Tesla Troubles and Secret The Communists Among Us

Hey, listeners, today’s Wednesday, October 15th. What day is it where you are? Have you gotten vaccinated yet? Wait. Wrong podcast. We’re back with more auto safety news.

Tesla’s Self-Driving Controversies

Anthony: And let’s start off with the world of Tesla. Yeah. Just a quick recap. This guy, Elon, he’s a con artist and he’s saying, Hey, our cars drive themselves.

And I know you’re like, wait, that’s old news. That’s 2016. You’re right. Didn’t happen then. Doesn’t happen now. And he’s saying, we only need cameras to do that ’cause I got eyeballs and that’s all I used to drive. He’s ignoring the fact that he can [00:01:00] probably hear and feel things, but maybe he can’t feel things.

I don’t know him. Tesla’s there’s full self-driving. Keeps getting worse it seems.

NITSA’s Investigations into Tesla

Anthony: Quoting from Ars Technica 2025 hadn’t been going long before. Nitsa announced an investigation following multiple crashes involving Tesla’s remote parking features. And last month the agency started a second concerning multiple deaths after the company’s signature, retractable door handles become.

Inoperative after a crash. Now it’s the controversially named full self-driving feature in the crosshairs after dozens of reports of Tesla’s breaking traffic laws while using this partially automated driving assist. The takeaway from that is don’t give this eline guy money. Let’s talking to NASA about his credit.

Fred: He never claimed it was full self opening. Ah,

Anthony: He’s saying, Hey, we have this super computer, we have advanced ai, blah, blah, blah. And they’re running through they [00:02:00] lights, they’re running through traffic signs. They’re not following basic laws. I don’t know if the big takeaway is the fact that Nitsa is actually investigating him, which, breach cheers for nitsa, or, yeah maybe that is the big surprise is that NSA’s actively investigating,

Michael: I don’t even know if that’s a big surprise. NITSA has basically been actively investigating Tesla for nine years, I think, since their first autopilot investigation. And yet we’ve seen a one half-assed recall come out of that, that we’re still not sure if it really helped safety. But Nitsa investigating something is less rare than Nitsa actually put clamping down or using the teeth that it has under the law to bite down on manufacturers who are doing the type of thing that Tesla’s doing.

And, frankly, there aren’t many other manufacturers doing the type of thing that Tesla’s doing. So it’s interesting.

Challenges with Tesla’s Full Self-Driving

Michael: Here they look like they’re focusing on, there’s [00:03:00] already an investigation open into full self-driving. This one is a new one focusing on two types of scenarios.

Mainly it looks like. Traffic lights, Teslas are really struggling with traffic lights where, it’s, and it’s not just their a visual problem. We’ve talked a lot about camera, the camera only system that Tesla has and how it’s inevitably going to struggle and low light and with flashing lights and certain situations.

Maybe that’s a contributor here, but the, that’s one area where they’re having problems. The second one is. They’re not doing really well at lane recognition. It looks like they’re pulling into, like a left turn only lane and then proceeding straight and sometimes, proceeding in the wrong side of the road on they’re doing wrong way driving and on a couple of occasions, a lot of issues like that.

So those are the two main areas that NSA’s Office of Defect investigation is going to be looking into here. But they didn’t leave it, they didn’t limit it to that, they [00:04:00] mentioned other types of violations such as railroad crossings, which as we know, a few senators brought that issue up a few weeks ago after there were some reports that Tesla was unable to detect or respond appropriately at railroad crossings when a train was coming.

Which is obviously a big danger.

Anthony: Yeah.

Railroad Crossings and Tesla’s Safety Issues

Anthony: Adding to that quoting from ccbt news.com, senators, ed Markey and Richard Blumenthal are calling on the on Nitsa to investigate Tesla’s full self-driving system, following growing reports that the technology fails to detect and properly respond to railroad crossings.

I’m gonna tell you that guys, this is, I’m gonna go out there, but my gaslight of the week is railroad crossings. Come on, it’s 2025. What are we doing with railroads? That’s some 18th, 1800th stuff we gotta move on America. Okay, that’s,

Fred: It’s only been 150 years. You can’t brush into these things, fair enough.

Anthony: But this is shocking, surprising. [00:05:00] Michael, okay, so there’s this investigation open and it looks like it is 2.8 million Teslas involved in this investigation, which sounds like probably every Tesla. Or close, close to it. Yeah, that’d be everyone,

Michael: everyone that has the ability to have full self-driving,

Anthony: okay. So how does this work? So they say we have an investigation open Elon’s Hey, remember I go, we’ll give you guys like $300 million to get the orange drive elected. What do we do here? Nisa says, no, we’re good people. What, how long does this process last? Oh God,

Michael: sorry. There is no telling.

The Lengthy Process of NITSA Investigations

Michael: If you look back at, they were, they started investigating autopilot, for instance in, I believe it was around 2016 after they opened their first investigation after the, I think it was the Joshua Brown CRA crash in Williston, Florida, where the guy was driving down the road on autopilot and went under the trailer tractor trailer that was crossing the road.

