Tesla on trial, Rollerskates and Robo Taxis

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, listeners, today is July 23rd, 2025. Alright, good morning everybody. You’re hopefully hearing this on July 24th, 2025 at your leisure whenever you’d like to do it. Either way, we’re gonna start off. This is a trigger warning time. It’s a lot of Tesla and Elon. I look if you’re eating breakfast now, I pause the show, come back to it, digest.

If you need to contact your spiritual advisor, do that. Because a lot is going on in the world [00:01:00] of Tesla. Mainly.

Tesla’s Legal Troubles in California

Anthony: Let’s start off with this, our Washington Post article quoting from it, state regulators in California argued Monday that Elon Musk’s Tesla should lose its license to sell vehicles in California.

As the automaker fights allegations in courtrooms on both sides of the country, that a dangerously misled drivers to believe its cars can drive themselves without human oversight, clutches, pearls. Oh my God, this is brand new information to us, gentlemen. Wait, Tesla’s been misleading its customers. How could, it’s can’t be true.

Michael: This is, this goes way back to the company calling their level two technology autopilot and full self-driving, which clearly to any reasonable human being implies vehicles are gonna be able to drive themselves when they can’t, and when humans need to be constantly monitoring their environment, just like they’d be driving a regular day without [00:02:00] these features.

So it’s, the California, I would argue, they’ve gotten into this a little late in the game. We were writing letters to the California DMV in 2017 or 2018 telling them they needed to clamp down on this language from Tesla. As well as to the FTC which did nothing and has continued to do nothing on the issue despite it being clearly deceptive marketing.

And it’s a huge problem. Tesla has been fighting hard against the DMD in California on this issue and delaying court hearings and doing all it can to prevent this from coming to a head, but it looks like it’s about to come to a head. So we’re interested to see what happened. We’ll see if there is, a spine in California to go after this.

This, I don’t know what the ultimate. Solution here would be, are they gonna tell Tesla to stop using those terms? The cats out of the bag on that. Those [00:03:00] terms, those terms have already killed a number of people just by misleading them into thinking the vehicles are something they’re not.

But even at this late stage in the game, it would be nice to see a state required Tesla do something to protect its customers and innocent people on the road who are basically Guinea pigs in Elon’s world.

Anthony: Michael, I have to ask you saying the Federal Trade Commission who oversees deceptive advertising, they haven’t done anything on to Tesla for doing this.

’cause if that’s true, then welcome to the You Smell amazing podcast. That’s right. By listening to this podcast, you smell amazing and everyone will like you.

Michael: Wow. Can I smell amazing by being on the podcast? Or is it just the listeners?

Anthony: By being on it, by being near it by, all right. You, it slices, it dices it frappes All I can get behind that.

It sounds like a lot

Michael: of, a lot of food prep going on there too.

Anthony: For our listeners, we prefer that you [00:04:00] stand way behind it. Okay. I think the remedy in California is, if this goes through that there’ll be a 30 deep period where they can’t sell Teslas plus some sort of, public shaming.

I think they’ll make Elon stand outside where people throw things at him. Is my understanding of the law. But I am, I’m not an expert. That could just be my fantasy.

Michael: Yeah, this is something that’s been going on for a while now. I think it’s been going on since 2022. That’s when the DMV order tests left.

I think there was also a state law in California that was passed in 2023 that tells vehicles that no, deceptive marketing is allowed on any features involving partial driving automations, level two automations, level three automations. You can’t call them deceptive names. And yet Teslas continue to sell ’em that way in California.

And so it’s amazing that just this brazen flaunting of the law continues to go on from, by Tesla. And this [00:05:00] isn’t the only area of course, but it’s concerning that there aren’t enough teeth in either our federal or state enforcement, even in California to prevent these types of things from happening.

Anthony: What could go wrong? Oh yeah. People keep dying.

Tesla’s Autopilot Issues and Court Cases

Anthony: Speaking of that, there’s a trial going on in Florida that we talked about last week. Can give you a little update on that. Missy Cummings friend of the show she is an expert, testimonial person. Expert witness. There we go. Expert witness in the case.

And she said, quoting it is my professional opinion that Tesla’s autopilot is defective because Tesla knowingly allows the car to be operated in operational domains for which it is explicitly not designed for. That seems pretty damning to me.

Michael: Yeah it’s totally correct. And a big part of the problem is, rather than using actual maps, which we all have, and GPS, which all Teslas have to determine where a [00:06:00] vehicle is and make sure that it’s operating in an operating design domain for which it was designed and constructed to, to perform in Tesla vehicles make a decision based on what they see through their cameras on the road to decide whether or not it’s a safe operating environment for the vehicle.

And it doesn’t work, right? We see people turning autopilot on roads for which it wasn’t intended. Supposedly it’s supposed to be restricted to certain. Highways that are, restricted in a way. They don’t have turnoffs. You have exits instead of the ability, for instance, for tractor trailers to cross the road where Teslas can’t see them.

And, you want those types of situations because we know that it’s, interstates and highways that are designed like interstates are some of the safest places to operate vehicles in America. The fatality and injury rates on major highways and interstates is [00:07:00] incredibly low compared to a lot of other roads like rural roads which is where the autopilot was turned on in, in the trial that’s going on.

So that’s something that, I lost my train of thought there, man. Here we go. I feel like a bad autonomous vehicle.

Fred: There’s something about this I don’t understand, which is that you guys are suggesting that wealthy people should have to conform to the laws like the rest of us. Is it Bo?

Anthony: I never said that.

Don’t brand me a communist.

Michael: I would suggest that people who buy these vehicles. Have to monitor them and they have to drive. We see so many cars coming to the market where it seems like the biggest advertising point for the technology they’re putting into to them is to allow people to watch TV or text, or do whatever the hell they want to do while they’re driving.

That has nothing to do with actually paying attention to the driving task. And we’re not there yet at all. We’re not even close to an era where people can sit back and not pay attention to the [00:08:00] road while they’re in charge of operating a motor vehicle. All these false promises coming out of the mouths of Elon and, some of the other folks in the auto industry who seem to want to follow in his footsteps are a huge problem.

