Tarrifs, Chinese AV regulations and road safety

[00:00:00] Introduction and Podcast Overview

[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. Welcome to the world’s greatest podcast. The only podcast that will ask the tough questions like, do cats just view humans as furniture that feed?

Furniture that feed, furniture that anyway, we’re going to talk about not about that. We’re going to talk about auto issues. How’s that sound? That sounds

[00:00:42] Michael: great. Good morning. How are you doing?

[00:00:44] Anthony: There we go. There’s some

[00:00:45] Michael: energy. I’m a dog person for the record.

[00:00:47] Anthony: There you go. Fred’s a bird person.

Don’t know how we get along.

[00:00:51] Fred: Are you a mog? Did you ever see Spaceballs? Yeah. Half man, half dog. Oh,

[00:00:57] Anthony: John Candy. The great

[00:00:58] Michael: John Candy. He was a [00:01:00] great dog man.

Yeah. My uncle, Mel Brooks, was involved in that.

[00:01:05] Anthony: Oh, wishful thinking.

[00:01:07] Discussion on Tariffs and Auto Industry Impact

[00:01:07] Anthony: Hey, let’s talk tariffs. I don’t know if you guys have heard of tariffs.

But the CEO of Ford, Jim Farley, sure has. Quoting from an article from NPR. Let’s be honest, Ford CEO Jim Farley told an investor conference in February, long term a 25 percent tariff across the Mexico and Canadian border will blow a hole in the U. S. industry that we have never seen. It’ll be the greatest hole.

It’ll be amazing. It’ll be so beautiful. It’ll be like chocolate cake. In fact, Farley noted because U. S. plants have built supply chains that span North America, U. S. based manufacturing will be hit especially hard. Analysts at Bernstein Research have simply found that Detroit automakers will be particularly vulnerable compared to their international competitors.

[00:01:48] Safety Concerns and Auto Industry Challenges

[00:01:48] Anthony: Now, what does this mean for safety?

[00:01:51] Michael: I don’t know. Hard to know. Think the immediate thing I think it means for safety is the [00:02:00] manufacturers have been predicting that the price of a car could rise from 3, 000 depending on the type of car. And that I’ve heard them say that they’re going to be producing about one third less vehicles if these tariffs aren’t met.

Very temporary which means that, we rely to get safe, new safety technology on the roads to get better automatic emergency braking to get better vehicle designs on the roads. We rely on some sort of turnover to make that happen. And if less cars are being produced, less cars are being.

Purchase, then that turnover slows down significantly. One of the things, one of the major impacts on safety is going to be the fact that older cars are staying on the road longer. We’re already at a position where older cars on America’s roads are older than they’ve ever been. They’re over 13 years old right now, I believe, as of last year.

And so this is only going to exacerbate that issue. And, Maybe cause the type of [00:03:00] issues we saw during the COVID pandemic where used car prices leapt and new car prices leapt and a lot of people were, weren’t able to afford vehicles or had to purchase vehicles that weren’t as new, weren’t as safe.

I think that will be one of the major impacts from this.

[00:03:20] Anthony: You always see auto manufacturers complain Oh, it’s 3 for this little safety thing. We’re not going to do it. Probably that’s going to do that. I was having, I had coffee yesterday with a super fan of the show, George, from Canada. And he, we were talking about the Hyundai Kia problem with the kids stealing here in the U.

S. Everybody remembers that. And part of the problem is those Hyundai Kias didn’t have an immobilizer. Whereas in Canada, apparently they never had this problem because Canadian law required them to have an immobilizer. And that’s just a 3, 4 part. So I just imagine this is just more 3 and 4 safety parts and security parts that auto manufacturers can be like, look, we gotta charge you 10 grand more because some dumb [00:04:00] trade war.

Brakes are only three out of four tires. That’s it. We’re only getting, some of the wheels are going to stop.

[00:04:06] Fred: I think it’s more of a problem than that. I think of something like an airbag. An airbag costs, what, a thousand dollars. It has to cross borders several times when it’s being manufactured.

Part of the manufacture might occur in Canada, part of it might occur in Mexico, part of it might occur here. Parts come from everywhere. As all of those individual parts come in, Each of them is going to be assessed to tariff and as the partially assembled part transfers across the border. It may also be assessed to tariff.

So it’s going to have a dramatic effect on lots of components. So I don’t think anybody yet knows because some person and unelected bureaucrat, no doubt we’ll have to establish the rules. For how these tariffs are going to be accomplished and of course, this gives the [00:05:00] politicians numerous opportunities to wield influence over individual companies and decisions.

So it’s, that’s another aspect of the tariffs that go towards the favor of the politicians. Another good reason to have them is simply so they can make winners and losers out of the various constituents.

[00:05:22] Anthony: I give a big thumbs up to Ford CEO Jim Farley for being the only one to actually speak up on this issue and be like, We’re gonna get screwed!

[00:05:31] Michael: There, he, I noticed yesterday there were some other folks, our friends at the Alliance for Automotive Innovation spoke out pretty clearly as basically saying that, the prices of some vehicles could rise 25%. They didn’t seem all that excited about the prospect of tariffs, that the Canada, Mexico, United States automotive, production pipeline has been relatively stable now for about 25 years, and this [00:06:00] is going to throw a pretty massive kink into it. And, the industry seems to be fine with the status quo. Typically, they are because I think that this that having a predictable marketplace serves them better than what they’re about to get.

So I. I, and I’ll get to this later, I think in my gaslight, but I think the industry has a very different view of this subject in the administration, but they are a little unwilling to speak up as Anthony just pointed out.

[00:06:32] Anthony: I do paraphrase Fred Perkins, everything in the future will be more expensive.

[00:06:37] Global Road Safety and Economic Impact

[00:06:37] Anthony: I’m going to jump to a op ed in the Guardian. This is a really good one titled, If Road Deaths Were a Virus, We’d Call It a Pandemic. Safer Transport Helps Us All and We Need It Urgently. This is basically they’re breaking down how dangerous the roads are globally. It’s over a million people every year killed.

