Speed Limits, Safety Standards, and Autonomous Vehicles

[00:00:00] Introduction to the Center for Auto Safety Podcast

[00:00:00] Anthony: You’re listening to There Auto Be A Law, the center for auto safety podcast with executive director, Michael Brooks, chief engineer, Fred Perkins, and hosted by me, Anthony Cimino for over 50 years. The center for auto safety has worked to make cars safer. Hi

listeners. Welcome to the only podcast that will give you a free recipe to cook a cat or a dog. No, I’m kidding. It’s the Center for Auto safety podcast.

[00:00:36] Fred: It’s not free. Come on. It’s nothing’s free.

[00:00:40] Anthony: Trust me. You’re all very happy today that our podcast is audio only because both Michael and Fred found some way to send little animations in our video stream right now.

And it’s a disturbing because I can’t figure out how to do it. But anyway, that’s a little too aggressive to start off today’s episode.

[00:00:59] California’s Intelligent Speed Assist Bill

[00:00:59] Anthony: We’re going to start [00:01:00] off with an article from the Washington Post and it’s talking about intelligent speed assist, essentially California. So in the state of California, they’ve introduced a bill that will basically, if you go 10 miles per hour over the speed limit, you’ll get a little warning on your car and say, Hey, you’re speeding.

And so from the article. from the state senator who’s sponsoring this bill. He quote, we have this technology that we know causes people to slow down and we know saves lives, so let’s use it. This is pretty good, I think. But then you have people later on saying this intrusive legislation threatens your driving experience and personal freedom to run over people.

There was a local person from San Francisco, a local rep said, there are people who said to me, if I want to risk getting a ticket, that’s my decision. I would respond and say it shouldn’t be your decision whether you put someone else’s life at risk. I think this is a great little thing, then there’s people like, this is the nanny state coming after me.

If I want [00:02:00] to do 95 in a school zone at 7 30 AM, it’s my right to kill little Billy and Janie.

[00:02:07] Fred: That could just be my interpretation. I note the accent. It needs a little work, but still that’s fine. Hey, I just updated the software on my Subaru and all of a sudden I was driving around yesterday. A little icon popped up on my screen that said the speed limit was X and you are driving at Y.

And I thought, I’ve never seen that before. And then when I was below the speed limit, my actual speed was in black. When I went above the speed limit, My act, my actual speed was listed in yellow. And then when I went five miles an hour above the speed limit, which I only did for investigative purposes, the actual speed was listed in red.

So this is actually being done on my car today. And I thought it was fascinating. It was really [00:03:00] interesting. This is directly related to what you were just talking about. There’s no controls on my pedals, but at least the information is being presented there.

[00:03:08] Anthony: My question for Michael is, if this actually passes in California, if Governor, if Gavin Newsom says, oh, okay, we’ll go on the advocates of safety this time, and California mandates this, Wouldn’t that de facto ipso e pluribus unum make that essentially happen for the entire country?

[00:03:26] Michael: Unless automakers only want to make ISA or intelligence speed assistance available in California, which they won’t do because it’s too much of a pain. And I think that, I believe the bill says they want it by 2030. It’s already in Europe this year. So 2030 is, further out than I think we’d even like to see it on the way, because the intelligence speed assistance technology is available and ready to go now Back to, Anthony’s point with the the enraged southern sounding male he had going there, some people believe it’s their right [00:04:00] and freedom to speed.

It’s not. Those people are uneducated and quite frankly, they’re selfish and probably bad drivers in the middle. We have, this bill. We have a lot of. Other safety groups. I wouldn’t count us in this bunch that support intelligence speed assistance. That’s simply going to warn drivers when they hit a certain speed over the speed limit, say 10 miles per hour, maybe annoy them with bells and whistles, but not do anything about it.

There’s another. Way there where maybe your gas pedal pushes back on you when you’re 10 miles per hour over the speed limit says no You can’t speed but we are in a another category. I think because Ultimately all of those proposals allow drivers to turn a system off, which is exactly what you don’t want Problem speeders, if all they have to do is hit a button or go into their control menu and turn off a feature every time they drive their car, they’re going to [00:05:00] do that.

They’re going to keep speeding. And they’re the ones we’re most concerned about causing high speed collisions that leave a lot of trauma in their wake. And none of these address that issue. And it may be the most critical issue of all. If you pass intelligent speed assistance, whether it’s legislation or federal regulations, and it allows an override switch for the worst of the worst, it’s not going to have the impact that it should and innocent people are going to be continued to be killed by speeders.

I think it’s great that Fred has little warnings in his Car. I do think that technology will prevent some people who are conscientious and pay attention to their speed from exceeding the speed limit and possibly getting themselves into trouble. But I don’t think it’s going to address the real bad guys here.

And, ultimately that’s the only version of this, I think that the center could support because it’s the only version of speed speeding technology, that’s going to get the worst offenders and the [00:06:00] biggest killers off the roads.

[00:06:01] Anthony: Yeah, further in the article quoting, It is unusual for an individual state to regulate the safety of vehicles, a job typically left to NHTSA.

Some lawmakers who back the bill said they were frustrated by the slow pace of federal action, but the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an industry group, ha, said it would be wrong for one state to require the technology while federal regulators are still weighing its potential benefits. The organization is urging Gavin Newsom to veto the bill.

That’s a shocker. So basically this is what we’ve talked about in the past, whereas NHTSA is very slow to move on things. These local representatives in the state of California are like, we’re tired of waiting around, and we’re gonna push this out. That’s what California basically did with fuel economy standards as well, is that correct?

[00:06:47] Michael: Yeah, and that’s been done in a number of other areas besides cars where there’s Not a federal regulation that would preempt the state regulations The state’s free to go ahead and pass something that would regulate the [00:07:00] vehicles sold in its state and It happens all the time where a law that’s passed in california virtually becomes a national law and is later incorporated into federal law because it’s just a giant pain in the ass for companies to You follow the law in a state that is, makes up a higher percentage of I don’t know, what is California, 15 percent of America’s population, maybe 20%.

It makes a lot of sense for companies to just go ahead and meet the California standard and in all their vehicles or in all their products and sell it across America that way. And usually California law is a, when they do. Put a law out like this. It is a precursor to something coming down the pipe federally anyway.