And, they did a study on [00:06:00] that, resolved the investigation by, in, in a lot of ways, blaming the driver, which wasn’t, rather than digging into automation, complacency and everything that we’ve learned about since that time. But who knows how long an investigation like this will last a lot.

A lot will depend on how cooperative Tesla is. And as I often say, they are continually playing a cat and mouse game with the regulators. They, we have serious questions about how forthright they’re being in their responses to nhtsa. What’s gonna happen next, is it’s going to send an information request to Tesla, asking them all sorts of questions around these incidents.

What kind of data does Tesla have on its end showing problems here? And then proceed from there. But as we’ve seen in the past, NITSA found it very difficult to, actually influence recalls on these systems that, that, that get anything done. And that, that. Prevent these problems from happening or prevent drivers from [00:07:00] misusing the system or from being complacent.

Tesla’s driver monitoring is probably not effective enough to do that at this point. Even, even if they redesign the software, they, the hardware comes into play there and Tesla is very hesitant to, and most manufacturers are to go back and retrofit vehicles with new hardware.

It’s, I, as much as we support Nisa investigating these things, at some point you have to ask where are the results? Where, we’re continuing to see people die in crashes related to autopilot, where there’s complacency or misuse of the system involved. We haven’t seen any giant steps by Tesla ordinance.

NITSA could force Tesla to do a better recalls by, taking the legal steps to force them to do that versus playing the continual, let’s negotiate with Tesla for a recall game that so far hasn’t given, hasn’t really stopped the fact that we’re, a lot of people on the roads, even [00:08:00] people who don’t own Teslas, are participating in this giant experiment around these vehicles.

And some people are paying with their lives. So it’s a problem. And this one’s, this investigation’s interesting because it seems like it it goes, te Nitsa opened up an investigation late last year into full self-driving around the system’s ability to see or detect. Problems in poor visibility conditions, whether that’s fog or rain or darkness.

That’s something we’ve seen a lot of with autopilot and full self-driving problems there. But in this circumstance, that’s probably going to play into it. But also there were in, in some of the situations where the vehicles were running red lights. The screen that shows inside the vehicle that shows what, what the what the Tesla is detecting, how it’s responding was actually showing the vehicle stopping at the red light.

So presumably the camera sensors [00:09:00] detected it. But there’s a problem in the vehicles, planning or response to that detection and the vehicles, while the screen is showing your car is stopping at a stoplight, your actual car is continuing through the stoplight.

Anthony: I suspected something like this ’cause I suspected that their interface that they show people is just a toy.

It’s just, it’s just a pleasant user interface to make people feel better. It’s not actually a reflection of what the car is doing.

Michael: Yeah. And that’s weird. That’s a complete disconnect. And that’s also, that raises some other safety issues. If you’ve got a screen in your car showing your car doing something that your car’s not doing, that’s a huge problem, right?

That’s, if people start to rely on what they see the screen doing rather than what’s going on around them, then I don’t know that, that opens up a whole other can of worms. We’re interested to see how this progresses.

Anthony: So autopilot is essentially lane centering and adaptive cruise control, or is it [00:10:00] more than that?

Michael: It’s so shady how they branded all these terms. If you go to Tesla’s website, autopilot is like the overarching name that they call all of these systems. Sometimes they refer to it simply as their they, it’s very confusing, like the way they’ve named everything.

It’s hard to say this is what autopilot is. So it’s full self-driving, I would say is, if, just to break it down simply, I would say that autopilot and most minds and most people refers to the lower level a DAS, things like automatic emergency braking, lane centering, that type of thing.

But your car is not making turns on its own. Full self-driving is when you have that kind of sustained steering effort or a, the vehicle actually turns itself and departs its lanes to achieve a certain goal.

Anthony: The reason I ask is ’cause the autopilot pilot level of things, that’s pretty common in a lot of new cars, lane centering, adaptive cruise control, whatnot.

Are we seeing similar issues with other manufacturers, or is it [00:11:00] the Tesla consumers saying this is called autopilot? I believe it must be something magical.

Michael: I, I think we have seen evidence that these systems are producing, some of the higher level assisted crews, things are producing some bad results.

We’ve seen an investigation into Ford’s Blue Crews where, there was people stalling in the road and the vehicle at night wasn’t detecting the vehicle, stalled in the road and causing and that caused a crash because the driver was relying on the vehicle to detect that sort of thing.

And when they’re operating on level two. So yeah, we’ve seen it before in other manufacturers, I would absolutely say that other manufacturers aren’t approaching this quite as recklessly as Tesla by just, throwing these systems down the road without proper geofencing. And then when something bad happens, completely blaming the driver.

But, if te if that behavior isn’t stopped by, NITSA the court system or Tesla itself, which of [00:12:00] course has the ability to make things safer, then why wouldn’t other manufacturers follow that trend? I, if they see an opportunity to oversell their technology and they’re not gonna be, have their knuckles wrapped by Nitsa, then they’ll probably do it.