We’ve talked about in the U. S. it’s over 40, 000 people a year killed. [00:07:00] Some hucksters like GM Cruise and Waymo will be like, Computers are better than humans. Now a great little blurb from this article I’m gonna pull out is, quoting, Key to meeting this goal to reduce pedestrian deaths and road deaths.

Key to meeting this goal is the decision to design and build our transport systems for people, not for motor vehicles, and to make safety paramount in all decisions. That is such a simple concept, but I think it is completely ignored, at least in the U. S., where the vision is we need more roads, we need wider roads, we need more lanes, we need all of these things.

Let’s eliminate speed limits. Whereas this is, hey, let’s do this from a people perspective and then design the systems around that, which I thought was great. Does that make me a socialist?

[00:07:50] Michael: Globally, you’re looking, I think there’s, it was 1. 2 million people die in crashes every year, which is, a city, the size of Dallas, Texas disappearing from the map every year, [00:08:00] which is an enormous toll.

And, they point out in the article, something that’s really important that people don’t think about as much as they should, the. The car crashes basically eliminate between 3 and 5 percent of your average country’s gross domestic product and costs and related issues. And in the United States, our really high traffic rate is probably a little higher than that.

I think our GDP is around 28 trillion and last year’s estimate for the cost of vehicle crashes was around 2 trillion. So we’re up around 7% I believe so it’s a significant cost and it’s worth putting in, reasonably priced safety measures onto roads into vehicles to avoid that ultimate hit on our bottom line and not to mention to save a lot of lives and prevent, Hundreds of thousands of injuries every year.

[00:08:52] Fred: The problem is that ship sailed a hundred years ago, and when there were no, when there was no technology to [00:09:00] really protect people in individual cars except, the technology was only what was between people’s ears. And the cars themselves were quite dangerous, but people wanted the transportation more than they wanted the safety.

Apparently that was the consensus, but 100 years have passed. And now there are a lot of technological solutions that can be put into cars. For example, speed limiters. That would be very simple technically to implement, but people are just reluctant to do that again, because time is more important than human lives, right?

And if he wants to be able to get around quickly, and the death that occurs is always somebody else’s death, right? Until it’s yours. So there’s, that’s a real problem. This really requires government. Perspective and government action to do the kind of planning that is required and put the regulations in place that are required to cut this down.

It’s really an economic decision at this point. [00:10:00] And it’s got nothing to do with the technology or technology available to save an awful lot of lives.

[00:10:07] Anthony: Michael, do you know of anybody around the world is designing streets and roadways with pedestrians or as they say, for designing systems for people?

[00:10:17] Michael: I think in Northern Europe, Norway, and those types of areas, there’s more of a focus on that kind of the places where the Vision Zero philosophy took hold first, where there’s cities that are designed more for pedestrian, bicycle traffic than they are for cars. And when you enter a city, you’re very limited.

The areas you can get to with a car and how fast you can go. And there are all sorts of measures put in place to protect people from cars essentially, but to still allow vehicles to, to traverse the area, just not quite as conveniently as we would all expect it to be in America. That’s really the only.

area in the world that I’m aware of that has really taken [00:11:00] hold of this idea of, designing cities that aren’t completely reliant on automobiles to function.

[00:11:08] Anthony: So again, I think Fred would argue, we eliminate the human. We let the computers drive everything, right?

[00:11:17] Fred: Sure. Why not?

[00:11:21] Anthony: Great.

[00:11:21] Autonomous Vehicles and Technological Challenges

[00:11:21] Anthony: Along with that, we have, I believe it’s my favorite car company, Maserati, is now they this is, I don’t get this, but I’ll try and get through this.

So Mazda, there’s apparently an autonomous vehicle speed challenge where for an engineer’s point of view, this has got to be entertaining as can be. It’s let’s build a supercar and have it drive itself as fast as possible. As best I can tell, it’s only driving in a straight line. But I, it’s unclear.

So there’s an article in The Verge quoting, These world speed records are much more than just a showcase of future technology. [00:12:00] Paul Mitchell, CEO of Indy Autonomous Challenge and Aid Adoption BV, said in a statement, We’re pushing AI driver software and robotics hardware to the absolute edge. Doing so with a street car is helpful.

It’s helping transition the learnings of autonomous racing to enable safe, secure, sustainable, high speed autonomous mobility on highways. Nonsense. Okay, Fred, very technical question for you. Okay, so you’re a computer. Does your processing power change based on how fast that computer is moving? Why are you insulting me, Anthony?

I’m not a

[00:12:40] Fred: computer. Okay. I try to be so nice, too. I’m not insulting. Is this your gas light? No, this isn’t my gas light. It should be, but

[00:12:54] Anthony: it could be a gas light. This is nonsense.

[00:12:57] Fred: Driving a car in a straight line has absolutely nothing to [00:13:00] do with the safety challenges that confront AVs operating in populated areas.

They’re completely separate. Technical issues.

[00:13:10] Anthony: Okay. And I can’t tell if this is true. It seems

[00:13:12] Michael: like they’re trying to bootstrap themselves into making this sound like it’s something important when in fact it’s just a bunch of speed junkies playing with toy cars.

[00:13:24] Anthony: Yeah. This is, I’m surprised Kyle didn’t wind up here.

[00:13:28] Michael: Oh, yeah. Also speaking to Kyle, I have to bring the humans into this. The human land speed record is 763 miles per hour. So the robots have a long way to go here

[00:13:39] Anthony: because it only reached 197. 7 miles per hour. I ain’t got nothing more about no robot.

[00:13:46] Fred: I think autonomous vehicles have orbited the Earth at 18, 000 miles per hour, so they might have a long way to go.

[00:13:54] Anthony: Yeah, but that’s if you believe the Earth is round. Or at least

[00:13:59] Fred: [00:14:00] cylindrical. Why not?

