was not at fault in this collision. Apparently the Waymo had stopped at a, an intersection while it was making a right turn.

It was yielding to a pedestrian and a motorcyclist rear ended the Waymo I believe, I don’t know if the motorcyclist popped off of the motorcycle into the other lane but the motorcyclist was apparently. In the adjacent lane after the crash and another vehicle coming through hit the motorcyclist and killed them, and then that vehicle ran.

That would suggest that vehicle was it certainly at fault for the, for fatality part of this. And, it’s hard to [00:38:00] say from the information we have, whether the Waymo stopped short or did something to cause the motorcycle to misinterpret. Its movement.

But, there’s nothing here that would suggest that Waymo was at fault At this point,

Fred: I’m going to suggest that we move into the towel right now, ’cause I’m gonna elaborate on this spot, please. So uht it up. The topic really is why Waymo’s Safety claims Ring Hollow and in particular Waymo searched in this case that

Finding that a Waymo vehicle was not at fault in the crash.

Means that the crash doesn’t count as far as their safety statistics are concerned. But the fact is that the presence of a Waymo was essential to this crash occurring, right? You can’t say Waymo wasn’t a factor in this crash. And now the industry has been fond of saying that a previous nitsa study that determined that humans [00:39:00] were a factor in 94% of crashes suggested that people are a cause of 94% of crashes, right?

We’ve heard that over and over again, even though it’s wrong, even though it’s a misinterpretation, it’s a handy talking point. But if that’s true and the industry believes that, then you’ve also gotta believe that if Waymo is a factor in a crash, that it’s the cause of the crash. The fact is that a hundred percent of Waymo involved crashes involve Waymo’s.

If the Waymo weren’t there, the crash would not have happened. So you can’t really say that, we don’t, we haven’t killed anybody, so we’re inherently safe. All of Waymo’s studies that are on their website reject consideration of all of the accidents and collisions that have been reported to the federal government.

This is an example of [00:40:00] what Phil Koopman, I think he coined the term calls moral rumple zone. The moral rum zone basically, is that if you can find some way to hide behind interpretations of crashes that suggest you don’t have responsibility, then they don’t count as far as you having any responsibility for the crash.

This is not true. Most crashes are not reported to the government at all. Many crashes that AVS are involved in are not reported, and even if reported, if people can make a, any kind of credible claim that Wema wasn’t at fault, then it doesn’t count in the crash. Statistics well at fault is a legal construct.

It’s not an engineering construct, right? So there’s a clean break between what is required legally and what is required morally and from an engineering perspective. So the reason that there are [00:41:00] claims to Safety Ring Hollow is that they don’t rely on the same engineering facts that are responsible for the vehicle operation as the source of the crash that involves Waymo’s.

They go with the moral carpal zone. Unless you can prove that Waymo was at fault, the crash doesn’t count. That’s simply not true. If the Waymo’s weren’t there, these crashes wouldn’t be occurring.

Speaker 2: Well, Fred, let me ask real quick. So you’re saying at fault, so a state that I live in New York has no fault when it comes to a crash.

So if a Waymo’s involved in a crash in New York State, it could never be at fault. Is that more of a Michael question? It’s a good question. I

Fred: don’t know.

Michael: The you mean you have no fault insurance in your no

Speaker 2: fault insurance? That’s a different thing. Oh, that’s a different thing.

Fred: Yeah.

Anyway I’m wrapping this up. Waymo’s will always say, in the event of a crash way, safety is our highest priority [00:42:00] at Waymo. We’re deeply saddened by this event, and we’re fully cooperative law enforcement and regulators. So what, okay. It is clear that continued operations are their first priority, not safety, because if they stood down all of their vehicles, safety would improve.

Speaker 5: Right?

Fred: Clearly it’s not their highest priority and really return on their capital investment after is probably second right after continued operations, right? They don’t wanna do anything to deteriorate their stock price and based on their actions. Public relations seems to be the third priority goes way ahead of safety.