So that that’s, similar to when we were talking about the doors and the problems with electric vehicles and doors. If you don’t nip these kind of things in the bud. And, people are racing to buy vehicles with, flush door handles and whizzbang features. Then the other the rest of the industry might be encouraged to adopt that type of behavior.

State Regulations and Autonomous Vehicles

Fred: Hey, Michael, is their authority within the states to ban operation of these vehicles if they have what the states consider to be inadequate control systems? Or is that something that, they can get away with because there’s no federal regulations concerning [00:13:00] that

Michael: particular design feature? I think there’s an argument, NITSA has the authority around, finding that around motor vehicle defects, right?

California can’t come in and order a manufacturer to do a recall, that kind of thing, but. California can regulate in other ways, right? They have control over the operation of taxi fleets, for instance. So perhaps they could say we can’t do anything about the car on the road, but we can tell taxi fleets, Hey, you’re not allowed to use this, you’re not allowed to use full self-driving while you’re operating and carrying passengers.

They could also approach it from a licensing perspective and say, Hey, we’ve run full self-driving through our, this isn’t an a system they have set up in California, but I think they could set up, tests for computer drivers to determine whether those computer drivers could be licensed under California law, just like human drivers are.

I think some of those things could be [00:14:00] done. I don’t know that they I don’t believe that they could go in and say, this technology is bad, take it outta the car. But there are other ways of getting at the problem that states have the ability to do

Fred: well. Yeah, I was thinking rather than forcing a company to take it out of the car whether or not they have the authority to say these designs are unacceptable on our state’s highways, I’ve noticed as I have been around the country that things like trek to trailers and tandem trailers, and they’re apparent in some states and not in others, but, clearly the heavy vehicles are subject to different state regulations or, the way to say it, is that different states have different regulations that drive the legality of using certain vehicles on the roads.

And why is this seemingly limited to the heavy trucks rather [00:15:00] than any other vehicle that’s endangering people?

Michael: Yeah, and I think it’s, it’s primarily because the double trailers that you’ll see in some states are allowed, within that state. They can’t say, Washington can’t tell Idaho that they’re going to allow them in Idaho, but within your state you could restrict the operation of those trailers.

I don’t know how that would apply towards, I’m not sure if the law there really. There’s a separate regulatory standards and bodies that, that regulate trailers versus, there just aren’t any states that have vehicle safety regulators that focus on technology or on, the design or the manufacturer of the vehicles.

But they do regulate things like, okay, these vehicles have been manufactured, we’ve got these trailers over here’s how you are allowed to use them on our roads. I think there’s some, there’s an argument that states could have some impact there on, on both autonomous vehicles [00:16:00] and on the lower levels of automated vehicles like the Tesla full self-driving.

Fred: ‘Cause clearly Nitsa is not going to do anything, at least for a long time there. It seems like they would have to put a rule in place. And that’s at minimum what multi-year process? Yeah. More or less forever. Based on recent experience,

Michael: right? Yeah. Yeah. I would say multi-decade process for some of some rules, particularly one in areas where, the technology is, I don’t, I think it’s unquestionably still developing, it’s not like it’s reached this point of stasis where this is what the technology is going to be and let’s write some regulations around it.

It’s constantly changing.

Anthony: So Fred, is what you’re saying, is that there automobile, a law?

Perhaps. Perhaps. Alright. Fred, one more question for you. What is the biggest threat to America? Biggest threat to America? Yep.

Fred: You mean [00:17:00] for real?

Anthony: That’s not the right answer. The right answer is China. Of course. It’s always China. Michael mentioned briefly touched on the electronic door handles. On Teslas, and we’ve discovered, we’ve talked about this before, whereas it, you get into a crash, the 12 volt battery system dies.

Those door handles are no longer working for emergency responders, or you’re inside the car, they don’t work. Rivian has come out and said, oh yeah, let’s change that. Tesla said, eh, suck it. Actually, I’m not really sure what Tesla said.

Michael: No. They said they were going to be changing. Oh, they did? Oh, look at that.

Take that, with a normal grain of salt, you take most things that come outta that company.

Fred: The rivian too is said they’re gonna go to a single pole. Yeah. Rivian confirmed that

Michael: actual design change in upcoming models.

China’s New Safety Standards for Electric Vehicles

Anthony: The folks in China, they’ve put together a draft document for technical requirements for automobile door handle safety.

How dare they? And part of it the require requirements in part of those requirements are every door excluding [00:18:00] trunk lids must feature an external handle with mechanical release functionality. In case of accidents involving battery thermal events, non collision side doors must be owned well through external handles without tools.

I like that one. External door handles must provide adequate hand operation. Every door must include internal handles with mechanical release capability that can open doors without external tools if electrical internal handles are installed. Mechanical backup handles must also be provided. Internal handles must be easily identifiable, clearly visible, positioned with 300 millimeters or door edges and located within the specific zones relative to seating positions.

So the China has come forth and said, enough of this nonsense, let’s make it so people can get out of a crashed vehicle without using tools and that, first responders can open the doors and get people out of these vehicles. So I think this is really just China going [00:19:00] after the jaws of life manufacturers and trying to put them outta business.