In this case, I don’t think there’s any question that NITS is planning to issue a regulation requiring intelligent speed assistance. That’s going to take effect sometime in the next five to 10 years. And that’s good. It’s a good thing. It’s an extra warning system on your car, but ultimately it’s not going to [00:08:00] have.

A, a completely it’s not going to be completely effective, as we said before, because it’s not going to address the worst of the worst and the people who speed for a living.

[00:08:13] Anthony: Speeding for a living. Apply now. So this sounds pretty straightforward to me. I’ve seen it when I use, My mapping software on a phone will show me that I’m going over the speed limit, again, just for testing purposes, not because I’m in the state of Connecticut and they’re all maniacs.

But I don’t see how this is a problem. I think people, especially those driving in the state of Connecticut, need to be reminded what the speed limit is and maybe slow down so people who don’t live in the state of Connecticut are not crying and screaming as everyone’s whipping past them really fast.

But hey, listeners, why don’t you tell us what you think?

[00:08:47] Fred: Also, an alert to listeners, many of the comments you hear on this podcast are intended to be ironic humor, but we’ve not been trained in humor delivery, so [00:09:00] please be aware of that. Thank you.

[00:09:02] Anthony: I disagree on some of that. Anyway, next article.

[00:09:08] NHTSA’s Pedestrian Protection Proposal

[00:09:08] Anthony: NHTSA pedestrian protection. Okay, we started talking about this last week. This is NHTSA’s proposal. Now this is a little

[00:09:14] Michael: different, right? This is a

[00:09:15] Anthony: little different? Okay. So this is NHTSA proposes new vehicle safety standards to better protect pedestrians. I don’t know why you gotta protect pedestrians.

They can’t even afford a car. What’s wrong with them? From this article, again, that was sarcasm. In 2022, 88 percent of pedestrian fatalities occurred in a single vehicle crashes. Single vehicle crashes means that I’m driving my car and I hit somebody who’s not in a car? Just clarifying?

[00:09:38] Michael: Yeah you’re, I think, basically, you’re hitting them directly, rather than, say, A collision between two cars, expands out or results in car going out onto the sidewalk and hitting a pedestrian or something like that.

[00:09:50] Anthony: Okay.

[00:09:50] Michael: It’s a car to person collision.

[00:09:53] Anthony: Okay. Or to a cyclist or someone who’s.

[00:09:55] Michael: Yeah.

[00:09:55] Anthony: Okay. The proposed rule would apply to passenger vehicles with a gross vehicle weight [00:10:00] of 10, 000 pounds or less. Hey, Hummer EV barely makes it. And data shows that fatalities of pedestrians struck by the front of a vehicle are more common for multi purpose passenger vehicles.

It’s 49 percent followed by passenger cars, 37 percent in 2022. Multi purpose passenger vehicles, they mean trucks and SUVs and crossovers, apparently. Yep. It’s

[00:10:23] Michael: basically anything under 10, 000 pounds that carries less, 10 or less people I believe would be, is what a multipurpose pass, if once you go over that 10 vehicle number you’re in a different category where this wouldn’t apply.

[00:10:35] Anthony: So where do clown car, cars apply in this? Cause.

[00:10:38] Michael: I was just going to say earlier, when we, when Fred said we weren’t trained in comedy, I did go to clown school once. And so clown cars are going to be passenger cars because they’re not funny if they’re big.

[00:10:49] Fred: Okay, we’re going to Thank you for that clarification.

I did read through this and there’s not much to argue with in it. It seems like a very good standard and it will [00:11:00] harmonize with European standards and Japanese standards. It’s pretty much all to the good. But one part in there I found interesting, which is that they intentionally separate the speed applicable to the standard from the speed that would be used in NCAP testing.

And that was new to me. Michael, did you notice that? Did you have any thoughts on that?

[00:11:22] Michael: Often you’ll see often you’ll see, and I think it’s a good thing to have, you’ll see lower speeds in the NHTSA regulation, which is what all manufacturers have to comply with. It’s a minimal safety standard.

And then you’ll see a higher speeds. In the end cap testing, because they want to be able to discriminate between the best and the worst. Even people that even cars that perform poorly on end cap, that might still meet the actual regulation because it’s only going to be testing at 25 miles per hour in cap might go up to 35.

So that you can [00:12:00] make decisions. distinguish between which vehicles are doing an even better job. And ultimately what that’s intended to do is, essentially shame the guys who are coming in last and make them want to do better so that the overall level of safety is raised.

[00:12:15] Anthony: What exactly is the proposal?

Suggest car manufacturers do. Is this changing the slope of the hood? Is this changing bumper heights? What?

[00:12:23] Michael: It’s not doing anything. It’s very hesitant to tell manufacturers they need to take steps X and Y, but what NHTSA does is introduce a test in this case. And I think it’s a 25 mile per hour test that tests.

I think it’s a 50 percentile male and a six year old crash dummy. And it simulates. a head to hood impact so And one of my quibbles with the rule is that we know that you know on smaller Children and even you know with some of the vehicles that are available Now we’re seeing hood heights and grills that are the [00:13:00] height of shorter women and men.

And so they’re not even going to be able to make contact with the hood on some of the larger trucks because they’re not that tall. No, but they did

[00:13:10] Fred: discuss that in the standard, Michael, and they did discuss mapping the so basically Anthony, what they do is they map a human height.

Onto the car as though the person being hit gets wrapped around whatever the geometry of the vehicle is. So with these massive trucks with the high the high grills, Michael was talking about, basically, they splat on the front of the car, whereas people who are taller or in a car with a smaller. They will fold over and their head will impact the hood.

So it’s all about those dynamics. And so

[00:13:49] Michael: They’re not really doing anything about the splats as Fred, Fred refers to them, man. This is strictly a test of what the head does when it hits the hood. And then the unfortunate fact is a lot of people’s heads. [00:14:00] Aren’t going to be hitting the hood.

They’re going to be impacted by the grill or by other areas, which in, for my understanding are not, there’s not a firm commitment to addressing those incidents in this notice of proposed rulemaking. While I think while ultimately this rulemaking is a great thing, and we’ll save a lot of lives for people whose heads might come in contact with the hood during a collision, it’s not going to change.

Incidents where the height of the pedestrian’s head doesn’t contact the hood.

[00:14:32] Anthony: Okay, so this proposed rule will not eliminate trucks and SUVs and crossovers, right? No. So this is one of these things that I got to ask is when these people are designing these cars, like we’ve talked about why are manufacturers spending all this time building these 9, 000 pound SUVs?