And, there’s many instances of advertising by Waymo touting people who’ve got no o obvious competence in safety. Touting the safety of Waymo. So that’s public relations. [00:43:00] So safety lags far behind, I think maybe fourth, maybe fifth. I, but it’s clearly not their first rarity. And that’s why Trent, Victor, people find it’s really hard to believe the claims that Waymo makes about safety.

This is true for all other AV manufacturers as well. They don’t, there’s no transparency. They don’t tell you what their data are. They don’t tell you why they assert safety and you know what the thresholds are for safety. They don’t even tell you what variables they’re looking at or what parameters they’re looking at.

So that’s why getting back to the original topic, that’s why way most safety claims Ring Hollow. They do everything within their power to avoid. Showing data that supports their claims. And even when the bodies start to pile up, they still say we’re not at fault. So it’s not our problem. It is your [00:44:00] problem because Waymo’s are involved in 100% Waymo involved crashes.

That’s it.

Speaker 2: I like it. I like it. Fred, I think you mistook their first priority is to continue convincing the C-Suite at Alphabet that they should keep sending billions and billions of dollars to this problem. Not problem. It’s the executive pay for the Waymo people. That’s what their number one priority is.

Every single thing they write about is convincing the C-suite at Alphabet that this is a viable project. I keep Paul,

Fred: I’ll go with that. But I’ve, I think that falls under continued operations, but

Speaker 2: All right. I’ll,

Fred: I’ll give you a point.

Speaker 2: Oh, hey, look at that. All right.

Legislation to End Forced Arbitration

Speaker 2: Let’s jump into an article, a story, a piece of legislation that Michael is very excited about.

We have to jump into this before we go into recalls. This is representative Johnson and Senator Blumenthal reintroduce legislation to end forced arbitration and [00:45:00] restore accountability for consumers and workers. I love ending forced arbitration or arbitration. Any point I don’t wanna arbitrate at all.

Michael, tell us why. This is wonderful.

Michael: It it would be wonderful if it passed Congress. Who knows what, what happens up, up on Capitol Hill these days and whether these types of things get through. But this is a great bill that addresses one of the biggest problems in the civil justice system today, in my opinion.

And it is forced arbitration, essentially your con when you contract with a company for a service. It could be, with Uber, it could be with your bank, it could be with your manufacturer of your vehicle. There, this is, this goes way beyond cars, but it has a significant impact in the area of cars.

There are provisions in there that require you to agree, you can’t make the purchase without making this agreement. Or you can’t contract for the service without agreeing. That if there is a dispute or if there is a [00:46:00] claim arises from a, an accident in a vehicle. We’ve seen that with Uber.

We’ve also seen with Uber, funneling sexually sexual assault victims into courts of arbitration. They, once you make this agreement with the company, and it could be on your cell phone with a click, it could be, there are a number of sneaky ways in which Americans are agreeing to, to, to arbitration.

Once you do that, as soon as you have a problem with that company, rather than being allowed to take your claim into a small claims court, if it’s a smaller claim or into a court of law, you get to go or you’re forced to go to a court of arbitration, which have a track record of ruling against consumers.

I think the numbers. Insane. It’s well over 90%, maybe up as high as 99% of the time. De depending on what type of arbitration is going on, where consumers are losing because essentially they signed away their [00:47:00] constitutional right to take these ve to take these manufacturers or these companies to trial when something goes wrong.

The Fair Act was introduced previously, I believe, in 2023 and 2024 maybe 2022 and 2023 and passed the House of Representatives didn’t get through the Senate. So once again it’s being released and we. Are heavily in support of it because it’s something we are seeing we’ve seen tech companies do for a long time.

But it’s something that we see with Tesla. It’s something we see with Uber, essentially trying to force people who have been involved in fatal collisions into courts of arbitration. Rather than being able to take their case to a judge and a jury they’re being forced into kangaroo courts that are essentially run by corporations across the country and allow for very limited discovery.