And what they’ve essentially done is set up a massive trap. It’s sitting there waiting for any driver that believes them and starts failing to supervise the operation of their motor vehicle.

Anthony: Bad. I agree. Okay.

Robo Taxis and Autonomous Driving Challenges

Anthony: I, this is pointless ’cause robo taxis are gonna, it’s gonna take over all the driving for everybody, right?

You don’t need to drive a car. And Tesla’s doing that now rolling out their roboto taxis, and they want everyone to focus on Theo taxis because no one’s buying their cars anymore. This is from an article on fortune.com. The very day that Elon Musk expanded the boundaries of his three week old autonomous ride hailing service in Austin, Joe teed Myers Tesla tried to illegally run a railroad crossing just as a [00:09:00] locomotive approached the robot.

Taxii did not see that, and the safety observer had to stop the vehicle until the train had passed. So there’s a little bit of work that still needs to be done to be polished up with the software, but otherwise, it’s been an amazing opportunity to see how well this can kill me. I see how well the expanded services working.

Wow. Joe t Fellow said so,

Michael: so almost running into a train requires just a little polish, right?

Anthony: It’s, it feels like a Monty Python skit. Like it does oh no, it’s fine. Just a flesh wound. I’m okay.

Michael: These days life feels like a Monty Python skit.

Anthony: I don’t understand this mindset.

The guy gets into a vehicle that tries to kill him. We’re no, we’re aware. It wasn’t, it didn’t have consciousness. It wasn’t thinking, I’m gonna kill Joe Che Meyer. But it tried to kill him. ’cause it’s a piece of shit. And he’s ah, it just, it’s gotta smooth some parts out. It’s okay. What is that mindset?

Let’s go to resident psychologist Fred Perkins.

Fred: There are people who [00:10:00] jump out of airplanes for fun there. There’s, I, I. I think that maybe, there’s an outlet for people who like to do that sort of thing. In the AV industry, people are willing to go to extreme lengths to convince themselves that these things are okay.

And the risks that you absorb both legal and physical when you get in these things is perfectly okay. I guess progress is their most important product. Who is That was, am I dating myself? That was General Electric slogan. Way back when.

Anthony: I don’t know what you do in your free time. You could date yourself.

We won’t judge.

Fred: Alright, fair enough.

Anthony: Okay.

Fred: Stephen Colbert suggested that the president do that in recent, oh. Nevermind. We won’t go there. Okay.

Anthony: So I wanna know if there’s any listeners in the Austin area who are like, yeah, I want to get into this suicide machine. Robax, I wanna, play [00:11:00] death with some minimum wage employee who’s probably looking at their phone and every now and then, just ah, a big red button.

If you are that, go to auto safety.org and click on donate. And if you click on donate, we’re more likely to read your comment. No, we’ll read all our comments. Oh, we’ve got a comment we gotta cover today. I forgot all about it. Remind me guys, we gotta do that comment. Question. But Michael, okay, so they, Tesla’s going crazy.

They’re they’re getting sued right and left. This they tend to just throw money at the problem and be like, Hey, we settled that case. It was the driver’s fault. Actually they

Michael: did, they did settle. There’ve been, I think two maybe more, but I two that I know of autopilot collisions that involved a tractor trailer crossing a road and the Tesla cameras unable to detect them.

The second one of those that happened was actually just settled this past week by Tesla. So they’re, it looks like what they’re doing a good job of settling cases where it’s very clear that their level two systems autopilot are [00:12:00] failing. And then they’re trying to fight the ones like the one currently going on in Florida where they think they have a chance.

Although, there, there’s. There’s a possibility that they tried to settle that one as well, but that the, the family there simply said, we want to take this one to court because we wanna stop this practice. Which is a rare and admirable thing to do as we see so many. And for sometimes understandable reasons.

So many people accept settlements and this stuff never makes it to the public. So we’re hopeful that this trial and the testimony generated from it, and hopefully a jury that has some sense and can see through Tesla’s attempts to blame the human can result in a decision that has a broader impact.

Anthony: The, this jury, they’re located in what state? Florida. Okay. Yep. Odds on them. Having sense. I’m just

Michael: kidding. Depends how many Florida men are on the jury, right?

Anthony: But Michael, [00:13:00] okay, so Tesla goes out there and does crazy things, but that’s okay.

NHTSA Staff Reductions and Safety Concerns

Anthony: We have checks and balances, we have safety regulators who are overseeing these things.

And that brings us to our next article, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Part of the transportation department is shrinking from 772 employees to 555. That is a more than the Federal Highway Administration and Federal Trends Administration are also both losing more than 25% of their staff.

We’re all gonna die. So more and more dangerous vehicles are getting out there, claiming I can drive myself, bro. And the government’s response is yeah. I believe that. Let’s fire the people whose job it is to make sure these things are not missiles of death. Is that right? Is that what I’m reading here?

Michael: Technically they’re not being fired for the most part. Oh. There were some probationary employees who I believe were fi you could call it fired and let go. A few months back. But bro, wait,

Anthony: probationary sounds like they did something wrong.

Michael: Yeah it’s a moniker given to a person in their first [00:14:00] year of service.

They’re probationary until they’re a full employee. A trial period, but vast majority of folks who are leaving Nitsa and leaving, the other highway safety agencies and the DOT as a whole are doing so by taking, a deferred payoff plan of some sort where they’re leaving government service voluntarily with the promise of a nice compensation package.

But this is. It it’s very disconcerting because for a lot of reasons, but, we’re losing talent at the agency that’s never going to come back. For the first time, and this is history, I think they were fairly positive about their staffing levels at the end of the Biden administration.

They were up to, they felt like they were up to snuff in the enforcement and research and rulemaking departments. And they were making some good progress on rulemaking and making progress in a lot of areas. And now, less than a year later we’re seeing, massive [00:15:00] cuts.