[00:14:01] Anthony: I don’t know. Continuing with our autonomous vehicle section of the show from MSN Doggy job cuts will slow down robo taxi rollouts, says fired federal worker. The doggy department, the Elon Musk thing where I assume he’s wearing a collar and a leash, he he wants to He, he has a company that, he says, we have a self driving taxi and we’re going to put him out in Austin in June.

I don’t believe it. It’s, self driving taxi thing looks dumb. But hey, he’s in charge now. He’s the president. So he’s getting rid of all these people in the government that he thinks are a problem. They’re bad people. And quoting from the article There was a massive push in the government over the past year to hire people from actual autonomous vehicle industry to assist in regulating and understanding it.

Since the government fired all recently hired employees, almost all of that private sector knowledge is now gone. Basically the one [00:15:00] terminated NHTSA employee said the firings would slow down companies trying to deploy robotaxis, including Tesla. This, I, this could be a gaslight as well from this fired NHTSA employee, because nothing will slow down Elon, man.

It’s all ketamine all the way.

[00:15:18] Michael: Yeah, this was a, it was hard. I think we brought this up last week in terms of whether this was an office that was actually targeted or if this was simply the result of the office being so new that it had a lot of probationary employees who were let go. I think it’s probably the latter because, Elon does a lot of things that don’t make any sense.

This could certainly fall into that category too. But Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Office of Automation Safety was essentially set up to hire engineers in the AV industry who can evaluate exemption petitions and automakers who are trying to deploy [00:16:00] autonomous vehicles. It was going to set up a pathway for them, which is something that Musk and other autonomous vehicle companies have done.

Long whined about saying that, there is no federal pathway to deployment. There’s too many regulate, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all the nonsense that comes out of their mouths about that. And then when, when they’re put in a position where they could actually have some influence over that, they cut the 1 office that is actually trying to enable the process to get started.

It doesn’t make a lot of sense. And, like a lot of things these days since it’s been thrown out the window.

[00:16:34] Anthony: Yeah, the only sense left is nonsense. Continuing with autonomous vehicles China has put in place some tightened regulations around autonomous driving updates.

Now the U S for whatever reason doesn’t do this, but now we look to China and they’re doing this. They have a new regulation, automakers must submit technical details [00:17:00] on driver, driving assistance systems and over the air upgrades when applying for market access. So the rules demand stopping the sales of defective vehicles, that sounds like a no brainer, and obtaining licenses for technical changes to ensure consumer safety and transparency.

Whereas, from what I can tell, and Michael will correct me if I’m wrong it’s a wild west with over the air upgrades. We don’t really know what’s happening with them, whereas it sounds like China’s saying, No, you guys have to apply specifically. Let us know what’s going on. Am I reading this correctly?

Close? Yeah, I think

[00:17:38] Michael: it’s, this, I think this applies in China, not just to autonomous driving or the completely human free side of things, but also to driver assistance systems it would apply to the Tesla vehicles sold with autopilot and that sort of thing in China. So advanced driver assistance and those kind of anytime [00:18:00] there’s a recall or a safety issue with those that can be addressed by an over the air update rather essentially than doing what we do in America, which is just trusting the manufacturer to do everything right.

And Beaming out this update to vehicles, China requires that manufacturer to provide some proof that the update is actually doing what it’s saying it’s going to do and not going to cause any additional problems and approving the update before it can be released, which I know that. Certain American manufacturers would balk at the idea of that.

In China, obviously there’s a different system involved with getting vehicles on the road. There’s more of a type approval system, whereas in America, we just trust the manufacturers and let them sign on the dotted line to basically say, Hey, we’ve met all the standards and we’re going to start selling this thing.

So it’s. It’s a sad day when you start to see China put more restrictive regulations in place over to prevent industries from taking [00:19:00] shortcuts. But that’s where we are right now. From DevDiscourse,

[00:19:04] Anthony: I’m going

to quote, Under China’s regulations, these upgrades are considered Product recalls, these upgrades being over the air upgrades are considered product recalls, raising questions about whether consumers might need to return vehicles for refunds. The rules obligate those planning over the air updates, upgrades to fix product defects or implement recalls to halt the production and sale of defective vehicles immediately.

So this is a lot more strict than

[00:19:34] Michael: That’s similar to the United States in some ways. For instance if you even if you are deeming an OTA update, To your fleet of vehicles that exist out in the wild that have already been purchased Until all of the vehicles that are in stock at the dealership or waiting to be sold Also have that upgrade you have to stop selling them so that’s somewhat similar to how it works here.

Although in [00:20:00] china, it looks like they would have a approval process there that would might lengthen the time period between developing the OTA and getting it into the vehicles and being able to start selling again. But also there’s an additional kind of clause in the Chinese regulation that if fixing the defect means that you’re making changes to the main technical parameters of the vehicle, automakers have to go back and get a license for those changes before they can resume production.

So that. That puts another level of another check on the ability of automakers to do a rather do some questionable fixes that might be really cheap, but might not actually address the real danger. We’ve pointed out a lot of situations, not necessarily with autonomy, but where manufacturers have put software fixes that we call them free calls.

Manufacturers will put a software fix in place. That’s super cheap. That [00:21:00] basically. And it covers the fact that there is a physical defect in the vehicle that needs to be addressed and the software update is simply a patch to prevent that physical defect from raising its head. In China, it doesn’t look like that’s going to, that would fly, at least as it pertains to vehicles with some sort of autonomy.

There’s a lot more reporting and a lot more, frankly, China looks like it is taking vehicle safety more seriously in many ways than the United States at this point.

[00:21:30] Anthony: Amazing. This prod podcast brought to you by cod liver oil. It won’t cure what ails you. And it might be available at Piggly Wiggly.

But instead of going to your Piggly Wiggly and buying cod liver oil or vitamin A to cure your measles, go to autosafety. org and click on Donate. It won’t cure your measles either, but it’s money well spent. And it doesn’t taste gross like cod liver oils. It’s horrible. Autosafety. org. Click on donate.