Michael: The jaws of life manufacturers are still absolutely gonna be necessary. Because no matter how great your egress system is in a car, you’re gonna encounter damages in certain crashes that simply aren’t gonna allow you to operate the doors.

Anthony: Michael’s clearly been taken over by the Chinese Communist Party.

That’s your thought. You

Michael: know what? You know what? Here’s what I will say in, in favor of China. We often think of China as this, I think that the a prevailing attitude in America is that it’s, it, they’re, they are is what you hear coming outta the current administration.

They’re evil, they’re bad, they, repressed their people, blah, blah, blah. But here we have China putting out safety standards for electric doors before Europe or the United States have come even close to it in an area, and, that makes sense in some respects because China is, fast becoming the home of the electric vehicle. Their manufacture electric vehicle manufacturers are churning them out to the extent they can’t even sell [00:20:00] them nearly as fast as they’re churn them out. And I, it’s a great place for this type of regulation to come about because we want to make sure that before electric vehicles become a super significant portion of the vehicles in the road, that some of these kinks, like this one are addressed.

So their safety requirements they’ve issued a proposed rulemaking essentially, which is something we see over here. And they’re saying we’re going to put all these things into place for all the manufacturers of, vehicles that have electric doors. Now they’re, I don’t think their regulations are perfect.

However, I also. Don’t read Mandarin. I, am relying on other people’s translations of what the standards say. I actually looked up the Chinese regulation. I’ve got a copy of it. I just I can barely understand anything except the picture. So I’m, relying on what, the article that, that we found on it, YY there, there are [00:21:00] some, a couple of concerns still.

They’re they specifically, the one you said you like Anthony, it says, in case of accidents involving battery, thermal events, non collision side doors must be openable through external handles without tools. I don’t think that should be limited to.

Accidents or crashes involving battery thermal events. We have a lot of crashes where a fire could propagate from, an internal combustion engine vehicle using gasoline to the electric vehicle. People still need to get out fast, so you shouldn’t, be specifying that it’s only going to be in that one situation.

Also, the, I like this part of the regulation. It’s something that I’ve talked about a lot and something that I want to see happen. Internal handles must be easily identifiable. Clearly visible, but the problem is, they’re saying position within 300 millimeter of door edges.

Which, you don’t

Anthony: know what a millimeter is. That’s what the problem is. No, that’s about,

Michael: That’s what you know. 11 inches, 12 inches, somewhere in there. And the [00:22:00] part I like is easily identifiable and clearly visible. Their argument is that, Tesla is putting their manual releases within 300 millimeter of door edges.

They’re just hiding them. So the easily identifiable and clearly visible thing is what we’re going for. We just want the, we want the manual escape handles to be as obvious as possible so that when you know you’ve got seven seconds to escape a vehicle with a battery fire going on before you’re turned into a piece of toast, you can get out of that vehicle obviously easily.

Boom, you’re out. And I guess to sum it all up, China is really starting to make me question the kind of vehicle safety reality I grew up in, starting, I guess in the year 2000 where the United States was in the lead. We’ve talked a lot about how Europe has caught up with the United States and surpassed us in a lot of areas of regulatory safety involving cars.

And now, even China is making its appearance [00:23:00] and putting a stamp on the map. Maybe China is going to lead us into the next generation of vehicle safety since the United States is so clearly lagging behind. So it’s an odd time to live in.

Anthony: Fred, I need your take on this.

’cause clearly Michael has been bought and paid for by the Chim Chinese Communist Party. We know you are a good American. As a young man, you cut the fences at Woodstock to let those hippies out so they weren’t trapped like cattle behind the anymore. I think he was trying to let them in. You helped test the sensors in the M1 Abrams tank by planning, by letting it run over your marijuana field.

You’ve worked in missile defense. Come on. What’s the answer, Fred Perkins?

Fred: The first part of the answer is, Michael, why do you hate freedom? And the second part of the answer is that actually the real threats that we face are if you exclude nuclear holocaust, which is always there, of course, is the subduction of the un nasco plate in the Pacific Northwest.

And the [00:24:00] potential for the destruction by steam explosion of the. Canary Islands, which would cause catastrophic inundation of the East Coast. Wait, I wanna go to the I’m sorry, what was

Anthony: your question again? I don’t remember anymore. I, he’s talking mega tidal

Michael: waves. We’ve gone way off track. We,

Anthony: we’ve, this is what I get for asking a man a skull cap.

This is too much. I think this is great that China’s actually pushing this stuff forward. I wish the US would do similar things. Yeah,

Michael: I said it. What I’m hoping here is that, we’ve seen Rivian recently say, okay, we’re gonna go back to a better design. We and confirming that they’re going to, we’ve seen Tesla say that, yeah, we’re gonna redesign our doors to make, opening it in emergencies easier.

I am hoping that this China regulation closes the book on that and it puts all manufacturers on notice that, hiding preventing external emergency responders or good Samaritans from helping people in cars and from these [00:25:00] hidden. These hidden manual releases that prevent occupants from escaping cars.