And as anyone who has been involved in lawsuits, targeting large companies, knows [00:48:00] discovery is going to be the meat of the case. And when you have courts of arbitration that are limiting that discovery, you’re incredibly limited in the type of information you can gain to convince the arbitrator that, that the company was at fault in, in, in whatever occurred.

This is an insidious practice that, that, started small and has made its way into, a large portion of the contracts that consumers agree to every day needs to be stopped. Because at some point we’re gonna, with the rise in AI and things like that, you’re literally going to be agreeing to a, allowing robots to control your future.

In some ways it’s scary. And so we, we are fully against forest arbitration when it comes to automobiles, but also in virtually every other area of life where humans contract with corporations. And so we’re very supportive of this bill,

Speaker 2: this episode brought to you by the [00:49:00] American Arbitration Board.

Now, hey, you know what listeners we’re we’re almost at recall time, but have you gone to auto safety.org and clicked on donate? Oh, really? I’m watching right now. Have you done this? Come on, do it. It’s for a good cause your name will not be put on a watch list probably. It’s fine. It’s good. Do it while you’re in the Piggly Wiggly.

Hey, I said Piggly Wiggly. Look at that. All right.

Electric Vehicles and Fake Engine Sounds

Speaker 2: Okay, so one fun story before we go into recalls. We’ve talked about this nonsense in the past. This is electric vehicles creating, putting in speakers to make it sound like that they’re internal combustion engines. It’s weird and dumb. The Wall Street Journal has an article on it.

One of the manufacturers, I love this, they’ve put the speakers behind the headlights. Yeah, nothing wrongs gonna go there. Nothing wrong. Also, I can’t make turn signals. And my car sounds like arga, but if you can go through the article and just [00:50:00] click on the examples of the engine. Sounds.

So some of these sounds are just, what you’d expect, middle-aged male fantasy sounds, but then there is the, as the BMW IX three and that sound they have pumping out of this is amazing. It is some futuristic sounding orchestral sound. It is so cool. I wanna save up my pennies just to buy this car just so I can sound like a douche.

No. So it sounds cool. It actually, I really like that one. I don’t know, do you guys listen to these audio

Michael: clips? I did not, but I’m going to, now that you’ve mentioned that, Fred, you’ve gotta do that. That sounds pretty cool. I just find this whole subject just so stupid. I’m looking

Speaker 2: forward to the recalls.

Michael: I, I don’t know if there would be, I’m trying to figure out a circumstance in which there would be a recall for fake noise coming out of the car. It’s difficult. No,

Speaker 2: because they’re putting these speakers behind the headlamps, like that’s what’s gonna be, and the vibrations are

Michael: going to kill headlamps, right?

A hundred

Speaker 2: percent. They can’t get [00:51:00] rear view cameras to work properly. Hey, and listeners, if you wanna know more about rear view cameras, tune in next week. We’ll get really into that. So that’s why things are going to get all messed up. Fred, did you listen to these sounds at all?

Fred: No, I did not. I do wanna digress a little bit though, and go back to the Flaming Corvettes just for a moment.

Okay. Because this actually goes along with, this is a kind of a subsidiary Gaslight. Corvettes are apparently bursting into flames because of inadequate separation between vent fans and the hot engine parts. And several have gone up in flames. They cost about a hundred thousand dollars a piece, more or less, but you own two of them suggest to me that money doesn’t matter a lot anymore.

But anyway, inside of this the GM acknowledges the problem and then they say the safety of our customers is the highest priority for the entire GM team. Again, we’ve talked about the fact that [00:52:00] well, probably selling Corvettes is the highest priority, but nevermind, they go on to say the affected Corvette models, Z six and ZR one versions from recent model years are sought after supercars with the ladder being able to reach 200 to 33 miles per hour.

So the question in my mind is, if you’re selling a car that can go at 233 miles per hour, how can you say that the safety of your customers is the highest priority? None of your customers are gonna be qualified to drive a car at 233 miles per hour?

Speaker 2: No. No. It’s the safety of their ego. That’s what it is.

It’s the safety of their fragile ego.