[00:21:55] Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Issues

[00:21:55] Anthony: And continuing with the world of Tesla.

Let’s go. From [00:22:00] Electrek, Tesla drivers are racking up fines using full self driving in China. China again. Quoting. The feature is called autopilot automatic assisted driving on urban roads as Tesla seems more cautious about using the term full self driving in China. But it’s a feature known for being in the full self driving package everywhere else.

I love this. It’s called Autopilot Automatic Assisted Driving on Urban Roads. At least the name is geo fenced now. Because it’s not designed for off roading. This is great.

[00:22:32] Michael: I don’t know. There’s a point at which when, in the use of the English language, you can, you put so many words together that the phrase becomes meaningless.

I think we reached it with that one.

[00:22:41] Anthony: Further in the article, quoting President of U. S. Elon Musk by the way, we’re We’re about the biggest challenges in making FSD work in China is the bus lanes are very complicated and there’s like literally hours of the day that you’re allowed to be there and not be there.

And then if you accidentally go on that bus lane at the wrong time, you get an automatic ticket [00:23:00] instantly. So it’s a big deal, bus lanes in China. So we’ve talked about this a thousand times in the show. One of the big problems that we have with FSD and autopilot is it’s not geo fenced.

These are. Highly mapped roads, the bus lanes don’t magically appear and disappear, they’re mapped, you could I don’t know, geofence this part of the road? Anyone?

[00:23:24] Fred: If Tesla, if, I’m sorry, if Tesla were to participate in the discussions within the SAE about what’s the, what is the definition of the ODD and where is it, can you even define exactly where the vehicle should be?

All of those regulatory discussions and industry consensus standards, Tesla simply does not participate and these subjects come up all the time to free form to not only share your views with other people in the industry, but also to learn from other people in the industry who are addressing some of these same problems.

Suggest [00:24:00] Tesla might want to join the party, but that’s an aside. And

[00:24:04] Michael: I just, I don’t see the big issue here. We have, obviously we have bus lanes in the United States and we have, lanes that change direction even at different times of the day, if this is, this should be simple programming involving maps and just following the rules of the road.

I don’t know what the big complication here is. It, we would, sorry, no, I just don’t, I don’t see the problem with figuring that. It just seems like they haven’t done their due diligence on programming these vehicles to work properly. It

[00:24:39] Fred: suggests that they’ve never incorporated bus lanes in their programming for these vehicles.

I wonder if they have.

[00:24:49] Anthony: No, it’s a tech bro walks into a room. He’s exposed to something he’s never heard before and goes whoa That’s really difficult and complicated and then he goes. We don’t need this. [00:25:00] This is garbage that’s what it is. And I hate to do it, but we got another Tesla piece I know I’m getting exhausted of it to last one promise Fingers crossed.

Ah, from Futurism. Terrifying footage shows Cybertruck on self driving mode swerve into oncoming traffic. Oh god, Jesus! So this guy’s driving a Cybertruck. He loves it. And his Cybertruck wants to make a left turn into oncoming traffic. Thankfully, this guy was not playing video games or watching movies, and he grabbed the steering wheel and pulled himself back into safety.

This was one of the things where it was not some obscured, it was not fog, rain, snowing, night. It was the middle of the afternoon, plenty of light, and this car just said, Oh, Elon made me. I must end it.

[00:25:51] Michael: It’s an unprotected left turn. It’s something that we’ve seen Tesla’s fail at. Throughout their history with full self driving, it’s been a problem that has come up [00:26:00] over and over again.

And, if you look at the video, the Tesla clearly knows there’s another vehicle approaching it and then tries to make the left turn anyway. So what does that say? It’s detecting another vehicle that’s proceeding. Directly at the vehicle that’s about to turn and it’s just going to turn right into it.

That’s clearly a failure in programming. You’re not even, it’s not even an issue with the sensor system. The approaching vehicle shows up on the monitor, so it knows it’s there and it literally looks like it’s trying to end its life. So It’s just the latest the latest problem in Tesla automation that is, ultimately going to kill or injure people if they don’t figure it out.

Or frankly, if Tesla doesn’t start including, a better sensor package and putting a lot more work into the autonomy.

[00:26:52] Anthony: All right. I’m going to jump into gas lights then.

[00:26:55] Gaslight of the Week: Elon Musk and Donald Trump

[00:26:55] Anthony: And I lied. It’s Tesla adjacent. Okay. Mine is something called [00:27:00] Tulip share. Tulip Share is a, I don’t know, let me just quote from this New York Times article.

Some investors want to pressure Mr. Musk to focus more on Tesla rather than his role as director of the so called Department of Government Efficiency. Tulip Share, a shareholder advocacy group, is planning to ask investors at Tesla’s next annual meeting to tie Mr. Musk’s pay to his, and this is the gaslight, to tie Mr.

Musk’s pay to his performance on environmental goals, social responsibility, and corporate governance. I don’t think Tulip Share is a real thing. This is nonsense. Clearly, they’ve never heard of Elon Musk. Come on, the environmental goals, social responsibility, and corporate governance. Unless his environmental goals is burn it all down.

Social responsibility is I don’t even talk to my kids. Corporate governance is you’re all fired. Come on, that’s my gaslight.[00:28:00]

[00:28:00] Michael: All right, Michael, you got a gaslight? Yeah. My gaslight is I believe someone who’s never made an appearance in our gaslights before, but someone who is well practiced at the art of gaslighting Donald J. Trump last night in his speech before Congress, made some comments. That I don’t see how anyone on earth could believe they’re true.

Although, we’re at the point where, that’s expected out of his mouth, but he said, talking about the tariffs, which, is a beautiful word, isn’t it? He said that along with our other policies will allow our auto industry to absolutely boom. It’s going to boom.

I’m not sure what kind of boom he means if it’s an explosive boom, or if it’s a. A financial boom, he wasn’t specific, but the gaslighting portion is that Trump claimed his decision was well received by top executives from the majors. He called them apparently talking about the three largest us automakers for GM [00:29:00] and Stellantis, which is questionably in all us automaker these days.