25% of the nitsa, 25% of the Federal Highway Administration and others. And so it’s, it makes it’s scary in a lot of ways to know that there we’re not going to have these folks working. But it’s also scary. It’s disconcerting when you look at, what’s happening at the DOT, the F-A-A-F-A literally has more employees than the number of people that die on our roads.

Every year they’ve got more than 40,000 employees, and I think they cut, a thousand or so of those, the FAA oversees an industry that’s, obviously needs some oversight as some of the things Boeing has done would tell you, but. There are a whole lot of employees there in an industry that we see very little loss of life in indu in injury.

The impact, the negative impacts of commercial airliners on American lives just aren’t really there. And you’ve got 40 [00:16:00] something thousand people working on that issue. Whereas at Nitsa, they’re responsible for overseeing an industry and overseeing drivers and, the transportation ecosystem that.

Kills about 40,000 people. It kills everyone working at the FAA every year, and yet they are only going to be down to 5,550 some odd employees now who are supposed to somehow manage all of that chaos. And it just points to, the people who are in charge right now, the government simply don’t understand what nitsa does.

You, you see a lot of congressmen saying things. In fact, my Gaslight of the week this week will be one of those, a lot of congressmen saying things and just they don’t understand how our regulatory agencies work and the efforts they put in to save lives around the country. And NHTSA is just completely sorely underrated, underfunded, and has been for many years.

And, just when NHTSA is getting [00:17:00] up to a point where we think they’re doing good, boom, a new administration comes in and kneecaps them. So it’s a terrible situation and it’s, who knows if they’re going to be able to attract, better talent in the future, to look at things like automated vehicles and some of the advanced software and electronics going into vehicles and distractions and impairment.

Who’s gonna want to go work at an agency where their job is constantly under threat? And where their work is completely undervalued by large portions of the government and the country. I don’t know. It’s it’s a bad time over and it’s and we hope that things get better, although the light at the end of the tunnel is probably still a good bit of way,

Fred: Even with Goodwill on a part of the administration and the best efforts of everybody who is there to rebuild that agency is gonna take many years.

Even if the, even if there is an administration that sees the importance of this regulatory agency, [00:18:00] the work that they do there is very sophisticated. And very needs a lot of background. It takes years and years to not only train the people who are the employees, but also to establish the procedures and the human relationships necessary to allow them to do their work.

This is not a small thing that we’re talking about here. This is a generational diminishment of the ability of the government to regulate an industry that is killing 40,000 Americans every year. This is it is hard to overstate the tragedy of this situation.

Anthony: Yeah. We beat up Nitsa a lot on this show, but I think all of us want it.

But Michael, I just wanna clarify something you said. You said it’ll be reduced to 5,500 employees at nitsa 555? I may, yeah. 555. That is insane. Like [00:19:00] 555 people is not a lot of people. That’s

Michael: No. And then in fact a lot of those folks, obviously aren’t directly involved in, research enforcement rulemaking activities.

There are a lot of folks at Nitsa who are involved in state grantmaking and other things to make sure that states and, police officers and firemen get some funding and that kind of thing. So it’s, and across the board cuts, they’re not providing a list of who’s leaving where, and exactly where all these cuts or are being made.

So we’re not really sure what the impact is at the moment. We don’t know, for instance, whether there’ve been drastic cuts to the enforcement division or whether a lot of these cuts have come. I expect many of them have come in the state grant areas given a lot of the cuts that have been made in those areas to the money that’s flowing in.

Ultimately the proof is going to be in the pudding when we see, what impact this has on the roads and on, on the, fatality [00:20:00] statistics. And it’s a long term analysis, it’s not something we’re gonna figure out this week or next month.

Gaslight of the Week: Misleading Statements and Safety

Anthony: Continuing with this, I’m gonna go to my Gaslight of the week.

That’s right. ’cause you mentioned Gaslight. This is from an article in east Bay Times. I’m not gonna link to this article ’cause there’s a lot of weird typos in it, but there’s a good quote in here from Jonathan Morrison, who is he now NSA’s director. Has he passed?

Michael: They haven’t voted on the confirmation.

Okay. The hearings

Anthony: concerned. He he said this realization of the mobility and safety benefits from AVS depends entirely upon consumer trust and that trust must be rooted in safety. The gaslight part is realization of the mobile mobility and safety benefits from avs. That’s science fiction people there.

Sure, I can imagine a future where the mobility and safety benefits of magical thinking will save lives. But this is not a thing. It’s not a thing. There’s no, no one has proven that these vehicles are [00:21:00] safer than your average teenager. I don’t care what Waymo’s PR department says. The this is wishful thinking, magical thinking, saying, Hey, in the future, these cars will drive themselves and give you a foot massage as you go along.

But wait, I got a better future. We don’t even need cards, man. Did you ever see Star Trek? Yeah. Teleportation. This is what we’re gonna do. Oh, know how safe that will be? Like, don’t even need airbags anymore. This is awesome. The future is incredible. Fuck you. It says, new director.

Fred: I’m gonna jump into my gaslight here because it fits right in with that.

The CO CEO of Waymo is a woman named Tera Maana. Forgive me if I’ve mispronounced the name, but she posted, recently, and she said, I’m quoting here. Here at Waymo, we’re committed to making roads safer for everyone, including pedestrians, cyclists, and skaters. [00:22:00] As someone who loves to roller skate and blade, I know the safety is not optional.

It’s essential as quote. And she cites a quote from a third party who was named Brendan Dejala, I think pro skateboarder. And he says, quote, I personally love,

Anthony: oh, it was getting so good. And then Fred’s internet pros Oh, than any ever would. Sorry. Fred. Fred, your internet froze for a second. Can we back up to pro skater?

Let back up to the skateboarders. Yeah. Pro skater, what did he say?

Fred: Okay. Pro skateboarder, Brenda Deja. I personally love looking over my shoulder and seeing a Waymo. It gives us more buffer than any car ever would close quote. And then she invites you to learn more about how Waymo’s making roads safer here.

I think this is really cute. Waymo’s official position on operational safety with respect to vulnerable road users [00:23:00] is that the CEO loves to roller skate and the pro skateboarder loves Waymo. I guess that settles it. Familiarity with a hazard is not evidence that the hazard doesn’t exist.

