Tesla fails, congestion pricing wins.

Introduction to the Podcast

Anthony: You are 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.

Hey everybody.

Humorous Updates and Tesla’s Earnings

Anthony: I’m gonna give you an update. I plan to be able to dunk a basketball in the coming months. I’m trying to time it with the launch of the cyber cab from Tesla. So as soon as that thing’s out, that’s when I’ll be able to dunk a basket

Michael: ball. Yep. I’m gonna, I’m gonna run a marathon.

Anthony: Ooh, Fred, what are you gonna do when the, when this comes out?

Fred: Winning lottery ticket. Ah, I’m gonna make a, I’m gonna make a big donation to the Center for Auto Safety when I get that, by the way. Oh, that that’s,

Anthony: wait a sec. We were talking about things that will never happen, [00:01:00] right? Everyone should make a large donation to the Center for Auto Safety.

Anyway since we’re talking about it, let’s just go into the nonsense that is Tesla. What do you say? This is outside of our wheelhouse, but they reported their earnings yesterday and it’s gone to shit. I’m gonna jump right into my gaslight. I’m doing it. Okay. The New York Times had an article where they talked about saying how oh liberal and more environmentally friendly people are no longer interested in buying these vehicles, but I guess the Nazis are fine with it, but there’s just not enough of them to make up for the declining sales of these stupid.

Dangerous vehicles like the cyber cab. Yeah, the,

Michael: yeah. Which doesn’t exist yet. We have no idea what that, that’s gonna be. And when, when Tesla’s saying, Elon is saying that they’re going to be deploying at a starting point, he said 10 to 20 model wise, I believe in this [00:02:00] year, in July, I think June in Austin, Texas, in June, right?

Two months away. In Austin, Texas operating presumably using just cameras and the bullshit that Elon has been touting for years now with little success. I don’t think anyone in the safety community thinks that the current model y and it’s. Full self-driving software is gonna be sufficient to allow these vehicles to safely travel America’s roads without a, they’re struggling to do it safely with a driver supervising the vehicles without one.

I think it’s gonna be a disaster. And wishing UL folks in Austin if that actually happens.

Anthony: What if it is actually the cyber cab on the road? ’cause it only has two seats and if they have to put a safety driver in it, that’ll be a very intimate ride. Can you sorry, this is just for one. It’s a great way to get out of a date, but no, the, my, my car’s only got room for one.

Sorry. Sorry. I’ll sit on your lap. Nope. [00:03:00] No. And there,

Michael: there was just so much so much gaslighting going on in, in the earnings call yesterday that’s, it’s hard to stomach, it’s hard to listen to sometimes to think that there are actually people with brains out there that believe the stuff that’s coming out of Elon Musk’s mouth is sad.

Anthony: Oh boy. Elon. Elon.

Tesla’s Safety Concerns and Regulatory Issues

Anthony: So the Washington Post has this long article. It was actually really good showing, getting into the details of the Walter Hang crash. Is that how I pronounce his name correctly? It’s Wong, Walter Wong. This is happened a few years ago where basically a car with autopilot on crashed.

The driver unfortunately killed. The article is titled Musk’s Fury Over a Tesla Investigation, foreshadowed his War on Washington. And basically that has Elon trying to bully regulators, which, maybe not the smartest move. [00:04:00] And he’s goes to the point of view, hangs up on them and what he does.

My, my big takeaway from this article I’m gonna quote now is. Musk’s relationship with regulators and safety officials fully eroded during the five most critical years in his self-driving push as he promoted his vision of consumer robo taxis. Musk tested a strategy of harnessing online armies of fanboy, oftentimes enthusiastic investors whose toxic digital personas were aimed at silencing short sellers or naysayers against those who threaten to slow the progress of autopilot and its companion mode, full self-driving, making life a nightmare for those who stood in the way.

So Musk is basically getting a bunch of trolls to attack these public servants and make their life difficult. And it made me think back to, I believe it was the late seventies, early eighties. The eighties, where Scientology did the same thing against the IRS, where they would harass and attack the IRS commissioners and heads of this so they [00:05:00] can get tax exempt status.

Unfortunately, the IRS eventually caved and said, sure, you’re a religion. Go ahead and get tax free status. Stop harassing me and my staff. I hope the regulators at, the Department of Transportation and that to have a little more spine. ’cause, more people die ’cause of Tesla’s probably.

Michael: A lot of this article is focused on the situation after the won class crash where, the head of the NTSB, Robert Sumwalt, who is incredibly nice guy, I met him and a good person and very competent leader of that agency. At the time, he’s no longer at the Inspi, essentially Elon hung up on him because he was trying to make sure that Tesla wasn’t leaking.

Crash details to the public, to pretend that it’s. Safety systems had nothing to do with the problem and to blame the crash on Walter wrong. Elon reacted violently to that and hung up on the [00:06:00] MTSB chairman and, just yet another temper tantrum. And, from somebody who’s not getting their way, it’s, I don’t know, it’s not the kind of behavior that.

I think is acceptable from the head of any company who has public safety responsibilities.

Fred: Hey, I have a question for you guys. How many illegal immigrants responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans? Now have a seat in the White House.

Anthony: One.

Fred: And who might that be?

Anthony: Elon Musk.

Fred: Oh, okay. Thank you. I just wanted to.