Fred: So it’s not just the AV companies that are trying to kill you friends. It’s it is also the conventional car companies.

Speaker 2: Alright we’ll stand clear of you as you’re filling up your Corvettes at the local Piggly Wiggly. Wow. Twice. Yeah, they’re pretty good.

Vehicle Recalls and Safety Concerns

Speaker 2: All right, let’s do some recalls. First up, [00:53:00] Toyota, 94,320 vehicles. The 2023 to 2025. Wait, Subaru Solter, wait, just Toyota own Subaru now?

Michael: No, I believe they manufacture, you’ll see this occasionally. Ah, and the vehicles manufacturers teaming up on the model, right?

Fred: Oh, they’ve got a, they’ve got a an ownership interest of I think 40% if I remember correctly oh yeah,

Speaker 2: that’s almost as much as you have Fred.

The 2023 to 2025 Lexus rz. I, and this is the Toyota BZ four x which is an ugly car and something to do with their air conditioner. And yeah it’s so hidden down here where it’s,

Michael: it’s the so basically it’s the HVAC system, which in some, you see a lot when it comes to safety.

However, this is where it really comes in is when you’re talking about de wind, windshield defrosting and defogging. Essentially the software here is preventing the HVAC system from properly defogging and defrosting the windshield. That’s. That doesn’t meet motor vehicle safety [00:54:00] standards. You’ve gotta have good defrosting and defogging.

I’m gonna keep saying that so I don’t say defragging, which I always screw up on.

Speaker 2: That’s more of a biblical issue.

Michael: Yeah. It is a biblical issue. But this is just gonna be a, I think it’s just gonna be a software update. It’s the hvac, electronic control unit. That’s the problem.

And it has some software in it that’s not quite working right. Owners are gonna hear about this somewhere around Halloween, so it’s gonna be a couple of months. In the meantime, you may wanna carry a towel in your car in case you need to wipe off your windshield. Pull over and wipe off your windshield while you’re driving.

Speaker 2: Okay. You heard your first folks carry a towel on your car.

Michael: There’s a number of reasons to carry a towel in your car. You don’t want, you don’t want your coffee spilling and getting onto your pristine vehicle electronics or just causing

Speaker 2: a mess. Okay, let’s move on. Next up Mazda. Hey, the Japanese are winning this week, 104,854 vehicles, the 2024 to 2025 Mazda CX 90, the CX [00:55:00] 70 and the fuel gauge and the instrument cluster may show fuel remaining despite an empty fuel tank.

My brother had a truck like that and he he would put a two by four on his dashboard to remind himself to get gas beyond dumb. And so the first time I see this, I’m like, what’s with this? Two by four? He is ah, that’s ’cause my fuel gauge doesn’t work. And I’m like, do you have fuel? He is yeah, we’re fine.

Two minutes later, engine dies. He thinks it’s hilarious ’cause they’re outta fuel. And I’m like, I man. So this is not a good one.

Michael: I think the reason you know this is the safety issue is because the, running outta gas on a highway happens to people all the time. But here it’s not caused by the owner being less than smart.

Let’s be honest, it’s not hard to keep your tank full. Here it’s caused by the vehicle telling you’ve got fuel when you don’t. Because the fuel gauge is bad or not? Technically, I don’t even think it’s the fuel gauge that’s bad. I believe that they’re gonna [00:56:00] have, it’s a software shocker, a software problem that’s making your fuel gauge read an inappropriate amount.

What they’re gonna do is reprogram your, it’s your BCM. What do you call that? Is that the body control module? That’ll be my guess for now. And you’re gonna hear about this one right around Halloween as well, Mazda owners. So keep a really good eye on your fuel gauge for the next couple of months.

And I wouldn’t let it get very low at all. Fill up with a half tank less left, just to be sure. And you should be okay until you can get the repair.

Speaker 2: But wait, how would you know you have a half tank less left? The game doesn’t work well, I

Michael: don’t think. I don’t think it it I don’t think it shows up until you get a little lower, but that’s just me guessing.