The experience of dodging a bullet is not proof of your invulnerability. Waymo is urgently perhaps desperately pushing the idea that familiarity with their devices as an adequate substitute for safety, design and performance transparency. I guess Waymo could have divulged their safety design metrics, key safety indicators, how well the operations conform to design standards, how much redundancy they built into their software and hardware.

Operating in the vicinity of pedestrians. But that’s probably a lot of work better to quote a professional skateboarder like NASA with a space shuttle substituting the idea that quote, it’s never been a problem. Close quote. By touting the [00:24:00] increasing miles driven with other catastrophe instead of transparency about their safety design and performance is really setting them up for a big PR fall.

When that catastrophe occurs, cue the late Shaw monologues, you can almost see them happening. The big fiscal question for Alphabet is whether Alphabet will be able to cash out a Waymo before that happens. GM waited too long for with crews. So in light of recent deaths and injuries involving Waymo vehicles, we’re offering two.

And what were this, sorry. Sorry. What were the deaths and injuries

Michael: for the Waymo’s?

Fred: Bill Copeman reported that there was a death involving a Waymo vehicle. He credits them with one sixth of a fatality. I’m not sure what the details of that are. And there were injuries particularly involving, we know the bicyclist who got doored by the Waymo, and then ran into another Waymo.

So [00:25:00] talking about skateboarding to deflect the public’s need for transparency into their safety design and performance. I’m nominating the Kra Mo Wana and Waymo for this week’s Gaslight award.

Anthony: That’s pretty good. You got my Waymo in there. And, mine was just slightly obnoxious, but I stand behind it.

Michael might disagree, let’s see.

Michael: It doesn’t matter. I’m gonna win this week. Oh, come on. My, my guess right now of the week is Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno, who made some comments at last week’s confirmation hearing for the nits administrator that were, dumb would be a good way to describe them.

But he says, he’s talking about the law that was passed in the bipartisan infrastructure law that would require alcohol detection devices to be installed in vehicles. So here’s his take on it. I don’t drink at all, he said, and yet, in the infrastructure law, which has to do with roads and bridges, they snuck in a [00:26:00] provision that starting in 26, 26 model year vehicles, I have to have an impairment detection in my advice.

A impairment detection device in my vehicle before my car can start. Why would I have to have an impairment detection device in my car that doesn’t lower the price of the cars? It raises the price of cars. And he also called the whole concept insane. Now. So much wrong with this statement. First of all, whether or not you drink at all has nothing to do with it.

There, there’s always a chance. Someone’s gonna drive your car, you’re gonna sell your car. There’s a million ways that, that, a vehicle can change hands or be operated by someone else. Yes, you’re correct. On one thing, this was put in the infrastructure law. It was not snuck in. It was put in in, and was in the bill for quite some time in multiple forms before it was placed in the infrastructure act.

And it does not start in 20, 26 mile a year vehicles. When it was passed, [00:27:00] there was a provision that stated that Nitso sh. Needed to put out the rulemaking by 2024 and have the rulemaking take effect in the next two to three years after the rulemaking. But it also included escape clause where the agency could say we don’t, we’re not able to do this yet.

And that’s essentially what the agency has done. They put out an advance notice of proposed rulemaking that basically asked a lot of questions, had no answers. They did this in 2023, and it’s not going anywhere right now. The technology still has a little ways to go, but it’s something that is incredibly important and could cut down on the, thousands and thousands of impaired driving deaths we see every year.

So there’s no way to really, no way to describe this other than the. It’s completely inaccurate and it just shows what a lack of understanding a sitting senator can have regarding an agency and a [00:28:00] rulemaking and a law. The guy simply has no clue. So for that Bernie gets my, Bernie Moreno gets my Gaslight of the week.

It’s hard to call someone the dumbest senator in the building when Tommy Tuberville is around, but he’s certainly in the running.

Fred: I’m gonna object to that. ’cause stupidity is not the same as Cupidity. And I’m not sure he is gaslighting so much as just being stupid.

Michael: He’s telling us that the law is one thing when it clearly isn’t to make us want to disagree with the law.

I think that qualifies.

Anthony: It is a tough one when it comes to judging. Way more by default it gets a plus one. Mine automatically gets a plus 10. But I think I, oh wait. Excuse me. Yeah, it’s a it’s a height adjustment. It’s that’s what’s going on here.

What’s wrong with, it’s an

Fred: inverse proportion.

Anthony: All right. Yeah. Do some math here, kid. Alright. It’s, but I think Michael’s might be good. It was pithy. It pointed out stupidity, gaslighting or not? I don’t know. I’m [00:29:00] gonna, I’m gonna give the edge to Michael this week.

Fred: Aw man. Dammit.

Paycheck.

Michael: I forgot to include the fact that Bernie Moreno made his career as a luxury car dealer.

Anthony: I love this. I don’t drink, so I don’t need this in my car. I don’t crash. I don’t need airbags, yeah. There you go. I don’t use my side view mirrors. Why am I paying for them?

Wait a second.

Fred: That’s like the gun guys who say, i’m a law abiding citizen, so I should be able to have my guns. Yeah. Everybody’s a law abiding citizen until they’re not. Exactly.

Anthony: I look forward to the day that Senator Bernie Moreno gets pulled over with a DUI, as that’s coming.

Ah, hey, let’s go into a topic we’ve talked about here many times.

The Importance of Physical Crash Testing

Anthony: Mr. Perkins talked about many times about simulations will are always doomed to succeed, right? Is that what your one of your t-shirts says? God, you are trainable. I’m impressed. Aw. Don’t tell my wife. This is from an article in MSN, I [00:30:00] guess from Newsweek titled Automakers Still Need to Crash Test Cars.

Despite Advances in ai, we all know that AI is gonna solve everything anyway, quoting from this article and I am quoting someone from. Volvo, while virtual crash testing has come a long way, physical crash tests remain a crucial compliment. It allows us to directly evaluate how the car’s hardware performs in real world scenarios.