And he said he spoke to the. Spoke to those majors today, yesterday, all three of them and the top people there. They’re so excited. Meanwhile, the industry group that, that, that represents those three majors, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation was coming out and saying that tariffs weren’t a good idea.

And we just heard from Jim Farley, who. Clearly doesn’t believe that the tariffs are a good idea. So I, I don’t know where the president thinks he’s getting this. I think it’s just total bullshit in support of a tariff that, or a tariff idea that is going to cripple the industry and raise consumer prices and ultimately have no real positive effect on Americans.

And so because of that just clear line of bullshit, I’m going to give the president my gas light of the week.

[00:29:52] Fred: Well done, Mr. How do you know when Donald Trump is lying?

[00:29:58] Michael: Are you going to do the lips is [00:30:00] moving?

[00:30:00] Fred: Yeah, you can see his lips moving. That’s right.

[00:30:02] Anthony: Now you have me picturing his lips in my head.

Thanks.

[00:30:07] Fred: That’s what you get for watching this speech.

[00:30:09] Anthony: I didn’t do that. That was Michael. No,

[00:30:11] Michael: I didn’t watch it. I didn’t watch it either. I took those comments this morning. I can’t stomach state of the unions and that type of thing. No matter who is Giving them. That’s not something I’m that interested in.

[00:30:24] Fred: No, I’m with you on that with you on that. All right.

[00:30:27] Regulatory Reliance on Industry Consensus Standards

[00:30:27] Fred: My gaslight illumination this week is regulatory reliance on industry consensus standards. We’ve all seen this where legislation will reference an S. A. E. document or an ISO document or something like that and says this is. Now we’ve got the effect of law because we’ve built it into the regulation.

So I’m going to say a few things about that process. And this is not a reflection on any individual involved in this process. They’re all my friends and they’re all engineers and they’re working hard. Towards doing the right job, but [00:31:00] there are some systematic problems with this approach.

[00:31:04] Bias in Consensus Standards

[00:31:04] Fred: First is that the consensus standards are heavily weighted toward industry favorable bias.

Almost all of the people who are in these groups that are developing the regulations are funded by industry. There are very few who are funded by anyone else. There are some university people in there as well. There’s, in most of the meetings that I attend, there is only one person who is actually funded by a safety advocacy organization, is that you? That is me, yes, and so when they say industry consensus, it means that everybody votes on the resolution or the document or whatever it is, and majority wins. That’s great, unless there is a bias towards a particular viewpoint, and the minority views are underrepresented, even if they happen to be factually superior.

So there’s a problem.

[00:31:59] Challenges in Industry Standards

[00:31:59] Fred: [00:32:00] Another problem is that industry groups. Who’s sole purpose is advocacy for some industry viewpoint can produce documents on their own that they put out in public and then those documents can be referenced uncritically. In the industry consensus standards and effectively promote them from just a rant, which I know something about that, to something that’s considered a responsible document.

So it’s a backdoor for points of view that really have never been vetted with the public or have had a fair hearing.

[00:32:33] Anthony: This is like the the Dick Cheney quoting an anonymous source in the New York Times about war and the anonymous source was him.

[00:32:40] Fred: Yeah. Yeah. That’s what it is. The Hoover Institute will reference documents that’s produced by the Cato Institute that’s based upon a news report that’s on Fox News, and you shuffle it through a bunch of hands, and what is that game called the guys, the three card monty or something, yeah, there you go, like that.[00:33:00]

A few consensus standards are reviewed by safety experts. Businesses generally have one person. Or maybe just a couple of people who they tag and fund to participate in a particular industry consensus group, like the SAE or the ISO or IEEE or, a lot of these different groups. It’s very hard for one person to have sufficient scope to cover all these different technical areas, but the industry, but.

The reality of the industry is that they only fund 1 person to do this. Typically. That’s not always true, but, that’s typical and it makes it very difficult to get adequate engineering content into all of these different groups, unless additional people are funded for whom that regulation is part of their technical background.

It’s not reasonable to expect the regulators and their staff. To be experts on all these things. [00:34:00] And for example, there’s somebody who’s a staff. Person in the Congress is probably an expert on legislative procedure, but they will not be an expert on the use of a Goodman diagram and the consequences of material science and a fragile material to impact the expected life of a bearing.

In a vehicle, right? These are things that come up and if that all sounded incomprehensible to you. Yes, it should be because you do something else. And the point is that people who understand those obscure things like the expert who understands the best way to rivet skin onto the wing of an airplane.

Is not the person who is also an expert on legislative procedure. So there’s a problem with the standard and the standards produced by the former group of experts on a good day, not by the latter group who have to talk about its implementation in standards or in in regulations.

[00:34:58] International Standards and Funding Issues

[00:34:58] Fred: And finally getting to the [00:35:00] end of this international standards are produced for international venues.

It’s very hard. Michael, do I have funding to go to Sewell and Tokyo and Helsinki for the meetings coming up this year. Before you answer that, Michael,

[00:35:12] Anthony: I wanted to see how big Fred’s luggage was, and if I could fit, cause I’d be good.

[00:35:19] Fred: It sounds silly, but the financing is a real barrier. Also the.

Regulations, the standards put up by these companies are expensive. They can be thousands of dollars a piece. And it’s how they make their money. It’s why they exist. So you can’t blame them for that. But it makes it very difficult for people who have interest in safety, but don’t have the funding to go after all of these regulations, to really understand what’s in them.

And a lot of times what is in them is the least common denominator for these very disparate groups that are put together to develop these industry consensus standards. I’m not sure what’s better, but I wanted [00:36:00] to do this just so people understand what is behind these industry consensus standards and why it may not be a good idea to just accept them wholesale into regulations.

End of rant. Thank you.

[00:36:14] Anthony: Listener, if you want to, if you want to send a 7 foot tall white man to South Korea, donate now at autosafety. org. I just want to do it just for the photographs. Fred, I’m confused. Was that your gas light or was that your towel?