Because that’s what the consumer wants. But the consumer doesn’t want a car that’s gonna, easily kill people, pedestrians and whatnot. So how did, how does this come about? What are these designers thinking? Or they’re just, in the past they just never had to think about [00:15:00] pedestrians. Is it that simple?

There’s no regulations around, hey, think about people outside your vehicle?

[00:15:07] Michael: If you consider, the history of auto safety, it wasn’t until almost 1970, after decades of vehicles on the road where we even started to consider What crashes were doing to the human inside the car and we’re still battling to get, sound and effective regulations in place to protect people in cars.

The idea that pedestrians needed to be protected by the car structure itself is somewhat new. Europe Was again out in front of the United States on this issue and probably a few other countries by putting in Pedestrian crash worthiness standards that did things like I believe this rules into the do creating, you know softer But not too soft hoods because there’s a chance That you’ll, a hood that’s too soft can allow the pedestrian’s head to make contact with hard engine components.

So you there’s a middle ground there that I think [00:16:00] they’re trying to achieve with this standard. To make, hoods and bumpers the least damaging they can. With accounting for both, the vehicle size and speed and also, how close the how protective is the hood of allowing the internal components of the engine from making contact with the pedestrian.

So there’s a lot of considerations here, and it’s a difficult standard and, they note, this standard is going to be going into coming into play right around the same time as the new. Pedestrian automatic emergency braking rule, which would require vehicles that detect a pedestrian to be stopping anyway, before they even reach this point.

It’s going to be quite some time before we see what the results are here.

[00:16:43] Anthony: Is then, so you’re saying in 1970, things started to change. What happened then? Oh, it was the creation of the center for auto safety. There we go. Yeah. Yep. If you’d like to continue to support this work, go to autosafety.

org and click on the donate button. Back to you, Mr. Perkins. It looked like you were going to say something.

[00:16:58] Fred: I was just going to say that as [00:17:00] Michael pointed out, the U. S. is essentially being dragged into this by the European community and the United Nations UNECE, European Commission on something that has been working on this for many years.

The U. S. Industry is losing out the market in Europe because the cars would not be compliant with the European standard unless and until this rules in place and affects the design of American cars. There is an economic incentive behind this as well. The result of it’s going to be cars that are safer for pedestrians and will actually expand the market for American cars into Europe.

[00:17:43] Anthony: Aha, take that, Mr. Iacocca. Safety does sell.

[00:17:48] Michael: Yeah, and you know what? Some of you folks out there probably already have vehicles that are European manufactured that comply with the European standards. I don’t know which ones they are, but generally that’s how cars work. Some [00:18:00] companies manufacture them to meet the standards of multiple countries where that’s possible so that it makes it easier for their supply chain.

[00:18:08] Anthony: Taking away my freedoms. Let’s go to a different well.

[00:18:11] Cyclists and Rolling Stop Signs

[00:18:11] Anthony: There’s an article in Electric that talks about cyclists should actually roll through stop signs instead of coming to a complete stop. And so there’s an, there’s a sentence in here that’s confusing to me. It said encouraging increased cycling, whether on electric bikes or good old fashioned acoustic bikes.

Huh? Did A. I. write this article?

[00:18:35] Michael: No, I, I think that the writer there is deploying some of that same humor and sarcasm that we talked about, but you’re just not getting it.

[00:18:44] Anthony: Yeah. Or maybe they’re putting playing cards in their spokes.

[00:18:48] Michael: That was fun.

[00:18:51] Anthony: I never did that as a kid. I didn’t know, he didn’t know that.

We

[00:18:54] Michael: just playing cards, baseball cards, and even aluminum soda cans work pretty well too.

[00:18:59] Fred: [00:19:00] Balloons are really great too, but they don’t last very long,

[00:19:03] Anthony: man. The article basically talks about saying that it’s safer for drivers and for cyclists to roll through a stop sign. They have to take some time to educate drivers.

Because this forces drivers to stop and pay attention more. So from the article, quoting the main takeaway from the study is that a rolling stop law allowed people biking to do an action they preferred in treating a stop sign as a yield. And once drivers were educated, intersection interactions between people biking and driving were no more dangerous than before introducing the law.

This is in

[00:19:34] Fred: Mad Magazine? I thought that was no longer being published.

[00:19:37] Anthony: Yeah, so I’ve driven on a bicycle on the streets of D. C. and the cyclist I was following, he didn’t stop at anything and I was trying to keep up with him. And I never rode a bicycle through the streets of D. C. ever again.

[00:19:50] Michael: Is this a real thing?

Look the study, it’s a study. So it’s, and it’s a study that kind of hinges on drivers [00:20:00] being educated to expect this, where there’s, that’s always a hard thing to do is educating drivers to take proper actions. Essentially the inclusion of the study is it’s more, it’s safer for bikers to, or using this, They call it the Idaho stop.

I’m still not sure why, but it’s called the Idaho stop.

[00:20:20] Anthony: Because the law was first introduced in the state of Idaho.

[00:20:23] Michael: There you go. It’s an Idaho stop and they treat stop signs as yield signs. And what you have to do is educate all of the drivers out there that bicyclists are going, essentially a bicyclist are going to have the right of way.

And in my driving, I try to do that anyway, because I’m incredibly scared of hitting cyclists and pedestrians and I want them to just Do whatever they need to do and get out of my way so I can keep moving. But in this case, I, I don’t know. I think there’s a hump there for education and you’ll see things like that, there’s a big difference in being a pedestrian in Portland, Oregon versus, Birmingham, Alabama in Portland, I remember my [00:21:00] father, after driving the first time, there was like, these people just walk right out into the street, right in front of you.

I was like, yeah, because they have the right of way there versus, what you might be used to where pedestrians wait for the cars to go by. So, ultimately, yeah, it would work great if, so you put the Idaho stop into play and let bicyclists roll through stop signs, but. It’s critical that you at the same time educate all the drivers out there.

And that’s really the hardest part of the whole thing.

[00:21:29] Fred: If I may respectfully disagree with the author, this is batshit crazy. Cyclists are incredibly exposed and I would bet a nickel, which is about my limit, that the author of this either is not a cyclist or is a takeout delivery person in New York City.

I can’t see any justification for this at all. This is just nuts.