Speaker 2: Ah guessing. Yeah. Al Mazda owners, next up Rivian 24,214 vehicles. The 2025 Rivian. R one T, the R one s. Before software version, blah, blah, blah. [00:57:00] And R one s was involved in a field incident in which HWA, I don’t know what that means. Experienced the onetime functional limit due to misclassification at very low speed.

Talk to me in English. What does this mean? There may be, so there, yeah, go for it.

Michael: They’re not classifying vehicles appropriately. And when they don’t do that, then the advanced driver assistance system doesn’t react and respond appropriately to other vehicles on the road, which is a huge problem.

It looks like this is happening at relatively low speeds, at least in the instances that they’re discussing here. And they’re simply worried about an increased risk of crash. So basically. There was a collision, I think in May where there it was only a six mile per hour collision. The driver didn’t see the vehicle and failed to brake because he was lulled in complacency by the A DAS.

And then the Rivian [00:58:00] also misclassified the vehicle that was in front of it and bumped it essentially at six miles per hour. This was reported to Rivian and I don’t believe there have been, at least as far as we know, any other crashes that have occurred related to this problem. Rivian opened up an investigation in May and then.

It looks like they’re going to they started manufacturing vehicles with an a software update and then applied the software update over the air to all their vehicles. So I think like 99% of vehicles at this point have already been remedied owners. You’re still going to get a notification in the mail and your vehicle will probably already be fixed by Halloween.

Speaker 2: Alright next one, Honda again, the jet. Oh, but this is American Honda Motor Corp. 17,334 vehicles. The 2025 Acura, RDX. And an improper electronic power steering software calibration may cause the electronic power steering system to enter fail safe mode under certain vehicle operating [00:59:00] conditions. Wait, electronic power.

So my power steering. And I go back to manual steering and I go, Ooh, good thing I’m taking steroids.

Michael: Pretty much basically steering effort increases and you’re gonna have a harder time controlling the vehicle. I think particularly at lower speeds. At least from my experience, driving vehicles without power steering.

It’s the low speeds that really get give you the exercise, right? And that’s a yet another is that four software problems we’ve seen today. It seems like we’ve had all software problems so far. But they’re gonna re reprogram the EPS memory layout with an improved software to fix your vehicle. And you’re probably gonna hear about this around October 20th if you’re an owner of one of these Acuras.

So be on the lookout for that. And in the meantime, if you lose power steering be prepared for that. Just have that in the back of your mind. Your vehicle will still be able to steer. It just won’t be as easy.

Speaker 2: Last recall, and this is [01:00:00] a banner moment. ’cause this is at least one week that Ford has not been listed as a recall.

Yes. So it’s been one week since Ford is listed as a recall. And the final recall comes from Chrysler 1007 61 vehicles. The 2018 Ram 1500, the Ram 2,500. They may have been built with a cab inflator that may rupture. What is a cab inflator? C Curtain airbag. Curtain airbag. Ah, yeah. Oh, that’s, oh, that’s not good.

Yeah,

Michael: so this is, this has got, oh, it’s Tata esque in a way, when you see a, but it’s the side airbags, to Tata, the really large recalls that occurred around Tata were front and passenger airbags for the, for, I think for all of them, if not the vast majority of them.

This is new because there’s a curtain airbag. This was also produced by Joyce and Safety Systems, which is a different company. And essentially there is moisture that’s [01:01:00] entering the inflator and causing some type of corrosion over time and can lead to what they call a stress corrosion cracking in the inflator.

And what happens is that then when that inflator is deployed it doesn’t work the way it should and, could act as essentially a hand grenade and. And really injure people in the vehicle which is something an airbag was explicitly designed not to do or should have been designed not to do.

Speaker 2: With that folks, that’s our show. Thanks for listening. We’ll be back next week and we’re gonna talk rear view cameras.

Fred: I’m excited.

Speaker 2: Bye-Bye

Fred: bye. Thanks for more information. Visit www.auto safety.org.