I’m hoping that’s going to be something, given China’s influence over the electric vehicle market now and the fact that, Tesla wants to sell vehicles in China I’m hoping that puts this issue to rest and that we start in the next couple of years to see consistency and standardization of, the escape mechanisms from electric doors.

Because frankly, I don’t think that NITSA would be able to get this regulation into play within the next decade given their current struggles.

Gaslight of the Week

Anthony: With that, I think it’s time for Gaslight, and my Gaslight was obviously myself pretending to be a host from the old show Crossfire on CNN. That’s right.

I’ve accepted self-awareness. My gaslight was me pretending to be a Crossfire host Red Perkins. What’s your gaslight?

Fred: I’m with Time Magazine. Is it the cooking magazine?

Anthony: [00:26:00] T-H-Y-M-E?

Fred: No. It’s the TIME magazine which I didn’t even know was still in business but there they are. So they’ve anointed the Waymo driver as a key invention for 2025, even though it wasn’t invented in 2025, but nevermind.

And they title it a Safer Self-Driving car. Okay, so they never say safer than what, so we know, we don’t know what the base is. The reporting is that more than 40,000 Americans die in traffic accidents every year with most caused by human error. There’s no support for this statement anywhere, and its a analysis states that humans are not the cause only a factor.

So this is just more more re. I guess replaying urban myths that are out there that are propagated by the a d companies to limit legis le restrictive legislations as much as [00:27:00] possible. Waymo ride hailing service that launched in 2009 sets its AI powered Waymo driver. Could be the solution could be sure, but that’s aspirational and speculative and I think they’d be a lot better off to use available technology to begin saving lives now, which is currently within their control system.

Then they go on to say way most, more than 2000 cars that are completed, more than 10 million trips in San Francisco, Phoenix, blah, blah, blah, according to the company. Isn’t there a role for journalists to do some research to validate the information coming out of the companies? I used to really respect times reporting.

But this was a long time ago. And I guess things change. And let’s see, Waymo plans to expand to Miami, Dallas, Nashville, Washington as Chinese, Baidu Apollo go races into Europe. Okay, that’s interesting. [00:28:00] So you restrict tariffs on Chinese cars are basically guaranteeing a home market for Waymo.

I guess that’s an important public policy initiative, but I don’t see why. And then Waymo, CEO Dmitri says, quote, we’ve built the safest, most advanced AI system operating in the physical world at scale. This’s so much bullshit, right? There’s no data behind this. So I’m, going away from my typical, and I’m not slamming way more for this time, magazine has done such poor reporting and reporting speculative statements is fact for reasons that one can only speculate about.

So they get my Gaslight nomination for this week Time Magazine.

Anthony: Alright, well done Mr. Brooks.

Michael: Alright today I’m gonna steal a page from Anthony’s book [00:29:00] where he usually goes after the investment people who are, oh boy, like Kathy Wood at Ark. This week’s guy is Gary Black. He is the managing director of Future Fund and he says that Tesla needs to employ a public relations staff.

To fight off efforts like NHTSA’s recently open investigation into Tesla’s, not seeing red lights and wrong lane operation under full self-driving. Did you say Nazi? No, I did not. No. I know you’re always looking for that In relation to Elon the problem with this is that, Tesla, has A, what he’s calling a PR staff.

If you’re beating back regulatory efforts, it’s maybe some PR involved, but also you’re gonna need attorneys and lobbyists and it’s a little more, it’s a little deeper than just a PR staff. I don’t think Gary really knows what he’s talking about There. Also, he is outlining, the need for tested, deploy a PR staff.

He’s missing the fact that this [00:30:00] is a nits investigation. This isn’t a rulemaking where you’re going to have a whole different set of criteria involved where you’re looking long term, you’re trying to, lobby the regulatory agency to move in a certain direction with its rules.

This is an in essentially a quasi law enforcement investigation of, some of the engineering underpinnings of vehicles that are already on the road. A public relations staff is probably not gonna be a lot of help there. But ultimately, I think the problem here isn’t that Tesla needs better pr.

It’s, from a safety perspective, the problem with Tesla is that they’ve got way too much PR that for years has been over-hyping the problems or not the problems over-hyping the vehicles. And not really acknowledging the problems involved and the safety issues involved in those vehicles.

For that, I’m going to give Gary Black my Gaslight of the week.

Anthony: That’s great. I like the fact you came from my playbook. But [00:31:00] honestly, I won self-awareness. It’s 2025. Everyone. Deep breath. So that’s it. Okay. Thanks judge. Yeah. Hey, no problem. Just wanna let you know that I’m a benevolent dictator.

Introduction to Nighttime Safety Study

Anthony: Moving on. Let’s go into more positive technology and not made up nonsense technology. Aaa did a study around nighttime safety. The article is called it’s a news release, I should say. Nighttime safety improved with pedestrian detection, effective rates rising from zero to 60%. Nighttime pedestrian advanced emergency braking impact avoidance, automatic, did I say automatic?