Everybody knew about the consistency of federal policy regarding the ice and illegal immigrants. Thank you.

Michael: Fortunately for for the government, Elon suggested also in his call yesterday that he’s stepping back from Doge soon. And although he said he was gonna continue to be involved, he thinks that Doge has gotten most of its work done already, which, [00:07:00] whatever work that is and whatever.

Supposed good. It did. I don’t think it did much, if any, and resulted in the loss of a lot of brain power from the government that we’re really gonna need, especially at Nitsa in the years to come.

Anthony: Yeah.

Tesla’s Workplace Culture and Safety Cover-ups

Anthony: Continuing with our Tesla thread this is an article from Electric former Tesla engineer Christina Ballan, who was fired in 2014, said an interview that her entire team was threatened with deportation.

For taking her side when she brought up a brake safety issue directly to Elon Musk. Now this is a very smart engineer, so much so that her initials are actually etched on the battery pack of the Model S. That’s impressive. And at some point Elon said, Hey, if there’s any problems and whatnot, you can come to me and tell me what’s going on.

So this very smart engineer said, Hey, here’s an issue. And then Elon said, you’re fired. It reminded me of when I worked at Apple, there was a point where Steve Jobs said, Hey, [00:08:00] if there’s any problems, you can come directly to me. And the guy across the hall from me did that and he was fired.

So don’t believe sociopaths, I. That’s that’s what

Michael: happened here. He she’s had a meeting set up with him and she showed up and he wasn’t there. It was just some big guys and they fired her and made her leave the building.

Yeah. And

Anthony: this issue she was bringing up was I watched an interview with her and they were saying that it was more dangerous than the Toyota recall, which was, this was around the floor safety mat.

The floor. Floor mats. Floor mats getting caught on blocking the brake pedal. Yep. So it’s not like a difficult fix, not oh my God, we have to tear down the entire vehicle and redo everything. It’s, we need a different format design. And that’s what, essentially what Toyota did.

Michael: It’s like safety coverup 1 0 1.

What are you doing here? You’ve got a pretty clear. Safety issue that could be addressed by what appears to be a fairly inexpensive recall, and you’re flipping out and firing the people that are the messenger essentially when they report [00:09:00] it. That’s the opposite of what some companies, I think Ford or GM have stand up for safety type programs.

Where you’re very much encouraged to bring any problem to the attention of the executive suite. And when you fire people who are bringing those problems forth, you’re pretty much stifling any chance that a program like that’s ever gonna work.

Anthony: Fred, I’m gonna ask you a question now.

Michael pointed out that Fred that Ford and General Motors and other companies have that stand up for safety. If they see a problem on the line, they can be like, Hey, there’s a problem here, and get it fixed. Whereas. Tesla, they claim that, but Tesla, you can get fired. Ford and GM people don’t get fired.

What’s the difference?

Fred: I’m not sure. The chain of command is very important to a lot of these organizations. In my own experience in the government, I brought up some safety issues that had not been vetted by the engineering staff and the people in charge of engineering. That were significant.

And when I brought ’em up, [00:10:00] the management was embarrassed by that. We had a design review where everybody sits around and offers their comment. So following my comment which embarrassed the leadership of the engineering group, they restructured the design review. So that, number one, it was a dictate that.

Engineering was the only source of any future technical comments. I was not in engineering, I was in the safety group, and B, that only people who were invited could make a comment in future design reviews. So this very similar response to what we’re seeing at Musk and other organizations. So if the chain of command is in fact.

So important a lot of people are gonna fall by the wayside who would otherwise provide valuable information.

Anthony: Fred, isn’t it true that they also [00:11:00] lowered the height of the doorways so you couldn’t actually even enter the meeting rooms?

Fred: Funny, I hadn’t really thought of that, but I did bump my head a lot.

Anthony: I was looking for the correct answer being unions. The people on the floor at Ford and Jim and whatnot, they’re members of unions. So they’re not gonna get fired. They can’t get fired for saying, Hey, this is dangerous. But that’s just my guess. The the other fun takeaway from this interview with the former Tesla engineers, she talks about how Elon claims all this stuff.

I’m sleeping on the floor, I work hardcore. She’s yeah, he would show up on Wednesdays for an hour a week. That’s it. That’s probably why they made decent cars for a while. But hey, that’s just my guess now. Oh God, I now wait, is it all gonna be just Tesla? No, last Tesla won.

The Cybertruck Debacle

Anthony: I think please be last from futurism.

The cyber truck is turning into a complete disaster. Don’t have to say anything else [00:12:00] done. It’s we’ve got a million pre-orders. They’ve sold like 10, 20,000 of them. Something like that.

Michael: 50. They think they’ve sold 50,000, ah,

Anthony: 50,000. How many of them have been recalled? But they

Michael: had a they had supposedly they had a million orders, right?

So either 950,000 of those folks dropped out. Or that was a made up number. So it could be a combination of both. But Tesla sold about 50,000 of ’em. But they’re built, they’re piling up and they’re actually going to slow down or stop some of the production lines that are making them. So that’s predicted, for over a year now.

Plus by us, the cyber truck is a flop. And now it looks like, Elon is turning towards. Working men to try to get them on the side of the cyber truck and sell more of them. I don’t think that is going to work at all. I don’t think that people who need trucks for work [00:13:00] are ever going to be able to work using the cyber truck, at least not effectively.