[00:21:54] Anthony: Speaking of nuts, let’s do a little gaslighting. How’s that sound?

[00:21:57] Fred: Oh, I like that segue. That’s good.

[00:21:59] Anthony: [00:22:00] Alright.

[00:22:00] Gaslighting in Autonomous Vehicle Reporting

[00:22:00] Anthony: I’m gonna kick off, cause frequent listeners know to the show know that I tend to choose GM crews, but lately, if you’ve been paying attention, I’ve switched it to ARK Investments.

A R K Investments, or Capital. I don’t know what they are. They’re a bunch of bullshit artists. And, in their weekly newsletter, this past week, They talked about the magic of self driving cars, and it’s just gonna happen, no problem. And they did some math, and I applaud them for trying to do some math but this is where they gaslit us.

From their newsletter it says ARK estimates that to be competitive with Uber, Tesla or Waymo you might need only 10, 000 cars to offer similar levels of service in a U. S. city. This is talking about any robo taxi service. That basically to compete with Uber, Tesla. Tesla doesn’t make a self driving car.

They don’t make a robo taxi. They’re claiming they’re going to announce one in October. They only need a company would only need 10, 000 cars to offer similar levels of service in any U. S. city, suggesting a capital [00:23:00] investment of 250 million at 25, 000 per car. This is insanity! This is nuts.

First of all, where are you going to buy a 25, 000 self driving car? Oh,

[00:23:13] Michael: ARK Investments. You can barely buy a 25, 000 car.

[00:23:17] Anthony: Exactly. But hey, ARK Investments, who’s a big pumper of the dumper of a stock called Tesla. They came it from Elon Musk claiming that, hey, gonna have a 25, 000 car coming.

And I think he’s been saying that since since pre pandemic. So that’s what we’ll say, pre pandemic he’s been making this claim, and so ARK’s just yeah. This guy said something. So that’s how we’re going to do the math. This to

[00:23:42] Fred: be fair, Anthony, you can go to Hertz and get one of their no longer wanted Tesla’s for probably a lot less than the 25, 000.

Because Hertz found out that nobody wants to drive the damn thing. So they’re unloading them as fast as they can.

[00:23:58] Anthony: But it’s not a robo taxi, is [00:24:00] it?

[00:24:00] Fred: Because they’re

[00:24:00] Anthony: claiming get a rob taxi’s not what

[00:24:02] Fred: Mr. Musk says.

[00:24:03] Anthony: Anyway, this is absurdist performance art. This is really, the SEC should be investigating arc capital.

’cause this is blatant, pumping of a stock. This is just pure nonsense. This is straight up lies. I, Kathy Wood Arc Investments, you’re my Gaslight of the week. Next up, let’s go with Mr. Fred Perkins. Why? Because he’s not looking at his phone right now.

[00:24:28] Fred: And we also have a new candidate for the Gaslight Award this week, which is Forbes Magazine.

Forbes Magazine. You may have heard of that. The particular article is called From Innovation to Reality. How Autonomous Trucks May Revolutionize Transportation and Logistics. Interestingly, the title actually belies the article because it uses the word may, which is already a weasel [00:25:00] word saying this could happen, but, maybe it won’t happen.

It’s written by, uh, excuse the pronunciation, Derek may Derek Mahan. Who’s the EVP, and I’m not sure what that is, and CEO of Warner Enterprises, a big trucking company. Anyway, he starts with a purported basic fact. Quoting, AVs are everywhere. As a result of extensive testing, they drove nearly 70 million miles on public roads by the end of 2023.

Equivalent to driving across route 66 more than 29, 000 times close quote. It’s my understanding that the actual number is 0, because there is no self driving on a unsupervised truck. That’s on the road. Now, as far as I know, I’m missing something possible. Then they go on to say today’s transportation sector leaders are collaborating with technology providers to refine and validate their solutions with drivers.

Evident a recent study that found the demand for [00:26:00] autonomous trucks is estimated to reach 6. 9 billion. By 2028, 109 percent increase from 3. 3 billion in 2023, close quote. The actual market was zero in 2023 because there were no autonomous trucks on the market. So, I’m not sure where this is coming from.

Maybe they’re talking about trucks that had human supervisory drivers, but those are not autonomous trucks. Let’s see. Not only do they offer solutions improving driver safety, but they also help make driver roles more desirable by enabling drivers to spend more time at home and have more regular schedules, addressing long held complaints within the industry, close quote.

[00:26:42] Anthony: Wait, I gotta jump in there for a second. Okay, so we’re getting rid of the driver. But this makes being a driver more desirable because you don’t have to do anything and you can stay at home. So are they saying that these trucking companies are going to pay these guys to stay home and not

[00:26:59] Fred: [00:27:00] drive?

That’s what he’s saying, of course the truth is that what would happen is if you have autonomous trucks that actually work on the highway and are safe, they’ll be used on main lines where there’s a lot of volume and And, and they make sense and they can go to depots and do all those things.

So what would actually happen is that the undesirable routes, which truckers have to use, and, which bring you to undesirable places like, the top of Pikes Peak to deliver mining equipment, those would actually go to the human drivers because the The routes that are populated and very heavily used would go to the autonomous drivers.

There’s no economic incentive to build an autonomous truck that’s going to deliver mining equipment to the top of pipe speed. This actually gets into the TAO this week, which is Jevon’s paradox. So I won’t talk about this further right now. I’ll just go back into the article. It says, quote, autonomous technologies, like collision avoidance systems, [00:28:00] automatic emergency braking, and advanced driver assistance are already widely adopted to support safety outcomes.

They help detect when there is a risk of a crash or other incidents, alert the driver, and even help maintain vehicle control and initiate braking. This is a conflation of very different technologies. The automatic emergency braking has got nothing to do with autonomous drivers. Okay he’s trying to take credit for a non existent benefit of autonomous driving to say that, we’re already here and we’re already doing this.

A classic rhetorical, Device used by I will, I would say conservative podcasters, for example, that conflates, two separate things and tries to make them equivalent. Let’s see autonomous technologies are proven. No, they’re not proven and as mentioned, safety must remain a top priority.

If it’s a [00:29:00] top priority, it’s not the top priority, right? That’s only one of many priorities, and the actual top priority is preservation of capital. Finally, he says, the industry is working with policymakers to ensure regulations make sense and are consistent across the U. S. Well, that’s true. But what they’re doing is they’re working to obfuscate the safety issues, jeopardize the public.