What did I say? You said advanced, automatic emergency brake pedestrian, automatic emergency braking impact avoidance improved from 0% in 2019 to 60% in 2025.

Pedestrian Detection and High-Visibility Clothing

Anthony: They also checked whether outfitting pedestrians with ANSI class three ensemble, basically high vis clothing, if that affected the value, the performance [00:32:00] of the PA EB systems.

And of course it did. So I think this is great that there’s been a huge improvement, obviously going from zero. Is because it didn’t exist in 2019.

Michael: Oh, it, I think it did. It just that they, it did not real.

Challenges in Automatic Emergency Braking

Michael: They had, there were manufacturers with automatic emergency braking systems claiming to detect pedestrians, and that’s what AAA tested in 2019.

Okay. They found that they were not working well at all in low visibility conditions. Like we we’ve talked about a number of times. And then they brought some vehicles back and this year and said, or late last year and said, we’re gonna test these things again and we’re gonna put, an ANSI class three hi vis clothes on the person to see if that helps or hurts detection.

Anthony: And it helps. So I think somewhat. Yeah. Yeah. But I think it’d be great if we had some sort of fashion designer, fashion influencer to encourage people to wear. [00:33:00] Reflective clothing at night. ’cause

Michael: I think that they need to develop systems that detect people no matter what they’re wearing, frankly.

Anthony: You just don’t care about fashion though. That’s the thing. That’s

Michael: very, that’s very true. But it, people shouldn’t have to put on a high visibility and c class three jacket in order to be seen by a vehicle. That’s just it seems to me that manufacturers would.

Be a, it’d be a lot smarter if they would just go ahead and use better systems. For instance, like a, an infrared camera system that can detect the heat of a human might make more sense than using cameras at night to try to detect a human wearing all black. There are technic I think there are technical solutions to get around this, but as usual with the industry, it’s gonna come down to the cost of those systems.

Right.

Fred: Michael? Michael. Now this is clearly a technical innovation.

Automotive Industry’s Resistance to Safety Regulations

Fred: So you would think that the Alliance for Automotive Innovation would be all over this Aren, aren’t they big supporters of. [00:34:00] Enhance safety of their,

Michael: At the moment they’re, they are trying to kill the nsa, automatic emergency braking rule specifically because for one of the many reasons they cited, but in this area, because they object to NSA requiring that the pedestrian automatic emergency braking work a hundred percent of the time.

And I think that’s because they acknowledge that with the current systems they’re putting in vehicles, they can’t reach that point. So after selling us these things for years they’re saying, under the table in the regulatory context we’re not there yet and we can’t get there by 2029.

Which

Fred: is problematic. Even though some companies have achieved

Michael: that, even though some have, and you’ll see in this study that the Toyota Camry, I believe, has a perfect record or a very good record. And we’ve seen some manufacturers that are doing a whole lot better than other manufacturers.

And in fact, the Toyotas did the best in the nitsa test leading up to the [00:35:00] automatic emergency braking rule. So maybe some of these other manufacturers need to consult with Toyota about why their systems are working better.

Fred: So you’re asserting that somehow the Alliance for Automotive Innovation has gone full Orwellian and that they’re organized to inhibit innovation?

Michael: The, yeah, the they want innovation to occur at the rate dictated by auto manufacturers to preserve their profit margins. Oh, thanks for clarifying that. So there are things like we could instrument cars right now that could be, far safer than they are. However it might drive the cost of a vehicle up, $20,000 on every vehicle.

That’s not really sustainable from a consumer standpoint or from the manufacturer standpoint. However, we also see the auto manufacturers really come hard against. Technologies that aren’t that expensive, but that could [00:36:00] significantly increase safety, better seats and cars, getting rear seat belt reminders into vehicles, getting pretensioners and load limiters into the rear seats of vehicles.

I could probably go on for longer than any of our listeners would want to hear me go on about that. There are just so many safety equipment options and variations that could be going into cars that, that would make cars so much safer, make, better driver monitoring every vehicle, better distraction prevention measures.

We just spoke last week about alcohol detection devices. There are a ton of things that could be going into cars to make them safer. Manufacturers, though seem, at least right now, to be so much more concerned with getting convenience features into cars that allow people to, eat their spaghetti and write emails while they’re driving.

So it’s, it’s a wild world there.

Fred: Clearly it would be a nice innovation if they use the technology that’s already in cars to warn other vehicles whenever a car is being, [00:37:00] I don’t know, driven dangerously or speeding or doing all those kinds of things. Or by an Italian doing their email.

Yeah. The only cost for that would be the one-time cost of the software to do it because all the components are already there in the car.

Anthony: But, hey, listener, instead of increasing the price of a vehicle, $20,000, let’s, what if the administration just said, here everybody here’s a tax refund for $20,000.

Now we can buy these really safe cars. I would suggest you don’t do that. I’d suggest you go to auto safety.org instead and donate that $20,000.