[00:36:29] Fred: That’s my gas light.

[00:36:30] Anthony: Okay. Your towel seems very similar too.

No?

[00:36:35] Fred: No, the towel is different. You want me to go into that now?

[00:36:38] Anthony: I’ll take a vote around the room.

[00:36:40] Fred: Alright. Yeah, sure.

[00:36:42] Michael: Why

[00:36:42] Fred: not?

[00:36:43] Proposed Simple Regulatory Scheme

[00:36:43] Fred: No, so I wanted to suggest a simple A E regulatory scheme. Or for state legislators, local national, federal, international, who knows what. But basically, if you go back to what’s called the System Engineering V, on the upper left hand [00:37:00] corner, you have a set of requirements that you put out, and that governs the design of the system, whatever it is.

Then in the upper right hand corner, You have validation of those requirements and everything that happens in between is basically just a process that allows those requirements to be manifested by some device that you’re producing. So what I’m suggesting is the first step in this simple regulatory scheme is for whoever is the Regulatory authority to review the developer’s safety requirements for that system.

Not the whole thing, not a type certificate, but just look at the safety and see what the developer intends to do to manifest safety in this device. And then at the end of the chain, when they’re proposing to put these out on the road, the regulators can then come back and say, okay, show me the evidence that you’ve accomplished each of these safety requirements.[00:38:00]

Why should we assume that you’ve passed? Why we assume that you failed, or if you’re not quite there, tell us what you’re going to do with a conditional approval. What are you going to do to eventually satisfy this safety requirement that you agreed to that needs to be done? And then, if the developer has any such conditional approvals, the developer needs to put together a plan for closing out any of those leans on the unfulfilled safety requirements.

I think this is pretty simple, actually. It’s far less intrusive than a true type certificate, but it’s a great way for people to know what you should expect this vehicle to do, what the developer has to do to achieve those requirements, and then evidence that, in fact, the developer has achieved that.

Right now, the state of regulation is that nobody knows what the safety requirements are for any particular vehicle [00:39:00] that’s being put out on the road. You want to put out a robo taxi? Great. Tell us how it’s going to work. Tell us how are you going to avoid the the blind person with a seeing eye dog crossing the intersection of 7th and Spruce.

We want to see that. Anyhow, that’s my that’s my tau this week. That’s a very simple approach and a rational approach for regulators to look at AVs before they’re used on the road and confirm that at least the safety requirements that have been imposed by the developer Have, in fact, been accomplished.

[00:39:36] Anthony: These companies already have this information, I imagine. I’ve not worked in the auto industry, but in the software industry, you have to have kind of some, this is our performance standards, this is the goals we’re going to try and meet, and you’ve got to say, at the end of the process, be like, did you meet it or not?

And then you go back through and figure out, yes, I met it, and, or no, I didn’t. So they’re doing that, I imagine, with engine performance and [00:40:00] battery performance.

[00:40:01] Fred: Every rational engineering development does this. So the Tesla doesn’t, but the AV people are saying, it works. Let me put it out on a highway and see if it kills anybody.

That’s not the same approach.

[00:40:15] Anthony: Future guests of the show Ford CEO, Jim Farley, it’d be great. This is something you can talk to us about when you agree to come on the show. I’ve just invited. Ford’s CEO Jim Farley to the show.

[00:40:25] Michael: Anthony has a crush on Jim Farley. I just want to let our listeners know

[00:40:29] Anthony: I don’t know that go that far You

[00:40:33] Fred: know crushing Kyle.

Yeah, I wanted to crush Kyle.

[00:40:36] Anthony: Yeah, and I crushed him. Okay Waymo, you’re next But so that I don’t I like this idea, Fred, because again, like they, any rational engineering department, any, even just grade school level engineering department, some college level course, you need to do this. You need to show this.

Just from an, Forget regulation. Just from an engineer’s point [00:41:00] of view, you’re on a complex problem. You have to remember, wait, what are we trying to accomplish here? Cause it’s time. It’s marketing. We’ll come in and be like, can I get in cornflower blue and change this? And I’ll have all sorts of weird change requests and be like, wait, were we building a car?

No, we’re making pancakes.

[00:41:14] Fred: I would think they’ve all got it, but I’m not sure until somebody sees it, how do you really know? The safety folks are generally not in the corporate suites, right? They’re generally down in the dirt somewhere doing what they do. And they dust them

[00:41:30] Anthony: off when a regulator comes by.

[00:41:32] Fred: Yeah. Trot them out for special occasions, that’s generally what happens in in American Industrial enterprises. Interesting in Japan, the safety people all have different colored hats. So they go through the factory and everybody knows who the safety people are.

They’ve got a different colored hat on than everybody else. You bring them in because they’re circulating around and they monitor the processes are very easy to find them. They’re very visible. [00:42:00] Different approach than what in the U. S., but again, if the companies don’t want to share their safety requirements with the world.

That’s fine. Every regulatory body has provisions for handling proprietary information, and there’s no reason why sharing that with the regulatory authorities means that you’re going to share it with the public as well. Everybody says they want to be transparent. Everybody says they want to be safe.

All right, here’s how you do it. Show people what you’re trying to do, and then show them that you’ve done it. Simple. Easy peasy.

[00:42:36] Anthony: Yeah listener, if you happen to work in the auto industry let us know if you guys do this. Write into contact at autosafety. org. We’ve been protecting whistleblowers for 50 years, over 50 years, and you’re not even asking me to blow the whistle.

I just want to know, hey, you work at Toyota, you sell something called Safety Sense. I’m assuming that you guys have some sort of documents. You don’t even have to share the [00:43:00] documents. Just tell us yes, no, unsubscribe. One of those.

[00:43:05] Fred: I had a friend in Detroit who saw a defect in I think it was an engine block that was coming through.

So he shut down the entire River Rouge plant because somebody said, Oh, you’re empowered. We’re doing safety now. It didn’t work out particularly well for him.