And indemnify the developers from the hazard that they’re putting on the roads. So I say, let’s turn the page on this tired old rhetoric. Where have we heard that before?

Hey,

[00:29:35] Fred: that’s pretty good. And by the way, can we get Taylor Swift to endorse our cave war? Michael, do you have any contacts there? Yeah,

[00:29:42] Michael: we’re in preliminary discussions with her team.

[00:29:45] Fred: Good. All right, so So that’s my nominee for a gaslight of the week. It’s mr. It’s the article by mr. Mahan

[00:29:54] Anthony: Fred i’m gonna jump on to that because ours technica I also had a similar [00:30:00] article, it must have been, Automatic Trucking Week, something like that, they sent out a press release where basically Ars Technica, we have a driver’s, driverless semis could be months away.

And it, it goes through Kodiak and Aurora and their different systems, but it’s a puff piece. But the part that really was gaslighting it for me was, Directly from the article, the key thing to remember, however, is that NOT deploying self driving technology is also risky.

Excuse me? Nearly 6, 000 people were killed in crashes involving large trucks driven by humans in 2022. At scale, self driving trucks should reduce this number significantly. Those of you listening, we don’t have to explain why this is just corporate puffery any further. We’re gonna

[00:30:48] Fred: have to expand this to include weasel words.

Yeah, I think

[00:30:52] Anthony: this is gonna become no longer gaslight illumination, it’s gonna become math illumination.

[00:30:58] Michael: Yeah I actually [00:31:00] have for my gaslight illumination of the week. I’ve gotten one that’s somewhat new. It’s gaslighting by omission.

[00:31:06] Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator Fire Investigation

[00:31:06] Michael: So omission, not emission. Stellantis, Chrysler. I’m shocked you haven’t made it into the gaslight illumination so far, but here’s your chance.

And you didn’t even say anything. But what’s happening is. NHTSA has opened an investigation into 21 to 23 Jeep Wranglers and 21 to 23 Jeep Gladiators. There have been nine fires reported by consumers that have happened while parked whether in a driveway, parking lot, wherever, while the ignition’s in an off position and no one’s around the vehicle.

So these vehicles are catching on fire. It’s unexplained why at this point. They think it’s Thermal events originating at the power steering pump electrical connector but they haven’t done a recall and NHTSA apparently has requested they do a recall and they’ve said no. Otherwise, I don’t know if NHTSA would be [00:32:00] opening an investigation to this.

This is a situation where, Chrysler probably should be going ahead and doing a recall and warning owners not to park these vehicles indoors in the garage and parking garages and other places, but they’re avoiding doing that. And they’re not even responding, or I haven’t found a quote from Stellantis yet that responds to this question.

Why is this a park outside situation where owners need to be wary? Clearly there’s not a recall yet, but there’s an investigation ongoing and we’ve got nine, at least nine incidents of fire occurring in these vehicles when they’re parked. On this one, I would say, you’re gaslighting us by emission, Stellantis you need to, and it’s somewhat unprecedented for a manufacturer.

To issue a warning. I’m not even sure if anyone ever has when there’s not a recall in effect, but I tell you what we’re going to start we’re going to issue a park outside warning for all these vehicles right now The center for auto safety is telling you if you own a 21 to 23 wrangler or a [00:33:00] 21 to 23 gladiator Park it outside.

Don’t park in your house, particularly overnight when you’re going to be indoors sleeping and could be killed By a house fire caused one of these vehicles

[00:33:11] Anthony: Hey, if you want to read more of Michael’s quote, we have a link to the AP article where he is quoted. That wasn’t my best sentence of all time, but it was pretty good.

That was a pretty good Gaslight.

[00:33:24] Fred: I think these are great nominees, but how does this get us back to Piggly Wiggly? We haven’t talked about that today.

[00:33:30] Tesla’s Autopilot Labeling Facilities

[00:33:30] Anthony: Speaking of Piggly Wiggly, Tesla, let’s do it. Okay, before we get into Fred’s towel, let’s do a quick rundown. There’s a good article that I wish we could link to, but it’s paywalled.

And this is in what was this, in Business Insider, right? Okay. Where it’s the article is, What it’s like working at Tesla’s autopilot labeling facilities, where your keystrokes and bathroom brakes are tracked. Aw, that’s such a fun company. Basically, Tesla they’re, all [00:34:00] their cars are, have cameras on the outside, most of them have cameras on the inside, and all of that data belongs to them.

So Tesla gets full chunk of all this data, and they have people that they’re paying 20 an hour to go through and be like, that’s a white line on a road, that’s someone picking their nose, that’s this, and to quote unquote train their artificial intelligence. I would like to stress the word artificial at this point.

And it seems It seems like a pretty good job, is what I’m trying to say. It seems like I’m gonna update my resume, possibly move to Buffalo and and go ahead and do this. What do you guys think? Think this is a good idea?

[00:34:37] Fred: I think cyber sweatshops are a bad idea whose time has come. Ooh, but I’ll be sweating dollars!

I think that these companies all use the metrics to lop off the bottom 5 percent of the performers every week. And they keep churning the employee pool until they’ve got forever. They just, [00:35:00] it’s a, it’s an interesting practice they’ve gotten software continually lopping off the bottom 5 percent of the

[00:35:07] Anthony: So Tesla’s been doing this since at least 2016, where they have people, they sit there and they look at this video all day and they click and label it and whatnot.

And 2016, that is 8 years ago, right? Can I do math? Yeah, that’s 8 years. And they’ve been claiming since then that, um, what is that, that Tesla has said its neural network will someday be able to train itself. But for now it relies on human workers. Eight years later, it’s neural network. I think just, it strikes me as a big lookup table.

I don’t think it’s a neural network. I don’t think there’s any sort of heuristics going on here. I think it’s just like Amazon’s mechanical Turk. Oh my God. Did I make, did I, am I just stealing gaslight illumination this week? Is this my third one?

[00:35:53] Michael: Oh boy. I don’t understand some things here, how, for a company that, that.

He continues to [00:36:00] talk about AI and how the neural networks and how one day these computers are gonna be training themselves. Why are they having to use thousands of humans to drive them forward into ai? That doesn’t, is that not counterintuitive or am I just not smart enough to understand?