Even as our virtual models continue to improve, physical testing is needed to validate and refine them to ensure accuracy. LA of Jacobson, senior technical specialist for injury profession at Volvo Cars told Newsweek, so this is, we’re gonna smash ’em in the real world, make sure things happen. We can’t fully rely on computers and whatever Sam Altman says which I think is good,

AI in Car Crash Analysis

Fred: he’s exactly right.

And the people who adv would advocate using AI to figure out what happens in a car crash are like asking Charles Dickens to [00:31:00] build a bridge. They’re just completely different animals. Wow. That made no, that metaphor made no sense to you. All right. It did

Anthony: not, it didn’t at all.

Volvo’s Extensive Crash Testing

Anthony: But I further in this article, I’m gonna point out Volvo conducts 200 to 250 crash tests annually. A new model on a new platform has crashed around 130 to 140 times alone. That’s physically, that’s not virtually they conduct 80,000 crashes annually on around 80 different vehicles. That seems in the virtual.

That seems, yeah. I

Michael: mean, one thing, I think they have to, you can 130 to 140 crashes of one vehicle that’s expensive. And that’s a lot. Volvo. I’m not sure if all manufacturers do that much, but, they also run I suppose they run simulations on all of the different types of crashes that you might see, all the different ways in which cars can be struck because they’re, obviously, they’re an infinite number of ways for that to happen.

And so testing as many as possible is a great thing. But what you’ll notice in this article, they interview Volvo, [00:32:00] Mercedes and Nissan engineers, and every single one of them said, essentially, simulations are great, but for validation, every one of ’em said validation. We have to do physical tests.

Anthony: That’s great. Are they required to do that for validation or they do that because those companies have a safety engineering mindset?

Michael: I would argue that you can’t certify the Federal Motor Vehicle safety standards without conducting those crash tests in a physical environment.

Anthony: Hey, I’d like to invite the CEO of Ford back on the show anytime you want, buddy.

Anytime at all.

Michael: I’m not sure if Anthony wants him on the podcast or wants a date, but

Anthony: he’d be entertaining. Come on. Yeah.

Volkswagen’s Airbag Recall Issues

Anthony: So another issue we’ve talked about quite a bit this is from Arizona. Five recalled without repairs, why some drivers still can’t get Dangerous Tota airbags fixed, and this is so disturbing to me.

This is a, talks about a family that has a 2015 Volkswagen [00:33:00] Beetle. They get a notice in the mail saying you need to get this fixed immediately in bold capital letters. The notice says Serious injury and even death can occur. And so this family, they’re like, oh my God, I wanna, I don’t want to be in serious injury or death.

And so they go into the Volkswagen dealership and they’re like yeah, we don’t we don’t have any parts. Have a nice day. Which is insane. Michael, do you know anything about this? Yeah. Because they quoted you in this article.

Michael: It’s, it the, this particular recall has been going on for two and a half years and there’s really no excuse not to have parts available for a recall.

That’s this dangerous at this point. And not only that, you know it two and a half years after this particular recall is announced, but we are nine plus years, 10 years out from the initial TODA airbag recalls. And Volkswagen knew then that these vehicles were gonna need to [00:34:00] have airbags replaced.

So there’s really no excuse. I’m not sure. And this isn’t just this family, this is a about a three or four month period now where Volkswagen is saying they just won’t have these airbags or airbag inflators for replacement on the vehicle. So what is this family supposed to do?

It’s a failure.

Anthony: What are

Michael: they? What they’re that’s the problem. There’s nothing you can really do as a consumer in this situation other than not drive the vehicle. You can’t force the manufacturer or the dealer to give you a rental vehicle because there are no, nothing requires them to do that.

You can’t, your options are basically. Take the risk or don’t drive the car. So it’s and it’s particularly with this Tata issue, these folks are in Arizona that, that were in the story. It’s hot there, not as humid, there, the heat and is a contributor to the defect there.

And as these vehicles age, they get more and more dangerous. This vehicle’s 10 or 11 years old, it’s getting towards that [00:35:00] spot where, the older these vehicles are, the higher the risk of an inflator explosion becomes. And so it’s not it’s not a vehicle I would put my daughter in. And I, I guess I would be the one going without a car for a while while she drove my car because it’s simply 2 1, 1 of these situations where it’s just, I.

It, although the risk may be low, we’re not sure. You just, there, there’s no way for even me or anyone really to know when of these airbags is going to explode. And so the best thing to do is just eliminate the risk altogether, not drive the vehicle. But that can put people in really bad situations.

If they have a vehicle they rely on to get to work or for any other important reason, they, there’s no option at that point for them. And it’s upsetting that Volkswagen screwed around and didn’t have enough parts available to do this recall. And yet as unwilling to provide alternate transportation for these folks,

Fred: BW is in big [00:36:00] trouble.

Their sales are collapsing. People don’t particularly like their cars. Their newest car. The ID buzz is going nowhere. People don’t like that. I think that their sales philosophy is to put. Cars on the road at as low price as possible because they make up the money in repairs. They’re no I’m serious.

I really think that’s their strategy. I unfortunately have owned a couple of Volkswagens and man, those things, they just, I left a front bumper in a snowbank once because, I backed up the car and the front bumper fell off. Was that a Jetta?

Michael: Yeah, it was. Yeah. Those older jettas have a significant front bumper attachment issue.

I had a buddy in college and his used to fall off all the time we put it back on.

Fred: Yeah I fixed it with coat hangers that’s, that was my approach. But I just think that company’s in real trouble. I don’t like their philosophy of, making money off of [00:37:00] repairs and having people have to run back in and, I don’t know, I, I.

I think that they’re going to squander all that money they made back in the sixties, pumping out those bugs. And I can’t see them in the future, especially now, if they want to get into autonomous vehicles that’s just, they’re gonna sink billions of dollars into that and it’s gonna go exactly nowhere.

Yeah. Weren’t they already involved

Michael: with Ford and then pulled out of that venture as well?

Fred: Yeah. But they’re trying to do it on their own now. And that’s bound to work out well, right? Yeah. Worked out so well for so many other people.