We may be writing the obituary for the cyber truck soon.

Fred: They have to, they have some problems associated with the tariffs now because remember we talked before about the defective rear view mirrors where every time somebody looked in the mirror, they would see a person laughing at the truck.

Yeah.

Fred: They ordered better mirrors, but they’re sourced in China and they just can’t get ’em. So that’s been a big problem for them. I think that’s why they can’t really get production up.

Anthony: Wow. Fred’s on a roll today. I like it. That’s pretty good. Alright, so Michael, you talked about yeah, now the cyber truck, they’re trying to advertise to the working man and so what Tesla’s done is now they’re gaslighting Ford.

’cause they’re basically taking Ford’s advertising imagery and saying, Hey, let’s just put a cyber truck in place of a F-150. I wish we could link to this one, but I apparently we can’t. Where they have a [00:14:00] showing a picture of a Ford F-150, pulling an Airstream TRA trailer, and then a cyber truck pulling an Airstream TRA trailer.

But the funny thing is the Airstream trailer that the cyber truck’s pulling is like half the size of the one, the F1 fifties, but so like they’re stealing the exact imagery and motifs from the F-150 AD campaigns. But then everything else, they have it doing work related, quote unquote is just smaller.

It’s, it makes it look like a dinky little toy. It’s hilarious. I don’t know who my gaslight is now. It’s Tesla, it’s Elon, it’s the New York Times. It’s,

Michael: yeah. I

Anthony: think we can just wrap

Michael: all this up in a bow and, give our, all of our guests.

Anthony: All right, Michael, go for it.

Michael: And in doing that, we’ve already talked about most of the gaslighting that he’s done this week.

Essentially, I think my biggest concern about all this Doge, his government involvement, everything included, is that they’re, they’re planning on putting Tesla vehicles. Running the current [00:15:00] Tesla supervised full self driving. Essentially they’re just gonna flip a switch, make that unsupervised, and ask people in Austin to get in the car.

I, we have gone over. I think I’ve ad nauseum covered the fact that Tesla’s system is simply not sufficient to safely operate an autonomous vehicle. The camera only approach is not going to work. You need more better sensors. You need a lot of things that Tesla doesn’t have to perform unsupervised, full self-driving.

And when you don’t have those things, people are going to die. And I. We have been through years of autonomous testing and semi deployment across America, and we’ve seen one direct fatality in Arizona years ago related to autonomous vehicles, which I. I think that, that is gonna come to a swift end if the Tesla software and hardware is deployed and allowed to operate unsupervised on, on, on the roads [00:16:00] of Austin, and, we’ve just, they’re going to say, we have remote supervision of these vehicles and I think we’ve talked enough about latency and remote operation to, that our listeners will understand that is not going to.

Prevent crashes. And it’s it just sounds like a nightmare. I hope it doesn’t happen. And yet again, I guess I’m rooting against Tesla in this regard.

Anthony: Remote supervision is also the technique my parents used to raise us. Anyway.

Gaslighting and Autonomous Vehicles

Fred Gaslight,

Fred: I do. This is a new candidate for Gaslight and people talk about things being inside the beltway, and this is definitely inside the beltway.

So this is an article published by the Washington Examiner and it’s written by Jeff Farrah, who is the president of the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association. And for those people who are not as familiar with Washington as some of us are, [00:17:00] you need to know that Washington Examiner is not a real newspaper.

It’s a website that is heavily influenced by right wing politics. Has a kind of questionable relationship with the truth, but and

Michael: the moonies.

Fred: Yeah, I was gonna say, isn’t it funded by a cult? Yeah. Yes. Yeah, I just looked that up. Apparently the both, the Moonies may have sold it to an individual who is similarly inclined, but.

Ownership is a little questionable right now. In any event, it’s not a real newspaper. A VIA is not a source of truth, but nevertheless, one of the things Jeff Farer writes in here is does have some facts in it. One of the facts it has is that Donald Trump is now president of the United States and has the authority of regulating.

AVS at the national level. And Mr. Farrow goes on to [00:18:00] write federal policy on avs will help solve one of our nation’s most vexing problems, persistent traffic fatalities. In 2023 alone, 41,000 people died in car crashes. And by the way, that is the second fact that’s in the article. Equivalent to a sold out crowd at some stadium.

And then he goes on to write this tragedy is overwhelmingly caused by human error such as distracted or impaired driving. Unlike human drivers, avs don’t drive impaired or distracted the vehicles perform. All elements of driving, yada have 360 degree visibility. It’s no wonder Duffy who is now the NSA administrator, is recently said avs are, quote, a wonderful technology that has the potential of making roads safer. So why is this a gaslight? Number one, it’s a clear mix of aspirational statements and facts which is that there [00:19:00] are avs, but there’s no evidence anywhere in the world that avs are at least as good as drunk drivers.

And there’s no evidence that. They are in fact going to save anybody’s lives. There’s no evidence that they are 94% safer inherently than other conventionally driven vehicles. And in fact, these are the same canards that Cruz was using in a full page ad shortly before the whole enterprise shut down and went away.

So I am a, I’m giving my Gaslight Award to the Washington Examiner for Uncritically Publishing at best, questionably correct information as a regular source of news.