Fred: I like that idea. I

Anthony: knew you would. I had to get it in there. Alright let’s do one more a EB story before we jump into the the towel of Fred.

Red Light Safety Cameras and Rear-End Crashes

Anthony: So the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has an article labeled Auto Brake Slashes Rear End Crash Risks associated with Red Light Safety Cameras.

Okay. So this is a little this is an intense one. I think. [00:38:00] Red light safety cameras reduce the dangerous right angle crashes that often cause injuries or fatalities when drivers run red lights. But the devices are also associated with an increase in less severe rear end crashes due to a rise in sudden stops at equipped intersections.

So red light running causes extremely dangerous high speed side crashes. So red light safety cameras are an essential intervention. IIHS President David Harkey said this study illustrates that a EB helps address one of their few downsides, which can hopefully accelerate the deployment in intersections across the country.

Okay. What is a red light safety camera? Exactly. This is the, this is just. It’s taking the picture of the person’s license plate who ran through it. Yeah.

Michael: Is it’s just basically gonna catch people that run red lights.

Anthony: Okay, so it’s not stopping someone from running the red light? No. Just wanted to make, yeah, I, I didn’t know if that’s vehicle,

Michael: vehicle, vehicle to infrastructure technology there.

Which is something that I think would be great if you’re, your, if vehicles could be automatically [00:39:00] stopped at, when encountering a traffic control device that would save a lot of lives.

Anthony: I think we equip all cars with a grappler. So if you see the car in front of you, run the red knee, grapple it.

No

Michael: misuse is the high probability of misuse there. This study is interesting. Red light cameras are effective and they’re just at base. They’re effective now. They, cause I think that the biggest community based, I guess when you see red light cameras proposed in cities, you’ll hear people come out and say.

Yes, they’re going to increase the risk of rear collisions at intersections, and they might, I they might increase that because more people are scared of getting red light camera tickets. Therefore, more people are stopping on yellows and stopping to make sure that they’re not, running a red light so they’re not getting tickets.

And that leaves following drivers who aren’t being careful enough in the first place and probably not giving enough space to run into the rear of vehicles [00:40:00] that have stopped. That’s the argument that we continually hear. But the fact is that. The red light cameras are preventing the side impact crashes we see in inter in intersections that evolve higher speeds and are much more dangerous than the rear end collisions that are occurring due supposedly to people’s fear of those types of collisions.

So what they’re finding now is that even beyond that, there’s is, I think IHS is very pretty supportive of red light safety cameras and, being deployed right now as they are. But what they’re finding in this study is that the more automatic emergency braking systems we get on the road, we’re gonna see far less of the rear end collisions in, in, in this, in, in red lights.

And we’re gonna see it, which makes. Traffic light cameras even more effective overall at preventing incidents. So there’s not going to be the downside that is alleged by a lot of people who are [00:41:00] opposed to red light cameras. Most people, I think, are opposed to them because they don’t want to get tickets or they don’t want their driving restricted.

They want to, I don’t know. I’m having still, I always have trouble identifying with the non-safety side of the argument, but ultimately automatic emergency braking is, basically going to resolve this problem even more than it is right now. And we’ve seen actually red light cameras drop in usage because of these types of objections.

And I think it’s really important that IHS is putting out a study, both. Combating those type of objections, but also showing how technology that’s going into vehicles can ultimately play a real role in, in, supporting this type of good safety infrastructure.

Anthony: I love it. I want red light cameras at every intersection of my neighborhood because people are always going to red lights.

With that, Fred, are you ready for the towel? I am, sir. Okay.

Computer-Driven Vehicle Safety Checklist

Anthony: This week I’m gonna [00:42:00] computer driven vehicle operations, regulatory safety approval checklist. This is a draft. Can you instead of please don’t go through the entire thing just give us the overview and a couple highlights.

’cause I just, I’m gonna, it could take us months.

Fred: I’m gonna go long in the context rather than the specifics. Michael and I have both had some experience interacting with legislative bodies. Us Congress, the state authorities, et cetera, et cetera. Now, one of the things that we’ve seen is it is essentially asymmetric warfare with respect to the computer driven vehicle manufacturers because they can hire full-time lobbyists, they can come with bags of money, they can do a lot of things to get the attention of the LE legislators, and it’s really beyond the resources available to the legislators and their staff to dive deeply into the issues that are contrary to [00:43:00] the computer-driven vehicle manufacturers.

So it’s really asymmetric contest because they simply don’t have the resources to look even handedly at the pros and cons. So what we’ve done here at the center, fraud Safety is helpfully put together a checklist of items. That the legislators and their staff can look at to say, okay, these are safety issues that are important to the approval of computer driven vehicles in our state.

And they can go through and check yes or no. Has this been done? Has that been done without having to go through all of the background that we, who are immersed in the issues are pretty familiar with. This is still a draft, but it’s gonna be completed within the next week or two. And once it’s completed, we’re going to post it on the website for anybody who wants to see it.

And of course, if you [00:44:00] have a request, you can send it in. And we’re happy to share the drafting this current form, even though it’s imperfect. Just to help you understand the context of some of the opposition we have to certain technical aspects. Of the safety arguments associated with computer driven vehicles.