Michael: I am a vo. My last three vehicles have been Volkswagen Jettas, and I had not had really any problems at all other than a couple of air conditioner issues, so maybe I just got lucky.

But I do like their price points.

Anthony: Speaking of making money on repairs, this episode is brought to you by Microsoft. I’m just kidding. Go to auto safety.org, click on donate. Further down in this article though, it talks [00:38:00] about they, I guess this is this Arizona five is one of those on your side.

We’ll help you. They contacted Volkswagen and Volkswagen’s Hey, if they don’t have parts, the dealer should give you a loaner vehicle. And then this they kept pushing and then Volkswagen within days like, Hey, we have the part to fix this. Oh wow. They actually just found one. Yeah. And they said they pulled thin air.

It was in my other couch cushion.

Michael: Oh. So here’s an idea. Everyone in America who is sitting there waiting on a airbag right now or replacement for these vehicles, call your local on your side consumer reporter, get them to do a story, and airbag will magically appear.

Anthony: I like it. And with that, let’s jump into the towel of Fred.

Fred: Thank you. I was gonna talk about Piggly Wiggly, but I guess I talk dam something else. Yeah.

The Space Shuttle Analogy

Fred: What I wanna talk about is the analogy between the AV development and NASA’s space shuttle. The younger people here, [00:39:00] there used to be a time when NASA would launch space shuttles and it was NASA’s always had the ambition of preserving NASA’s own organizational longevity.

And the space shuttle was one of those deals. They wanted to be the only ride that people could use to get into space. In order to do that, they built this big thing called a space shuttle. And on the side of it, they, in order to launch it, it was so heavy that they had to put on two solid rocket motors, right?

Big, tall things that are filled with rocket fuel. They built them in pieces, right? And in order to build it up, they had to stack the pieces together through something called the field joint. And the field joints were bolted up and they were supposed to seal and keep the gases inside the rocket motor.

But in Mission 51 L, they, it failed [00:40:00] catastrophically and it caused the space shuttle to fail and kill the seven astronauts. This is not the same as the discovery, which came years later. That was a different problem. But the point is that if you look at the Rogers commission report, which is the government’s answer to the or analysis of the failure, I should say, there’s a lot of revealing information.

Now on page 61, for example. It shows that the design, which was intended to close the joint and compress the o-rings that were in the joint to keep the gases where they belonged actually was a bad design. It was in the engineer’s design. As the pressure increased, a flange would compress the O-ring, and that would cause the seal to, to be reinforced.

What actually happened is that when they built it, [00:41:00] the seal or the tang that was supposed to compress the O-ring pulled away from the O-ring, so allowed the seal to happen. They allowed the seal to be leaky. So NASA discovered this, and rather than fixing the design, they went in and they put putty in to try to seal it up.

Now when they put the putty in. They were able to close it up for the most part, but of 21 launches with the ambient temperature, 61 degrees or lower only. Four showed signs of O-ring thermal distress, but there were other indicators of failure. Nine there were actually nine prior instances of fuel joint distress.

Now, what is the analogy here? The analogy is that they knew there were problems. They convinced themselves, they could convinced the public that the [00:42:00] PR of launching these things on schedule on time was much more important than actually going back to fix the design. They did not reveal this structural design problem at all to the public, and they ran through it and their ethos was it’s never been a problem.

We haven’t killed anybody yet. Now, this is the exact analogy of the AV industry saying, we’ve driven a hundred million miles and we haven’t killed anybody yet. They’re really setting themselves up for the same kind of failure that NASA experienced when the spat shuttle blew up. And all of the subsequent problems that happened as a result of that loss of credibility, loss of the program lot of strutting and but of 12 of the 21 launches with the ambient temperatures of 61 degrees Fahrenheit or lower, four showed signs of O-ring, thermal stress, thermal distress, erosion, or blowout [00:43:00] by foot.

Each of the launches below 61 Fahrenheit resulted in one or more o-rings that showed signs of thermal distress. That’s 20% of the launches. This space shuttle and colder conditions showed signs of leakage of the hot gases that were detected. And then NASA did nothing, certainly did nothing about addressing this in public.

So NASA management knew there was a persistent problem, but the pressure to continue operations cause them to override safety concerns. That sounds a lot like AV management, doesn’t it? They’re running off the road. They’re going the wrong way. Down streets. Waymo’s going the wrong way Down streets.

They’re weaving. They’re dodging, they’re injuring people in the bike lanes, they’re operating in the bike lanes. But none of this is a concern for them. You know the only statistic, the only metric that they report is how many miles they’ve driven. [00:44:00] Even. That’s very confusing because there’s a lot of different models, a lot of different software.

But the point is that. They’re, they, like NASA are trying to put a bandaid on the problem rather than address it in public and let the public know where the risk really is. So we don’t know what their a, what the AV safety designs are. This is a lot like NASA not letting people know what the real risk factors are associated with the shuttle and how they’ve decided to just ignore problems because number one, the public doesn’t know about it.

Number two, it hasn’t killed anybody yet. We do know at Tesla’s FSD operations have killed numerous people that avs have been reported to grievously, injure, pedestrians travel in the opposite direction, aggressively intrude on crosswalks according to reports, interfere with emergency operations illegally intrude on bike paths.

So [00:45:00] are these AV anomalies like all of the public smoke. For all of the instances of O-Ring degradation that NASA covered up or is there something else going on here? It seems like the logic is that too few people have died so far for us to really address the safety concerns. That seems to be the case with Tesla, certainly, and Waymo seems to be headed in that same direction.

So a lot of people have died due to reliance on FSD before the government gives green light to AV operations. They should really insist on developer transparency on their safety designs, the key safety indicators and the test performance relative to design limits as indicated by the key safety indicators.

This is engineering data that I’d be willing to bet a nickel. All of these companies are recording, as far as I know, they’re not sharing it with the public. I don’t have any [00:46:00] knowledge. Michael, you may, that they’re sharing that with the regulators, but it seems like the least that should happen before you expose the public.