Anthony: Excellent. Now, Fred, how did you come across the Washington examiner? Did [00:20:00] you, were you unwrapping a piece of fish and that was the.

Newspaper. It was wrapped in,

Fred: it was a virtual fish because it was a virtual paper. Oh. Yeah. We talked earlier before the broadcast started about the fact that there’s a lot of pollen in the air and that the aerial whale sharks will be sorting out that plankton for themselves.

So this is the thought that led me to, to, look at the Washington Examiner.

Source of,

Fred: I thought, virtual whale sharks directly lead to virtual information.

Anthony: I like it. I think they’re they’ll be just as tasty as autonomous vehicles, saving people’s lives as we speak.

Fred: And still nobody knows where whale sharks congregate to mate.

So it’s equally true that whale sharks in the ocean are as mythical as whale sharks in the air.

Anthony: And that brings us to Fred Perkins. Other podcast, whale Sharks. Where do they come from

Fred: and [00:21:00] why?

Anthony: But while you’re searching for that on the internet, take a stop [email protected]. Click on donate.

Thank you.

Canada’s Vehicle Safety Standards

Anthony: Let’s do an update from our friends in Canada. Let’s do a Canada update. So Canada still an independent nation. That’s all we have to say. There’s an article from drive driving.ca talking about how Canada needs to step up now with their vehicle safety standards. Canada is, as I believe our previous guest, George, ie.

Pointed out, they follow, they’ve been following essentially what Nitsa does for years and piggybacking on it, but making some adjustments. For example, they didn’t have the Hyundai Kia car theft thing. ’cause they said, Hey, oh, you gotta sell these cars. They need to have an immobilizer.

But now with the gutting of Nitsa, they’re like hey, we gotta come up with our own regulations and make things safer. So quoting from this article NHTSA’s Tesla Investigations, the Nitsa. [00:22:00] Which has been a Thornton and Tesla’s side for years has eight active investigations into the company.

After receiving and publishing more than 10,000 complaints from members of the public, according to the financial Times car manufacturers must report to Nitsa any crashes that occur when advanced driver assistance or autonomous driving features were active within 30 seconds of impact. Musk has famously touted and exaggerated the ability of his company’s vehicles, even as the investigations pile up.

Reuters analysis of the Nitsa crash data shows Tesla accounted for 40 out of 45 fatal crashes reported to Nitsa through October 15th, 2024. And so now the Canadians are like they’re not gonna have any regulations really coming outta the us So it’s time for us to put our own frameworks in and assert our further independence and make us less attractive as a takeover target, Michael.

Michael: We have talked endlessly, I believe, about how America’s falling behind in, crash testing and safety standards. How Europe is leading the charge on most [00:23:00] of that. Now having gotten intelligence speed assistance into vehicles this year, you, it’s hard not to agree with that. And their fatality rate being, three or four times lower in many countries in Europe than they are here also lends credibility for the argument that Europe.

And possibly, Japan, China, and other countries have an argument to be on top of the pile as well. But a lot of people are doing better right now in the United States in terms of regulation. And that’s not just a, this administration thing. It’s taken the United States, a couple of decades of.

Poor and slow and tedious rulemaking and research by nhtsa that has led us to this point where we’ve just fallen behind other countries who are able to move more quickly on safety. And Canada is starting to feel the heat. They’ve, for many years they’ve. Adopted a lot of the federal motor vehicle safety standards.

They’ve relied on the federal enforcement investigations and recall process in the [00:24:00] United States to inform them on what goes on in Canada. And now they are looking over at us and saying I don’t think we can rely on these guys anymore. And they may be right. And so this is essentially the article is a call to.

The Canadian government saying, we really need to beef up our ability to make safety standards on our own without the United States assistance or we’re going to start seeing some of the same traffic issues that they’re seeing down there. And, obviously seeing our government in the hands of anti-regulation is like Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the, all the other folks who are on top of the pile right now makes them even more scared about their future and about their safety.

So it is a great article, and I couldn’t agree with it more. It’s from Lorraine Summerfield, who writes I believe writes a regular column in Canada.

Fred: A note on Canada. By the way, I recently drove [00:25:00] through Canada on the way to Detroit, and certainly American standards seem to prevail. I also noted that the behavior of young men with bill hats driving pickup trucks is very similar to the that of American citizens.

A lot of people running at 20 miles an hour above the speed limit. Zooming in and out of traffic and always with the bill hats tip down so that it gives them a very narrower field of view. Not my favorite people to drive around, but it is an international standard. Apparently that’s been adopted by the Canadians.

Anthony: Young men are dumb everywhere. Shocker.

Fred: In my experience, yes, that’s true. So some old men too.

Anthony: Hey, wait a second.

US-Japan Tariff Negotiations and Safety Standards

Anthony: So we were talking about how Canada’s gotta work on their safety regulations and really step up, but now it looks like the US is negotiating some tariff nonsense with Japan. And part of it [00:26:00] is the US saying Japan, your safety requirement’s a little too high.

For our vehicle, so make your cars less safe, and we will work out some deal with tariffs. This is from an article we’re linking to an msn.com. Quoting us Car makers have long complained about perceived non tariff barriers, blocking access to Japan’s market, including stringent safety standards. A report by the US Trade Representative last month cited Japan’s non-acceptance of US Safety Standard Certification as providing an equal level of production as its own standards, unique testing protocols and obstacles to establishing distribution and service networks.