[00:43:22] Anthony: I love it. Moving on to somebody who I don’t think things are working out particularly well for you guys.

[00:43:27] Flying Car Company and Its Challenges

[00:43:27] Anthony: Remember Dracula? Remember? Yeah. So this is, I think we covered this story like a year ago, maybe.

And this is a guy who, he’s interesting. This is a flying car company. And we’re going to have a link to the article from BGR. com, whatever that means. And it has a embedded video there. You can see this flying car prototype. It’s the, and it’s really flying, but it looks like a [00:44:00] 1950s knockoff of like outer limits.

Showing how the thing moves you’re literally looking for the string. It’s a flying car that I don’t understand what the problem it’s trying to solve is. It’s eh, the guy, I can’t pronounce his name, but he says it will reduce traffic, make the world more efficient. That’s just Be we can, everybody is a gas lighter this week.

[00:44:26] Michael: You just have to watch the video and the guy to really get a feel for the kind of, the car does not look like it could drive. It doesn’t look very heavy. It looks like it may be only a few hundred pounds to allow the lawnmower sounding engines that are powering it to bring it off the ground. So it’s very odd, but this guy, Jim Duchovny, who is the.

It’s continuing to push this idea. I’m not sure exactly who’s funding him, but whoever they are, I question their Capabilities.

[00:44:55] Anthony: Bitcoin, bro. It’s Bitcoin. It’s a very silly looking thing. It [00:45:00] doesn’t move very far, but I will give him this. Cause I listened to his whole thing about how it will reduce traffic.

No, it won’t. It’ll make the world more efficient. No, it won’t. But he did have one case that I thought was okay. One use case, which he said for search and rescue. Because it can get into tight spots that like a helicopter couldn’t because of rotor blades. And I’m like, Oh, maybe. But then again, if you have to do search and rescue in the middle of Grand Tetons, there’s no way this thing’s getting out there in the first place.

So I like your idea. I like your enthusiasm. But whatever. It’s your money to set on fire. Or your investor’s money.

[00:45:32] Vehicle Safety Recall Week at NHTSA

[00:45:32] Anthony: And with that, hey folks, it’s Vehicle Safety Recall Week at NHTSA. That’s right. It began March 3rd, and it focuses on the importance of checking for recalls and getting any re unrepaired recalls fixed immediately for free.

I don’t know why they have to say it like that, because all recall fixes are free. It’s Recall Week at NHTSA. Isn’t that exciting?

[00:45:54] Michael: It’s Recall Week at NHTSA. That’s basically every year they hold Safety [00:46:00] Recalls Week. And it’s essentially a reminder that everybody should regularly, but if you’re not doing it regularly, just do it today.

Go to NHTSA. gov and enter your license plate number, or you can enter your VIN number if you’ve memorized all 17 digits. And you’ll get a the next screen will tell you whether or not you have any open recalls on your vehicle and let you know if you need to make an appointment with your dealer to get them fixed, which is critical.

If NHTSA just issues recalls and manufacturers just issue recalls and nobody gets them fixed, we still have all these problems on the road. So it’s critical that people do this check. And once a year NHTSA likes to nudge everyone and remind them. to do it. In fact, this is the big year of the big week of the year where they do that reminding, but typically they’ll remind people almost every day.

If you visit their websites, the first thing is the spot to enter your vehicles information and track down your recall. So we encourage everyone to do that.

[00:46:55] Anthony: Hey, and if you’re too lazy to do that, you can go to autosafety. org, go to our vehicle safety [00:47:00] check, choose your year, make, model, and you can get not only the nits of recalls, you can see complaints people have put in, complaints from our supporters.

You can get technical service bulletins, you get the whole thing, and then you subscribe and once a month, we will send you, Hey, this is what’s going on with your vehicle. 99 times out of 100. Hopefully nothing’s going on with your vehicle, but hey, if you need to know that one time, and also where are you going to find technical service bulletins?

It’s a tough one. I was searching for a technical service bulletin on my vehicle because I think there’s something wrong with the USB outlet, but it just could be dirt.

[00:47:32] Fred: But anyway, recall Hey, Anthony, do they still have open part supply on Yugos? Oh, I’m sorry. You don’t have a Hugo, I thought you did.

I

[00:47:41] Anthony: don’t. Growing up a neighbor had a Hugo and I was like, oh, that’s, ah, that’s, I thought we were poor, but I was like, damn. Yeah, guys are tough. Damn. We’re doing a we got a, a shive. A chavet. Was it a Chevrolet Cha? Those

[00:47:57] Fred: are beautiful.[00:48:00]

[00:48:02] Anthony: Anyway, let’s go into recalls.

[00:48:04] Recalls: Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen

[00:48:04] Anthony: With Recall Week, let’s stick with the Germans this week. Mercedes Benz. 20,339 vehicles. The 2021 to 2022 Mercedes Meach, S five 80, which I believe, Michael, you have the Meach S six 80 the S 500 SF 80, a whole bunch of Mercedes. And due to climactic factors and the resulting material behavior, affected brake hoses may not meet durability specifications.

Huh, what kind of climactic factors could that be?

[00:48:35] Michael: It looks like the brake hoses are failing in hot and humid weather for whatever reasons they are. Degrading and they fail and when they fail, you’re going to have reduced braking performance. And if you’re an owner, you may notice a brake fluid warning message before this happens, but regardless you should be getting a notification in later in April.

They’re going to [00:49:00] replace the brake hoses on your front axle of those vehicles.

[00:49:04] Anthony: If you have a Maybach, maybe your chauffeur will notice that there’s a brake fluid warning light. Next up, Volkswagen, 60, 490 vehicles. The 2023 Volkswagen ID. 4, 2021, 22 ID. 4, Audi Q4 e tron, and some other e tron sportback.

Under Certain circumstances, the N gear position, I assume being neutral, may not be shown in the instrument cluster when it should be displayed. These vehicles fail to comply with what safety standard? Come on, Michael. I have, I don’t even know this, it would be

[00:49:45] Michael: the transmit, it should be something related to transmission shift interlock, but I don’t know if there’s a standard here.