These delicate bags of meat that are walking down the street to these three ton vehicles that are going by with no human intervention. This, I’ve been talking recently about how insane it is that this dangerous industrial machinery is allowed to operate in the vicinity of people with no knowledge of what the safety margins are.

No knowledge of safety redundancies no transparency at all as to what the jeopardy are facing. The pedestrians pedra at Waymo said I’m a roller skater, and this roller skater said it’s okay. So that’s our safety response. I don’t think that’s adequate. And if they continue down this road, I believe they’re going to have their own [00:47:00] eventual challeng or disaster equivalent.

Humans are going to humans, spectators and vulnerable road users are gonna pay a very heavy price for this. And there’ll be a lot of implications for Waymo, a lot of people to blame, but it’s really time for them to step up, do the right thing, show us how they do this, show us what their safety indicators are, and show us that they’re making steady progress toward a safer future.

If in fact, as the KRA does, they claim that the future will be safer. So that’s my tile this week.

Anthony: It’ll be safer for roller skaters. You just gotta dust them off and get out there.

Fred: Maybe that’s the answer. Give everybody roller skates.

Anthony: I think it is. I kinda

Fred: like that

Anthony: idea. Oh no.

Listener Mail: Headlight Blindness

Anthony: Hey, let’s I’m gonna jump into listener mail.

Before we get into our recalls. This is a question that came in from Bob Hanson, and his question is, when is something going to be done to control the headlight blindness [00:48:00] problem? I agree. The Ford and Chevrolet trucks are the killers, especially those that have lift kits, 35 inch plus size tires. I only referencing, I’m only referencing new truck production.

The states that have yearly inspections don’t enforce this issue on older model trucks. Thanks for writing in Bob. I agree. I hate these vehicles that are out there. Just trying to blind me, gentlemen. One, is something gonna be done?

Fred: Never.

Anthony: Okay. Then Michael,

Michael: You have to figure out what the source of annoyance is here, right?

Being blinded. Being blinded by what? By these headlights that are you being blind? Is it an LED light? Is it a, is it an aftermarket light? Is it an aftermarket modification on the truck? There are a lot of people out there driving vehicles whose headlights haven’t been named recently. There are a lot of people who are going on the bed.

They’ve beating myself and Bob’s

Anthony: face.

Michael: Going on eBay or going to [00:49:00] a, parts dealer that are buying fraudulent or counterfeit parts off eBay that haven’t been certified in federal motor vehicle safety standards. ’cause that means they’re cheaper. There’s a massive black market in market industry there.

And there are a lot of, folks who raise their trucks up to crazy heights. That’s not something that is, you can regulate on the federal level. It’s something that states could regulate, but they don’t do it very often. It’s hard to place blame in this scenario.

We’ve heard a lot of chat and there’s even a couple of groups who are anti LED just generally who are on the forefront of pushing for some type of regulations here. But you. Ultimately, it comes down to one factor for me. I have not yet seen any data whatsoever that shows that LED lights on, stock LED lights coming with vehicles are contributing to some type of safety issue.[00:50:00]

They’re certainly contributing to some type of annoyance issue because there are a lot of people who are out there who are annoyed by these bright lights. But you have to, you have to know in order to criticize or put a regulation out that can apply to this, you’d have to know what the source of this problem is.

Is it inadequately aimed lights? Is it non-certified counterfeit lights? Is it a redneck raising their pickup truck? What is the problem? And if it’s a lot of different problems, I think that a lot of those problems are probably either addressed by state regulations. ’cause states do regulate certain things like aftermarket modifications that NHTSA doesn’t have the authority to regulate.

And you have to do this on a state by state basis to get anything done. I think the feds could contribute, not NHTSA per se, customs and border control preventing. Counterfeit vehicle equipment from entering America whether that’s in [00:51:00] bulk or piece by piece on eBay or however they’re getting it into America to sell it.

There’s some things that could be done there to lower this problem. I just don’t know if, like Fred says, I don’t know if it there is a one size fits all solution. I certainly don’t think there is at the federal level.

Anthony: Bob, do what I do when you’re driving at night, put on sunglasses.

All good.

Michael: There are night glasses that are sold that claim to reduce LED, the blue light that’s submitted by LEDs. I think they probably also reduce the light entering your eyes at night as a driver, which is, could mean that you’re reducing your vision generally as well, which is probably not a good thing.

But there are some good reviews and some good bad reviews of them. I wasn’t able to formulate a scientific opinion on whether or not they, they’re effective, but there, there are some people that seem to use those with some effect.

Fred: This may be something a bit of a self-limiting problem because [00:52:00] these people who elevate their pickup trucks number one, are.

Basically young men who wear bill caps and they will no longer be young men after a while. And the other thing is that when they do this, they are really increasing the rollover propensity of those trucks. And so they’re, much more likely to have a short lifespan than other people. There may be Darwinian effect to limit this.

So the solution to the

Michael: LED light problem is rollover deaths for the people that race pickups.

Anthony: Wow. You were to your first, that’s tough. Eugenics through aftermarket purchases. Ah hey Bob, thanks for writing in. If anyone else has a question, send it to you. contact@autosafety.org or there’s a form on the website.

I think there is somewhere it’s pretty easy to find. You can find it. Bob found it.

Recalls: Volvo, Ford, and Mercedes-Benz

Anthony: Let’s let’s jump onto recalls. First one up Volvo. That’s right. Nitsa issues. Urgent brake failure warning for [00:53:00] select Volvo. Volvo vehicles. This is the, let me open up the re boo loss of brake function.

This is a bunch of 2023 Volvos with a whole bunch of silly acronyms after them in certain driving scenarios while coasting down a hill and using B mode or one pedal drive, the vehicle may lose brake function. Oh no. So this is for EVs because it’s one pedal drive.

Michael: They’re, yeah, they’ve got it could be hybrids as well.

Okay. They have the rigid braking,

Anthony: ah, so advises do not use regenerative braking. Turn off B mode. Okay.