So in the US, just to remind people vehicles are self-certified, that means I’m car manufacturer X and I say yep, I’m good. No testing. I don’t have to hand in any reports. I don’t have to do anything. It’s safe, if you catch me on something like that, I’ll be like, oh I’ll recall.

But I’m safe. I don’t have to do anything. Am I on the money [00:27:00] there? Mike? Mike?

Michael: Yeah. You’re about as close as you can get. There’s just, there, there are no real checks. Occasionally something might turn up in Nisa Crash testing with end cap. They’ll notice a non-compliance and pursue it.

Sometimes they have compliance testing when that, that they try to figure out when, if there’s a problem. But all of that’s after the fact. The vehicles are already, on the road being sold because they’ve been certified as safe by the manufacturer.

Anthony: Excellent. So Japan, I assume they don’t take this cowboy cavalier attitude and they’re like, no, you gotta test and you gotta show us some results and some real data here.

Is that what’s going on?

Michael: There’s just a lot more there’s a couple of other things.

Comparing US and Japanese Car Markets

Michael: I think that. We’re very different in the terms of the layout of our country, right? Japan has a lot of people in a very small space. We’ve got a lot of people, but if they’re in a very large place, we get a lot more rural areas.

I think there’s a lot more focus on pedestrian and urban driving in [00:28:00] Japan. The cars are like a lot of places on earth. The cars are inevitably gonna be a lot smaller than a lot of the cars we’re driving in the United States. So there’s a huge number of differences and.

US Manufacturers in Japan: Challenges and Opportunities

Michael: The United States.

United States vehicle manufacturers have never really made a, been a big presence in Japan. To expect to change that by lowering the safety standards in Japan, obviously seems like a silly idea to us. As cheerleaders for safety. Essentially they’re saying. Hey, Japan, we want you to lower your safety standards and let us send more cars into your country so that your domestic manufacturers are going to lose money on the deal.

I don’t understand what Japan has to gain here other than the approvable of a madman who is president of the United States. I don’t know it. It just seems like a no-win situation, and it doesn’t seem like you’re really negotiating anything. I think Japan’s better off allowing, they [00:29:00] also mentioned that they were going to change the they were gonna allow more American rice into the country.

That’s probably a better deal than lowering the vehicle safety standards over there.

Fred: What could possibly go wrong, whether requiring other countries to reduce their safety standards in order to accept American vehicles? This would probably spread to Europe too, because, it. There are a lot of details like inclusion of first aid kits and European cars before they’re sold.

That, that should never happen. People should never have a first aid kit in their car, right?

Anthony: No. This podcast sponsored by Boeing. Boeing we self certify our jets. Oh, sorry. What? They do not.

Michael: They do not. Oh, I know. I’m sorry. I had a first aid kit that came in, I think the Volkswagen I bought in 2003, but I don’t think they kept putting them in vehicles after that.

My, my next two did not have a first aid kit, but that’s interesting. I didn’t, I, I [00:30:00] never thought that it was because there was an actual safety standard at another country requiring them to do that. I just thought it was a little cool add-on. They threw in the car.

Anthony: Do us manufacturers even make cars for the Japanese market because we just make giant, massive cars.

And I’ve been to Tokyo and you don’t have spaces for, you know a or to Escalade or Cadillac Escalade, some Escalade. I.

Michael: I don’t know that there’s such, I don’t know if there’s, Japanese citizens who are importing the vehicles. Like in the United States, you can get special imports and get you work your way around safety standards. But I don’t, I’m not aware of the United States manufacturers that are clicking all the boxes and going through the certification process over in Japan. It just doesn’t seem like a very lucrative thing for them to do. Part, particularly given the distance.

Distances involved and the shipments, although there seems to be a much higher level of European luxury vehicles that are imported into Japan America’s doesn’t, American brands don’t have kind of the luxury [00:31:00] cache, other than maybe what Cadillac, or, they don’t really have what Europe has going in that regard.

It looks like most of Europe does a little better in Japan than the United States as far as vehicle exports, but I not significantly most, I think most vehicles in Japan are probably manufactured in Japan, maybe China, maybe some Hyundai vehicles as well.

Anthony: So we get even an update on Canada.

Let’s give you an update on New York.

Speeding and Automated Speed Cameras in New York

Anthony: So we talked in the past about I think it was last week, we talked about speeding and automated speed cameras in New York. And there’s a great [email protected] we’re gonna link to that lists the top 10 super speeders and the locations where they most often terrorize New Yorkers.

Now this is insane list. I didn’t make it, thank God. Yeah. But it talks about for example, the number one is a 2023 Audi as six, and it’s had total fines of $46,636. That’s [00:32:00] worth more than the car itself. And they’ve paid $11,000 in tickets. Other ones, they’ve got like a 2015 Mercedes that owes $47,000.

It’s crazy. A Kia Forte, I don’t know how to say it. With $33,000 in tickets, like you could buy like three Kia Forts. I don’t know what a Kia Forte is. I don’t know. But, it sounds insane. Yeah.

Michael: Yeah. The crazy thing here is that there’s someone, the, that number one ticket receiver, the alley driver, 563 violations in one year, which is, and it’s in a

Anthony: school zone,

Michael: in a school zone, more than one every day.