[00:36:15] Fred: That’s because AI is a big lookup table that’s all it is.

[00:36:21] Anthony: In this case, it is a big lookup table.

[00:36:24] The Reality of Artificial Intelligence

[00:36:24] Fred: We’ve talked about this before, but artificial intelligence is a misnomer. It’s not artificial intelligence. It’s automated correlation. And correlation is quite different than causality. And that’s why AI struggles to do anything that humans can’t do better.

For

[00:36:40] Anthony: example, real quick, so remember when the IBM supercomputer won Jeopardy, or when it wins at chess and whatnot, what it’s doing is it’s essentially a really super fast database that says, okay, you moved your pawn here are all the possible permutations for the next 20 moves. [00:37:00] And it figures out which is the best ones and calculates odds.

That’s, they label that artificial intelligence. It’s a really, there’s no, nothing intelligent about that. The people who programmed it were very intelligent. They came up with some really clever ways to make things faster and cache data. And quote unquote, look ahead does not mean that it is intuiting anything.

Or there’s any conscious thought behind it. This is, it’s a really cool database. And this kind of exposes that. Tesla is not artificial intelligence. There’s no intelligence there at all. There’s no inference. There’s no heuristics. It is a lookup table.

[00:37:35] Fred: It is intelligent in the sense that it allows people to extract lots and lots of money from private investors.

Hey,

[00:37:46] Anthony: Kathy, what at ARK investments, how you doing girl?

[00:37:50] Michael: From the safety perspective, this article and beyond kind of the workers issues in the AI, the workers. Reported to the business and business insider that they were told [00:38:00] to ignore no turn on red. No u turn signs meaning We suppose that they’re not training the tesla ai to adhere to those signs, you know violating Laws and rules of the road which we’ve already seen tesla have to issue a recall with nitsa and it seems like the, as one, one of the workers summarized it said, it’s a driver first mentality.

I think the idea is we want to train it to drive like a human would not a robot that’s just following the rules. And I think all of us would be on the side of training these vehicles to be robots that just follow the rules. Because we don’t need any more humans on our road and the promise that all of these autonomy and AI companies are making to us is that ultimately the robot is going to drive safer than we ever could and so we’re safer hopping to a vehicle with a robot.

We don’t want to hop into cars that are driven by robots mimicking humans. That sounds like a terribly poorly [00:39:00] thought out idea.

[00:39:02] Anthony: Shameful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:39:03] Jevons Paradox Explained

[00:39:03] Anthony: So with that, let’s go to the, let’s go to the Tao and and you’re inviting somebody named Javon. You’ve now

[00:39:08] Fred: entered the Tao of Fred. It sounds like an old Elton John song.

Javon’s Paradox. Javon’s Paradox. Yeah. Anyway putting Elton John aside for the moment. Javon’s Paradox is actually something that most of us are familiar with. So when an innovation occurs that makes some particular thing more efficient, Then people tend to do more of it. And overall, the multitude of people doing the more efficient thing overwhelms the original efficiency.

So for example in the 1970s. There was something called the gas crisis. And so, the EPA required cars to become a lot more efficient and gas mileage went way up. Cars use a lot less gas. This caused a depression [00:40:00] in the cause suppression of gasoline prices and made it very cheap. And then because gasoline is very cheap, people started buying a lot of SUVs.

And the number of SUVs that people purchased caused, even though they were more efficient thermodynamically than they were previously, there were just so many of them and they were so big that overall the consumption of petroleum products went way up. And this got us where we are today. So there’s a lot of parallels.

Led lights. You can even go into communications, for example, with the Internet, right? Which originally was going to be. A forum for free exchange of ideas. Everything was going to be great along with the newspapers. It would allow instant facts checking and everything is going to be wonderful. And it became a very efficient way of exchanging information.

In fact, it became so efficient that people started using it overwhelmingly rather than buying [00:41:00] newspapers. And it’s caused the collapse of local news also the collapse of fact checking. And really the destruction of what had once been a news industry with a lot of integrity and a lot of a lot of very large footprint, I should say, struggling for exactly what that is.

So that’s Jevon’s Paradox, that the efficiency of something, increasing the efficiency of some desirable thing actually destroys whatever it is that you were trying to, to So this has applications for AVs automated vehicles, because if in fact they’re doing something that people really like, and I suspect right now there’s already a competition going for the first child conceived in an AV in San Francisco, I don’t know who that is, if it’s in fact doing something that people really like, people are going to use it a lot.

And because they’re going to use it a lot, it’s going to overwhelm whatever that efficiency was [00:42:00] that the AVs brought. Now, we’ve had trouble identifying exactly what that is because the AVs actually do nothing that a human driver can’t do, but still putting that aside, maybe the privacy. Or the perception of privacy that they’ve got in an AV will cause them to be overwhelmingly popular, and they will simply take over the cities.

Then whatever benefit they’ve got goes away because you’ll have streets clogged with AVs rather than streets clogged with self driven vehicles. Anyway, Jevons Paradox, and mathematics, I’m sure you remember. Anthony and Michael, your experience with multivariable calculus. yeah,

[00:42:46] Anthony: you’re talking to two guys with philosophy degrees.

Does that

[00:42:50] Michael: come after calculus 101? Cause I

[00:42:52] Fred: did come after that. Yeah. So anyway, there’s in multivariable calculus, there’s something called a partial [00:43:00] derivative. Okay, and there’s also something called a total derivative. Now, a total derivative considers the context of all of the variables in a mathematical problem, and talks about the sensitivity of all of the variables put together in a big lump.

It’s very difficult to manipulate mathematically, so people came up with something called a partial derivative in which they just extract one variable from that mess and look at what happens when you just change that one variable while leaving everything else constant. This is actually what Jevon’s paradox is all about.

It looks at looking, making one change in a very complex system. And then assumes that very complex system is going to remain static while you change that one variable. Folks, that never happens. That’s, that’s not reality. It’s, in a sense, the difference between a digital simulation and an analog system.

The digital simulation always [00:44:00] tends to get you to the incorrect result much faster. And when you look at the projections of the benefits associated with AVs, that’s exactly what we’re encountering. We don’t know what the future is going to look like. We do know that it’s going to be unexpected. The purported benefits of AVs assuming there are some besides capital appreciation by the developers will almost certainly.