Michael: Until you get the remedy. There’s an over the air update that’s available for this recall and it, I think there’s only, I think 11,000 or so of these vehicles and or 12,000 of these vehicles and 11,000 have already been fixed.

It’s an over the updates and most people have done it. But the problem is pretty significant. They even NITSA even included a video there of a person [00:54:00] who was driving on a mountain pass and, all of a sudden their brakes just failed. And they started flying down the hill, ran into an embankment and we’re actuallys very lucky that they weren’t killed or injured in the crash.

But all of this was caused by another recall. And one of our, one of the recalls we talk about a lot, the review camera failures. Volvo had an original recall. It was 25 V 2 82, which I believe they put out earlier this year, maybe March or April. And the remedy for the rear view camera recall actually causes the problem that we see here in this new recall, which shows you that, software.

It’s a kind of a new world when you’re talking about software and vehicles, this isn’t something we see traditionally a recall on one system in the vehicle impacting another system in the vehicle. It’s a major [00:55:00] concern. I think as vehicles become more defined by software and electronics that kind of integrate multiple systems, we’ve talked about it.

The integration of the infotainment and the rear view camera systems. And I think it’s also a good argument for standards that make sure manufacturers are thoroughly testing and validating software updates to confirm not only you’re fixing the problem you’re addressing, but also making sure you’re not creating new problems in the process.

We saw a recall from Tesla that involved. Phantom breaking actually I think the Washington Post did a story on it a couple of years ago, generate even more phantom breaking complaints after the recall was performed, which raises questions about the how solid the software validation process is.

When these manufacturers are scrambling to get out a recall remedy and a software update for their customers. Are they doing enough testing of these updates before they’re released to the public? And in this case, for Volvo? I think the [00:56:00] answer is no, they didn’t and they put a lot of people in significant danger.

Now they’re scrambling to make sure these folks get an over the air update quickly, and that’s why NSA put out the press release.

Anthony: Fred Michael said that this kind of software and vehicles is new and this kind of software affecting, like you fix something here, it caused something else to break here in autos is new.

Maybe is that kind of thing in software new, is there something that software engineers do that makes sure?

Fred: Yeah. It’s called software validation. But there’s a problem here, which is that if you do software validation on a software that doesn’t affect physical objects, you can zip right through it.

And who the hell cares if your Microsoft Word has a little problem? So they’ll fix it on the next update. The problem here is that the software affects the operation of a physical vehicle that can kill people. And in order to [00:57:00] do a complete regression analysis and validation it would take perhaps thousands of years because the numbers of variables involved and the numbers of safety critical functions involved.

And that is only for the. Computer part of it. If you, in, if you look at the physical vehicle and say I’ve gotta validate all of these software updates in terms of not only what it can do to the logic, but also what happens with the physical hardware. You’ve got an enormous engineering problem.

There are no standards for what that’s got to do. So companies right now are in a position where they can just suck their thumb and do whatever they want and say that’s good enough. But we urgently need standards for how to test these vehicles and how to test the software and validate the software and make sure that they’re not gonna kill people.

Anthony: I like [00:58:00] it. Next recall is my weekly love letter to Jim Farley. Bored. 694,271 vehicles, the 2021 to 2024 Ford Bronco Sport, 2020 to 2022 Ford Escape. A fuel injector may crack resulting in fuel or vapor migrating to, and or accumulating near ignition sources resulting in potential underhood fire. So they got bum fuel injectors.

Sounds like good.

Michael: Yeah. Essentially the fuel injectors could crack and this could, this basically could lead to a fire. I think this is, this is a. Kind of an ongoing saga. We talked last week about the gigantic number of Ford recalls this year and how that relates to consent order that was agreed to with Nitsa by Ford.

That requires them to go back and redo some of their recalls. And this is one of those that they’re coming back and redoing a couple of recalls where they didn’t [00:59:00] quite figure things out the first time. So this is a new remedy, and so Fords Ford owners are gonna have to return again to the dealership to get a fix on this one.

And it looks like they’ll be hearing about it in mid August.

Anthony: This is obvious. Their fuel injectors are supplied by an Italian company eh. All right. Last recall Dahmer Vans, USA 43,422 vehicles, the 2020 to 2023 Mercedes-Benz Mattress. Oh. They have, yeah. These are like van, yeah, like buses.

Oh. Power may be sporadically interrupted to the infotainment system. They made the rear view camera, blah, blah, blah.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah.

Anthony: Don’t care anymore. Rear view cameras garbage. Don’t even use them. I go to car. Every car I have now I just smash the rear view camera. ’cause what’s the point I give up.

Michael: I love my rear view camera.

Yeah, so do I. It’s never not worked, which is, you know why [01:00:00] it’s disconcerting to see so many rear view camera recalls. This one is, you know why also, why do you have an infotainment system in a commercial?

Anthony: I don’t know. Fan Or, this is interesting though. It says due to a deviation in the development process at a supplier, not us, man.

Somebody else. Yeah. The thickness of the electrical pins of the infotainment system might not meet specifications. I don’t know. You’re gonna buy tens, thousands of these things. Maybe check a few samples. Does this meet our specifications? It just seems reasonable to me. What the hell do I know?

Go to auto safety.org. Click on donate. We’re done? Are we done? Alright. Sure.

Fred: Thanks everybody. By. Whoa. Wait. Before we leave this, wait. Whoa. What? There is an extensive body of literature about how engineers should sample and test devices. And, what the risks are, what the probability of failure is.

There’s a lot that’s known about this. So [01:01:00] these quality defects that we’re talking about, like the fuel injectors failing and the Mercedes van connectors not being adequate. This is just all evidence of terrible. Engineering controls on their development process. It’s not inevitable.

It’s a choice made by the manufacturers to not do their job properly. So just leave it there. But thank you for that digression.

Anthony: If you’d like to hire Fred Perkins to come to your factory, he’ll roll up a newspaper and swat these engineers on the nose and say, no bad engineer, test these things better.

It’s for a nominal fee, I get 10%. And with that, we’ll be back next week. Bye.

Fred: Very good. Bye bye. Thanks everybody. For more information, visit www.auto safety.org.