All of these tickets are in the school zone. So god knows, it’s not like this guy’s just beating in a school zone, but, and I say Guy, I’m assuming it’s a guy but. He was actually paid $46,600 in tickets and still owes what, 11,000 and something. Yeah. But it’s amazing to me that someone, how do you not go to this guy’s [00:33:00] house and pull him out of his house and throw him in jail?

How is that not happening? Someone who is routinely putting other people’s lives at risk and just doesn’t care and is just gonna buy his way out of the problem. Not our kind of people.

Anthony: No. It’s crazy. It’s a fun article just to go through and go, wow, look at this. More, you’re paying more in fines than the vehicle’s worth, but

Michael: yeah, who knows?

And you see the Range Rover the Black 22 Range. Land Rover. Range Rover, 196 schools speeding zone tickets. Last year they’ve paid $44,260 for the privilege to speed through school zone.

Anthony: Unbelievable. I’m doing something wrong with my life.

Congestion Pricing in New York: Success and Concerns

Anthony: The next one, a New York update is on congestion pricing, bu bomb from an article in Jalopnik quoting.

In fact, while far fewer cars in the city means life has improved for the people who actually live in New York. The people who still drive to work instead of taking public transportation have also benefited. After all, less traffic means faster [00:34:00] travel times, which means car commuters spend less time sitting in traffic.

At rush hour, the Holland Tunnel, for example, saw delays drop by 65% while travel time through the tunnel is down 48%, the fewer cars in the city. MTA Deputy Chief Juliette Michelson told Curbed doctors have reported fewer less pa late patients and delivery drivers claim they’re saving so much time. It just keep win-win.

Unless you wear a lot of orange makeup and then you’re like nah. I

Michael: don’t know why. I think the co, the coolest thing here is that excessive car honking complaints have dropped 70% Oh. Since the year over year. I know you like that entity.

Anthony: I’m a big fan of that, except for outside my window where they keep double parking and blocking FDNY ambulances just so they can pick up some food.

But anyway so we’ve covered Canada, we’ve covered New York. It

Michael: shows, it shows that the congestion pricing is. It’s really seems to work despite some opposition, which seemed to be from people who didn’t live in New York City anyway. And [00:35:00] that’s a great thing if that’s going to work.

And it’s also, provided with the state, I think half a billion dollars in profit from the program that they can use to reinvest into safer streets. I, it sounds like a great success. I guess the only. The only concern here that we would have anytime congestion is cut, is that, congestion prevents vehicles from typically traveling fast enough to experience a lot of fatal crashes.

And does freeing up congestion in the city result in, higher speed of travel, which it seems to. The stats seem to back that up. Less congestion. Your people are getting into the city quicker. Does that mean you’re going to have more fatal crashes? Maybe more pedestrian crashes? We’ll have to wait to see.

Fred: Yeah. Yeah. But remember the definition of congestion is a much higher concentration of vehicles. So if you look at the rate yeah, of fatalities, it may be compensated simply ’cause there’s so many more vehicles in the area. I’ve [00:36:00] never noticed that walking across the street in New York during a traffic gym is a particularly safe.

Safe or a relaxing maneuver. No.

Anthony: Marijuana’s legal in New York, so that makes it a little easier anyway, to do what it,

you ever have funions. So look, we’ve covered Canada. We’ve gone back and covered that. We’ve covered New York again, the speeding and the the congestion pricing. So I’m feeling like we’re getting a little redundant.

The Debate on Redundancy in Vehicle Design

Anthony: Ah, so you ready for the towel of red entered? You’re gonna cover redundancy.

Fred: I’m ready. Great. Great. Is redundancy in vehicle design good or bad?

Anthony: It depends. Is it, how many couples do we

Fred: need?

Michael: Is it good to a point? You can’t put, you have, you put seven cameras on a car to run the A DAS. Maybe you put 14 to make it redundant. So you can, but why don’t you reach a point [00:37:00] where redundancy isn’t really gonna help anymore?

Anthony: I would like a passenger side braking pedal.

Fred: Yeah. That’s the whole problem actually, is redundancy is always with regard to some parameter. So if you look at individual electrical components. If you looked at all those components that could affect the safety of a vehicle, these days you’re looking at thousands and thousands of components.

And so should each of these be redundant? That would be a very difficult design objective. And if you want to have a resistor, that is, if it still safe, if it fails, that’s hard to do. Yeah.

Michael: Redundant tires seem like they’d be hard to do too.

Fred: Actually, there is some redundancy in tires because if you think of the ability of steering a vehicle and you compare a motorcycle with a car that’s got four wheels, if you get a flat tire in your front, you can still steer the vehicle, right?

You can get off the road if. [00:38:00] Failure in the front tire of a motorcycle, you’re in a world of hurt. And so with regard to directional control of a vehicle, there is some redundancy in the fact that you have four tires on a car. But that points out that you always have to look at redundancy in terms of with respect to what software redundancy is an interesting problem.

So if, let’s say that you’ve got, a mission safety or a safety critical feature in the software, and you want it to be redundant. If the software fails or has a problem, you’re still stuck with the software, right? ’cause it’s running your vehicle. So how do you do that? One of the ways you can do that is just have another copy of the software running on a separate computer, right?