Be overwhelmed by whatever disadvantages come about because of unknown circumstances and an inability to project that very complex system into the future by changing a fundamental aspect of what the system is built on. Jevons Paradox. End of rant. Thank you.

[00:44:47] Anthony: I don’t know if that qualifies as a rant, but I want to find this J’Von guy and his pair of ducks and we’ll have a talk to them.

[00:44:53] Fred: He’s sad, sadly he’s been dead for over a hundred years, so it may be difficult.

[00:44:57] Anthony: Because a couple of ducks killed him. [00:45:00] Hey, come on, comedy people. Like that? Huh? Anybody? You can’t just,

[00:45:05] Michael: wait, you can’t just call it comedy. If it’s not funny, it’s not funny.

[00:45:10] Fred: If you repeat it enough, sometimes people will laugh just to make it go away.

Huh? There you go, there’s an example.

[00:45:20] Essential Car Safety Items

[00:45:20] Anthony: Alright before we jump into recalls, there’s a fun little, I don’t know, I’ll call it advertising slash listicle thing, but it’s in the Huffington Post. And it’s titled, 15 Car Safety Essentials You Should Always Have Before Hitting the Road. And it’s got some good things in there, and the first thing it has is a car repair kit.

And I think this is a great idea. So I remember. Pre 9 11, I was given a car roadside repair kit, and it came with road flares. And I remember getting on a plane, flying back to California, and I put it on the conveyor belt, and I’m like, Oh, this has a class 2 explosive in it. Ah, I’ll just explain it as it [00:46:00] goes through.

No one stopped me. No one cared. The plane was rerouted to Vegas. Same thing. No one stopped me, so In the middle of that United Airlines flight, I cracked open a flare and said, Take this plane to Cuba! And they just, gave me free drinks. Times were different then. Life was simpler.

[00:46:16] Fred: Again, folks, ironic humor.

Just to let it go.

[00:46:19] Anthony: Really? Do you think somebody’s sitting there going he hijacked a plane? He went to Cuba?

[00:46:25] Fred: We have a lot of listeners, Shane.

[00:46:27] Anthony: Between your sister and my brother, that’s two. Okay.

[00:46:30] Michael: So you would have been better off with the LED road flares that come in at number six.

[00:46:35] Anthony: Oh this was the nineties there.

I don’t think they had LED road flares, but it seems like

[00:46:40] Michael: a pretty good idea over the flammable type.

[00:46:43] Anthony: I agree a hundred percent. That seems pretty good. But the number two on the list is jumper cables. People really need to be educated how to use jumper cables.

[00:46:52] Fred: Yeah.

[00:46:53] Anthony: That’s because they’re incredibly dangerous.

[00:46:56] Fred: Yeah let me just say that the good jumper cables are not [00:47:00] dangerous because they contain circuitry that stops the flow of electricity if you put them on the wrong way. So this particular article was defective in that it should have specified safe. Jumper cables, which do exist. Anyway, I digress.

[00:47:16] Anthony: No, this is great.

I didn’t know this. How do you identify, as a consumer, how do you identify safe jumper cables?

[00:47:21] Fred: You look at the box, which says safe jumper cables.

[00:47:26] Anthony: Oh, you’re gaslighting me. It’s

[00:47:27] Fred: difficult. It’s difficult.

[00:47:31] Anthony: One of the things on the list I think is stupid is a cell phone car mount. That’s not really essential.

We don’t want people looking at their phones.

[00:47:40] Michael: Yeah, but if they’re going to be looking at their phones or if they’re simply using their phone as a navigational aid, which is something I definitely do on trips it’s, better than using a hand to control the phone, having it sit right in front of your face.

[00:47:54] Anthony: I don’t know. Okay. You can convince me. First aid kit. I thought that was [00:48:00] excellent. I think that’s a good

[00:48:01] Michael: idea. And flashlight. The one thing that needs, everyone needs to, there’s a, the window breaker seatbelt cutter tool. These days, there’s so many cars that have laminated side windows that you need to know what type of windows you have before you rely on a tool like that.

If you’re, if your side windows are tempered, those tools are great. They’re going to shatter the window, but if they’re laminated, those tools are useless. And it’s better to have a crowbar or a, a small block of C4 explosive if you want to get out of the laminated windows.

[00:48:32] Fred: That window breaker assumes that you’ve got a tempered glass window and it would be useless in a laminated glass situation.

And also, even though there are a lot of good individual suggestions in this article, if you put them all together. That’s a big pile of stuff and some of the things in that you need to have immediately available while you’re driving in an emergency and some of it’s going to sit in the back of your car.

So [00:49:00] what’s missing in this is a way of making that accessible at the right time in the right place and storing it in a way that is better than spreading it all over the front seat that’s unoccupied.

[00:49:10] Anthony: Yeah so we’ve talked about you’re in a crash and things flying around. Like, how do you store your crowbar and your C4?

I guess your C4 is okay in the crash, but the crowbar, how do you stop that from flying? I

[00:49:20] Michael: do, I actually carry a crowbar just in case, and it has come in handy for a number of things in my trunk though. So it’s not going to impact my head and a collision. In fact, I try to keep all loose objects in my car and my trunk and, unless I’m on a trip and it’s not possible.

And, I, I was traveling two weeks ago and had, a suitcase and water bottles and a backpack with a laptop in it and all sorts of other things inside the. Compart the cabin and there’s no way around that. I just had too much stuff that I was taking with me and sometimes it’s inevitable that you’re going to have loose objects in the car you should do your best to place them in areas where the smaller heavier [00:50:00] ones aren’t going to come in contact with you and the softer ones are the only things that are going to come in contact with you in case of a collision, it’s that’s a tough one.

[00:50:09] Anthony: Michael, I think we’re both really glad that you came back from your doomsday prepper escape route, because in my trunk, I had a backpack, a crowbar, all this stuff. What missing from the article as a former resident of the San Francisco Bay area is a gallon of water. Cause anytime I’d go over like the Oakland Bay bridge, I was like that’s my gallon of water in case the upper level collapses on me.

And then one day my brother drank it. I was like, dude, what are you doing drinking my survival water? And he’s it tastes old. Well, but it’s water, whatever. Anyway it’s a fun little list. Like we’ve said, there’s some things in here that are definitely worth having. The road at adorable.

[00:50:50] Michael: Yeah, at Road Atlas, if you’re in a place where, your phone doesn’t have a connection, that could come in really handy.