[00:49:51] Anthony: The requirements of 49 CFR, that’s

[00:49:53] Michael: the transmitter, yeah,

[00:49:55] Anthony: 102, hey, look at that. So wait, I put my car in neutral on the, just the display [00:50:00] doesn’t show neutral.

[00:50:01] Michael: What you want feedback as a driver as to what your, what gear your transmission is. And so if you’re, if you are if you throw your gear shift up to park and nothing shows up, but it’s in neutral, then you’re not in part.

Your vehicle can roll away. That’s a problem. But essentially, you just, you have to have a, you have to have a gear shift that’s in neutral and you have to have a gear shift that’s in neutral. Feedback as a driver as to what position your gear shift is. And this was also the problem when that Star Trek actor was run over by his own Jeep a few years back.

Because there wasn’t sufficient feedback from the, I think it was called a, I can’t remember the. The exact name for it, but there was a specific type of gear selector in those vehicles that didn’t didn’t let the driver know properly when the vehicle was or was not in park because it would, it was a shifter that you instead of having six or seven distinct places that the vehicle shifter would go [00:51:00] into and you would know where it was.

This was all electronic and it didn’t really allow you to have that same sort of, it’s a human factors issue didn’t allow you to have that same certainty of what gear your vehicle is in. So there were a lot of drivers who thought they were in park who were actually not in park in that situation.

Similar situation here. And all of this is. It’s, it’s regulated by the government. The government wants us to know what gear our vehicles are in. That’s why there’s FMVSS 102. It looks like this is going to be a software update. It’s doesn’t look like OTA. I can’t, I don’t see that. So folks are probably going to hear about this from Volkswagen and Audi later in April.

Let

[00:51:44] Fred: me just jump in and say that I’m sure our listeners already do this, but you should always set the emergency brake when you park your car, because when you put it in park, it locks the transmission, or if you [00:52:00] absentmindedly put it in neutral, as Michael just said, your car could roll back. But if you set the emergency brake, it locks the wheels, so your car is not going to go anywhere.

And it’s a very simple thing to do, but try to remember that, folks. We want to keep you around.

[00:52:15] Anthony: What I like to do, too, is when I get out of the car, I just slash all my tires, so then it doesn’t roll.

[00:52:22] Fred: You’re a New Yorker. It’s a little different in New York. Yeah,

[00:52:24] Anthony: I stop people from slashing it for me.

Last up, Volkswagen. 13, 769 vehicles. The 2024 Volkswagen ID. 4. Again? Wait, did they have multiple recalls on this one? Yeah, they were

[00:52:38] Michael: both, yes.

[00:52:41] Anthony: Three in the past class on this is the 2024 and the 2024 to 2025 Audi Q4, e tron and Oh, in the affected vehicles, condensation may form within the onboard charger with the integrated DC, DC converter causing electromigration on the printed circuit board due to insufficient [00:53:00] protective coding.

I like Electro Migration that’s they opened for Kraftwerk, I think back in 78. Yeah, that’s basically,

[00:53:08] Michael: this is a failure of the circuit board and ultimately whatever Electro Migration is the the integrated onboard, onboard AC DC converter. fails and doesn’t charge the battery and ultimately that prevents you from starting the vehicle but also if you this is the 12 volt battery that’s affected here not the main electric vehicle battery so it controls a lot of in a assist a lot of the electronic controls and assisted functions in your vehicle.

So if that battery dies, you can lose some of those controls. You can have reduced driving functions. They’re not specific about what functions these are. But you can just use your imagination there. It’s dangerous. What they’re going to do here is sometime, I believe in gosh, I can’t even see [00:54:00] a date on this one.

Oh, April 29th. Sometimes in sometime in late April, they’re going to let you know. And you’ll have to go into the dealership and they’re going to replace that converter with an approved converter. Apparently one that avoids this problem of electro migration.

[00:54:16] Electromigration and Circuit Board Issues

[00:54:16] Fred: So I’m not sure that this is the problem, but here’s some information you can use at your next cocktail party.

[00:54:22] Technical Service Bulletins and Final Thoughts

[00:54:22] Fred: Pur tin connect, pur tin solder, which is used in many circuit pores now can be a problem because Puritan can grow what are called tin whiskers. They’re little, just what they sound like. They’re a little whiskey that right over the tin. And if these two cross from two different positions, you can get a short circuit or you can, destroy the electronics on them because they’re these tin whiskers are conductive. So normally circuit boards. That are going to be used in challenging environments, like hot, humid environments or salt air [00:55:00] will have a chemical cover put on them. So that even if the whiskers do grow, they’re unlikely to contact another 1 in the military.

You’re required to put a certain amount of lead into the solder because that can prohibit the. Growth of the tin whiskers. So I said, I’m guessing this is what they may be talking about. We’ll let your migration because it sounds consistent there. Now you’re set for your next cocktail party.

[00:55:25] Anthony: Surprisingly, I was actually interested in that because I have lead free solder. Cause I was like, I don’t need solder with lead in it, but now you’re convinced me, maybe I do. But it also reminds me, as a kid, I had an electronic battleship, and as a lot of kids, I would take it apart, and I bridged part of the circuit board with my finger, and it would get the craziest sounds possible.

It would mix different sounds. I like that. You could have been an engineer. Yeah, I could have, but I couldn’t afford the cut and peg. Hey!

[00:55:57] Conclusion and Call to Action

[00:55:57] Anthony: With that, folks, thanks for listening to another episode [00:56:00] of There Ought to Be a Law. We’ll be back next week, and if you have any questions, comments, concerns, or you want to donate money send it I’ll post my PayPal address.

Stop it. Yeah. Okay. Autosafety. org. Subscribe. Five stars. Tell all your friends. Bye bye.

[00:56:17] Fred: Bye bye. For more information, visit www. autosafety. org.