So then it’s redundant. One fail. You still got the other one. But the problem that comes up is. How do you know which one is correct? If one fails and the [00:39:00] other is working perfectly well, you need to have a tiebreaker somewhere. So in order to have single redundancy for the software, you really need to have three copies of it running so that you can vote on the best answer.

Another way you can do it is to have two completely separate algorithms that are in one computer. That is, running both of them, right? And they look at the same result. And this actually brings to one of my pet peeves of real time misunderstandings because for the vehicle, you gotta have the software tied to the actual clock if you’re gonna have two different algorithms running, right?

Because they both have to come up with the same solution at the same time. So that dictates a lot about the how the software is gonna run. My, this is getting long-winded, but my point is only that you need to look at redundancy in terms of what’s being what is trying to be accomplished, and what is the [00:40:00] objective of this redundancy.

So just by merely saying we have redundancy, as the AV industry does the a talk about redundant software or redundancy, we have redundant design. That doesn’t mean it’s inherently safe. You really have to look at the details of how they’re putting a boundary around what is being defined as the function they’re trying to pro, which they’re trying to provide redundancy and their ability of doing that with truly independent means that comes to the same conclusion and provide the same functionality.

So it’s actually a very complicated subject. I only bring this up just because the AV industry does often say, oh, we’ve got redundant software, everything. Excuse me, everything’s fine. What can possibly go wrong? A lot can still go wrong, and you really need to look at it very [00:41:00] careful introspection about these vehicles and where the redundancy sits and what it’s trying to accomplish.

So it’s not a hot issue right now, but it’s just another perspective that needs to be addressed when you’re looking at AV safety and the ability of autonomous vehicles to safely conclude the drive, particularly when something goes wrong in a safety critical function. So is that that sounds a little convoluted.

Is that clear and meaningful?

Anthony: I totally get it. I I think it might be your new Gaslight, the AV industry saying we have redundancy, but not pointing out that Yeah, we don’t know what it means. So back to an airplane example. I know there are safety systems like the Hydraulics on a Boeing, they have three copies of everything.

So if one system dies, the pressure will just build up in the other remaining too, so they can still control the flaps and the rudders and. And the in-house movie service ’cause I believe that one. I’m [00:42:00] glad you brought

Fred: that up. There’s another aircraft industry is a really good example of how and when this is applied.

’cause you’ve flown in an airplane, right? Oh yeah. And it has two wings. One on the left and one on the right.

Anthony: I was only on the left side, so I don’t know.

Fred: Oh, that’s the liberal airplane. But if you lose one wing you’re in a world of hurt. So you could say, whoa, what we really need to do is we need to have a redundant set of wings or a biplane, right?

And somebody could say that’s the only, that’s the only way to go, that it would be safe. So it brings up the, that brings up the whole discussion of whether an individual component or function is sufficiently reliable, that there’s no real advantage in redundancy. So one really well-built wing is probably better than two really poorly built wings, and you’ve also got restrictions on what the aircraft can do.

This is why the aircraft are certified so carefully and why they [00:43:00] put so much design effort into it and why the government has a program for supervising the design and performance of the vehicles because you cannot have. Completely redundant features on an airplane or it wouldn’t be able to fly, right?

You can’t have two fusion lodges. You can’t have two sets of wings. You can’t double up on everything. So instead they make sure that the system’s in place, which are unitary, are sufficiently reliable. Companies will not do this themselves because they don’t have a definition of what is sufficiently reliable.

That’s something that’s imposed by the government or public standards. And this feeds back into why AVS have such a problem with the safety. They declare over and over again that everything is safe, but they never say why or never provide the details of how they’re accomplishing that safety objective.[00:44:00]

That’s a agreed real conversation stopper again, bring this up at a at your nice cocktail party if you want to be alone.

Anthony: No I don’t. If you wanna have lots of friends, go to auto safety.org and click on donate.

Recent Vehicle Recalls: Volkswagen, Ford, and Chrysler

Anthony: Now we’re gonna run into recalls ’cause we’re running low on time ’cause Michael has to make a run, but he’s gonna drive safely in his commute.

So recalls starting off with Volkswagen 5,637 vehicles. The 2025 Volkswagen. Id buzz a brand new car. It has a non-compliance with F-M-V-S-S 1 35. That requires either the common word break or other prescribed specific icons described in F-M-B-S-S 1 0 1. Wait, so they, huh? So they’re not using a break icon or the word break or when you put on a break?

I’m so confused. I don’t think

Michael: It’s it’s not when you’re breaking, it’s when you have a brake system malfunction. So your brakes aren’t working right, [00:45:00] or they failed. There’s certain situations in which one F and BSS 1 35 and 1 0 1, which controls your instrument panel requires a telltale to pop up saying, Hey, your brakes are screwy.

You need to know about this. And that’s really it. I think it just doesn’t, it doesn’t happen. I think there’s I think what it is they’ve got like a bad icon or whatever the icon is that’s on the. Buzz ID or ID buzz screen is not appropriate. It’s gotta be, this is similar to one of the Tesla recalls where the height of the font wasn’t high enough, right?

In this case it’s supposed to be 3.2 millimeters or higher and it doesn’t match that. So I don’t think they. I don’t know what data container software is, but apparently that’s what you’re gonna be giving as an owner. You’ll hear about this recall from BW sometime around the start of June.