I’m struggling to figure out why you would need a [00:51:00] battery powered radio, given what I hear on the radio these days. But, that’s number 15 for a reason.

[00:51:07] Anthony: It’s number 15 because that’s the least amount of money the article makes from, Alright, let’s go into some recalls time.

[00:51:14] Recent Vehicle Recalls

[00:51:14] Anthony: Alright, let’s start up the Chrysler, also known as Stellantis.

1. 2 million plus vehicles, the 2019 2024 Ram 1500 hiccup. They’re having some problems with their anti lock brake systems and electronic stability control. Oh boy, that’s a lot of trucks to recall. Michael, do we think it’s outside?

[00:51:40] Michael: No, I don’t believe there’s any fires going here. What the, I think what the real problem is that the the electronic stability control can fail due to a failure in the ABS or analog brake system.

So I think what they’re going to be doing is replacing the analog brake module or maybe [00:52:00] reprogramming it more likely with new software. To align it with the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 126 that they’re not quite meeting in this case. And that looks like a recall that’ll be out next month.

[00:52:12] Anthony: All right. Moving on, our next recall ah, Chrysler, 32, 863 vehicles. This is the 2020 to 2024 Jeep Gladiator. Now this is different from the park outside one we talked about earlier. This there are three and a half inch instrument panel cluster may become blank. That’s never good. So you’re driving down the street and all of a sudden, Hey, I’m going.

Eight miles over the speed limit. I’m doing nothing like

[00:52:44] Michael: there’s, that’s, this is one of those, that’s a yikes for me. It’s, if you don’t know what your speed is, it makes driving very difficult or unsafe at a minimum. Beyond that, there are a lot of other things on the instrument panel that you need.

And there’s the, this is a [00:53:00] you Use your words. We’re gonna, this is a it’s a huge safety problem for a lot of reasons, but it looks like, they’re gonna be, I don’t know, we’re gonna, I’ve lost my, I’ve completely lost my language skills here. Yep, and he’s thinking about

[00:53:15] Anthony: where I put my next go bag.

Anyway, they’re

[00:53:19] Michael: going to be, they’re going to be replacing a circuit, a printed circuit board in your instrument panel as part of this recall. And essentially you’ve got to fail another failed electric electronic part on a vehicle contributing to this recall.

[00:53:33] Anthony: Oh boy. So if you’re driving one of these cars and all of a sudden your instrument panel goes blank it’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

Next up Volkswagen, not a rare entrant, 837 vehicles, ooh, a very small number of vehicles, the 2023 2024 Volkswagen ID. 4, ah, hence why it’s only 837 vehicles. This is the nut securing the primary inflator of the passenger airbag, may be [00:54:00] loose, oh. If the nuts are loose, the airbag may not inflate properly.

So someone just didn’t turn a wrench enough. Is that what happened?

[00:54:10] Michael: Yeah, that’s basically what happened. I, they use certain torque settings and everything’s they’re not just, Trusting a worker on the factory line with a wrench to make a determination of when a nut is tight enough.

They use torque settings on whatever machinery they’re using to torque those nuts. And in this case, the result is, I think they were inspecting missing inflator in one of. They’re in one of their factories and they found that, whoa, we’ve got airbag inflators there to loose. And, like anything, a cannon, a gun, anything that has a projectile coming out of one end of it, if you’re not properly bolted down on the other end, really bad and unexpected things are going to happen.

Basically you would have Deployments that, either don’t protect the passenger, [00:55:00] possibly deployments that are dangerous. But recall is going ahead and recalling all these I D four vehicles from twenty twenty four.

[00:55:09] Fred: Loose nuts. Excuse me. Loose nuts seems like an invitation to political humor, particularly given debates that we’ve heard recently.

Is that within our scope or do we need to stay away from that?

[00:55:20] Anthony: Define humor. Humor. Define humor.

[00:55:23] Fred: That’s

[00:55:23] Anthony: difficult

[00:55:23] Fred: to do.

[00:55:24] Anthony: That’s good. Come on. Michael got a juggle. All right. Last recall. Volkswagen. Wait a second. Two Chryslers, two Volkswagen. They meet in a bar. Next thing you know. This is 98, 806 vehicles.

The 2021 to 2024 Volkswagen ID. What’s lucky people

[00:55:43] Michael: here. The ID for is actually, I took a look at them cause I keep feeling like I hear I, they’re coming up in recalls and they’ve been making them since the 2021 model year and that model year has 10 recalls on it. So you’ve got all, a good number of recalls on your vehicle.

If you bought the ID [00:56:00] for and in this case, The vehicle’s door handles operate using electronics. And I believe it’s a a, an electronic latch of some sort operating them. And so water gets into a circuit board and the door handles and What ultimately happens is you could be driving down the road and your door can fly open unexpectedly, which, particularly if you’re not wearing your seatbelt could be to be a very bad thing.

And they’re going to recall that replace. I think they’re doing using. inspecting, they will replace the circuit board if they see damage. And then they’re putting in some type of countermeasure to ensure that no more water gets onto the circuit board.

[00:56:41] Anthony: So this is not manufactured as well as my AM FM radio clock radio shower buddy.

[00:56:47] Fred: No, but I’m confident none of our listeners dry without using a seatbelt, Michael, I just want to be clear about that.

[00:56:55] Anthony: Oh, my car has seatbelts. That’s not like I removed them. They’re still [00:57:00] there. Okay. That

[00:57:04] Fred: was humor, right? Humor. Okay.

[00:57:08] Conclusion and Farewell

[00:57:08] Anthony: Hey listeners. Thanks so much. Thank you for telling all of your friends, clicking five stars, rating rescribing, rescrubbing, re doing anything you want, telling all of your friends, sharing going to autosafety.

org, clicking donate and then actually completing the donation form and clicking submit and not using a credit card number you bought off the dark web. And until next week.

[00:57:30] Fred: One, one final thought. Oh no. Michael, did you happen to go to a Piggly Wiggly while you were on your recent trip?

[00:57:38] Michael: I did not go in one, I passed a few.

Oh, that’s tragic. Alright, thank you. I apologize, yeah. Thank you. Bye, everybody.

[00:57:48] Anthony: Oh, no, you get some more Wiggly. You’re on their payroll. Goodbye.

[00:57:51] Fred: Oink. For more information, visit www. autosafety. org.