But it’s gonna correct the coating in your vehicle so that the telltale signs are 3.2 [00:46:00] millimeters or greater.

Anthony: And this is for their new ID buzz that is they’re trying to be their van again, but it just, it looks like a minivan to me. Hey, that’s just my opinion, man. Next up Ford 24,655 vehicles.

The 2025 Ford Explorer. Oh boy. Damaged park system may reduce the ability of the transmission park feature to hold the vehicle if the electronic parking brake is not applied. That’s not great. Yeah, it’s some software issue here and, oh, you’ll be notified by mail at some point that

Michael: this is another, this is the powertrain con control module for the vehicle is resetting while you’re driving. And so that can do a lot of problems. It can damage your transmission and other parts of your park system if you’re moving at the time, I think they say here, if you’re moving, it speeds greater than 10 miles per hour.

And this happens, there’s a good chance that you’re going to have a damaged park system transmission [00:47:00] system. And also you can lose acceleration. You can lose motive power if you get. In the event of eight consecutive resets in the span of 18 seconds, you can lose noted power according to the recall submission.

So this doesn’t sound very safe at all. It looks like what Ford is gonna do is notify folks later next month, and there’s going to be possible. They’re gonna, they’re gonna change your software, but also they’re gonna go in and look at your transmission to make sure your park system hasn’t been damaged by previous resets.

Anthony: It makes me wonder like what kind of testing protocol they have in place. ’cause so much of this is software related. There’s ways to Yeah. Automate these things.

Michael: Software is starting to, every year it creeps higher and the percentage of recalls that software is involved in, and, we’re never gonna get to a hundred percent because there’s always gonna be, mechanical failure involved with vehicles.

But the percentage of recalls that are software related is higher now that it’s ever [00:48:00] been, it’s only going to get higher.

Anthony: Next up, wait. Ford 123,611 vehicles the 20 17 20 17 to 2018 Ford F-150. Let’s see, the, oh no, and there’s the 20 17 20 18 Expedition Lincoln Navigator, ooh. A substantial loss of brake fluid can reduce brake function to the front wheels.

Thank God they have redundant brakes. They got breaks in back, right? Huh? You got a redundant break, eh, I thought Fred gives a thumbs up here. If the brake fluid in the reservoir is depleted to a predetermined level, the driver will receive an audible chime, a message center alert, a coupon for a brake fluid, and a red brake warning indicator in the instrument cluster.

Oh boy. Okay. They’re not getting a coupon.

Michael: Yeah, this is something that’s bothered some Ford owners for quite some time now. They are gonna be basically you’re driving and you can lose your brake fluid, which means you’re losing brake function to your front. Where wheels, that’s a huge [00:49:00] problem.

I think that they’re gonna be replacing your, some of the actual parts here, this is not a recall. You’re gonna have your master cylinder replaced, and if the master cylinder is found to have been leaking, they’re also gonna replace your brake booster for free. So expect it looks like you’re gonna hear about that really soon for owners of these vehicles starting later in April, may, in about five days.

Anthony: All right, we have one recall left. The company is Chrysler. There’s 48,494 vehicles. Fred, what do you think went wrong with these vehicles? It’s been a minute. So recall Chrysler I.

Fred: I don’t know Anthony, but I think you probably do.

Anthony: Rear view camera. Come on. 2023. 2025. Alpha Romeo to toenail whatever, 2023.

2025 Dodge Hornet. Wait, alpha Romeo Toal

Michael: work. Work that out. Work that out in your hair, right? Yeah. I can’t

Anthony: really work that one out. Yeah. There,

Michael: Did you know that your Alpha Romeo has got the [00:50:00] same system as a Dodge Hornet?

Anthony: Yeah. Then you’re like, wait, I’m, someone’s getting ripped off here. Yeah, that’s funny.

So a rear view image that does not display reduces the driver. So wait their rear view camera, blah, blah, blah. Rear view camera, blah, blah, blah. Rear view camera.

Michael: Yeah. This is yet another rear view camera problem. This one is. A cold soldering issue. So it’s not what we, I think the typical one we see is software related, some problem with that.

But here there’s a there’s a soldering, cold soldering error on a voltage regulator. Or a software defect within a microprocessor. But I think they’re going to be getting a new printed circuit board. Layout and a software update. But for some older vehicles, they’re only going to need a software update because they already have a new printed circuit board.

Maybe somebody knew about this problem before now.

Anthony: It all seems very suspicious.

Michael: It does. June 4th is when owners will be [00:51:00] hearing about that. Make sure to ask them. Ask them when you go in. Why did they start giving people new printed circuit boards December 6th, 2023, but it took them. A year and a half to perform at this recall.

Anthony: I wanna know why they won’t know

Michael: the answer, but it’s worth asking.

Anthony: I don’t know why. Is it a solder issue or is it a software issue?

Michael: Yeah. What’s going on here? Yeah,

Anthony: you put solder in my software.

Conclusion and Upcoming Topics

Anthony: And with that, unless anyone has any final departing words,

Fred: no, I’ve dispensed all the wisdom I’ve got available right now.

Anthony: That’s excellent. We’ve appreciated it greatly. Next week we’re gonna talk about Subaru and airbags on the outside of their cars ’cause it’s so cool. But till then, thanks for everybody for listening. Bye.

Fred: Thanks everybody. Thank you. Bye-bye.

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