One of them, for example, only and only one, is that the reliance on the SAE automation levels, obs skewers, a lot of the safety issues. So we are talking about computer driven vehicles WR large rather than level one or level two or level four or five or whatever levels you want to have. Because even if a car is considered to be a level two vehicle by the manufacturer, the issues of takeover of the vehicle by the human operator in an emergency is the same whether you’re in a level two vehicle or a [00:45:00] level three vehicle, or even a level four vehicle that does not have immediately available human controls.

It’s not an issue with level five because they don’t have human controls. The issues many of the issues associated with safety for the level five vehicles are the same as the level two. So rather than trying to segregate it that way, we’re just referring to computer driven vehicles. All of us share certain safety concerns and I’ve put assembled that in a way that’s very usable by people who, again, are not as immersed in the details of these safety arguments as we are.

Michael, Anthony,

Anthony: anything you want to add to that? So are you seeing this as like a state regulator using this as a checklist? So let’s say I am, I represent the state of denial and in comes a company called Mela and they say, Hey, we wanna unleash [00:46:00] our. Vehicles on your roads, would you be expecting me as a regulator to be like, hold on a second, I’ll go through this checklist and say, Hey, does this work?

’cause like I’m looking at one of these items in the checklist, has the applicant proven the safety of occupants and other road users in the event of loss of external communications or connectivity? So should I be like asking Messula and be like, Hey what happens when you’re when your cell, when you didn’t pay your cell phone bill?

Fred: Sure. I think absolutely right. But also you’ve got a situation in any place where people are trying to deploy the computer driven vehicles that when on automatic control, they need to respond to emergency geofencing. If there’s a fire with fire equipment, they have, the vehicles should stay out of that area.

When they’re under automatic control as well as on when they’re under human control, but [00:47:00] Right, so that’s a question about safety that’s associated with connectivity to the other world. Even if you’ve paid your bill, you still have to have the connectivity available in response to emergencies, right? So you’ve got a fire somewhere, you’ve got an accident and there’s an accident response and there’s tractors and, all kinds of Rutgers around.

Or you’ve got a sudden demonstration in the middle of a city where people like, communists like Michael have taken over the whole the whole roadway and there’s no way for a vehicle to get through. So yeah, all of those situations are based upon adequate connectivity for the vehicle and when and authority issues a command to stay the hell away from certain dangerous areas.

Anthony: Yeah, I like it. This is good. So in your mind, what do you think Michael and the other communists are protesting? Is it that the Piggly Wiggly has run out of pork [00:48:00] products?

Fred: No, they’re protesting the creeping authoritarianism of the government. Adams hoping that it’ll be Chinese rather than Trump.

Okay. Because they’re much better on auto safety.

Anthony: So do you look at the, so in all seriousness, too much? No. In all seriousness, do you, is this something you imagine happening at the state level, at the federal level, or both?

Fred: Yes, ideally

Michael: it’s both, but as a minimum

Anthony: just says yes. Okay. Yes. I think this

Michael: is ideally something that could be used from, at the locality level up, for just in asking the right questions about computer driven vehicles that are being deployed on your roads as a city, as a state, as the federal government, whether you’re a regulator, up through the legislatures.

And, I think it’s important for, even for common citizens to have these types of questions in mind. Not. It’s obviously, it’s not something that’s going to interest every human in America, but for people that are really [00:49:00] interesting in evaluating the potential safety or negative safety consequences of computer driven vehicles, it’s a checklist that is developed based on, Fred and my and our experience on this type of thing.

I, these are problems that we’ve seen arise in years of looking at computer driven vehicles, and there are questions that I think are important to ask any computer driven vehicle manufacturer about, to ensure that adequate safety is being built into their systems.

Anthony: I, I like this idea a lot.

I think we should make this into a little app and allow people to go through and score it. And so you check, check, Hey, 97%, oh, here’s 0%.

Fred: You can go ahead and do that. You’re a computer. W but the reality of the legislatures is that the people who work there. Work very hard.

They’re pulled in a thousand different directions. It’s unrealistic to expect them to have the depth of understanding that we’ve got about these issues. And when the lobbyist comes in and says we’re, [00:50:00] like Waymo says we’re five times safer than anybody else. That sounds convincing, but what the hell does that even mean?

Does that mean they have five good collisions for every one bad collision? I can, I don’t know what the hell that even means. We’re not gonna ask that question. Yeah. If somebody comes in as a lobbyist says that, and there’s no counter to say what does that exactly mean? How is the legislator being pulled into a thousand different directions and having to raise funds for their reelection?

How in the world do they, can they be expected to know that unless somebody tells it to ’em? So that’s what we’re doing. We’re. Providing a, essentially a database that can be accessed just by looking at a couple of like a couple of pages of print. And if you have any questions, give us a call.

But, this is a start of a campaign to allow a reasonable debate in legislatures around the country about [00:51:00] whether or not to allow self-driving vehicles, computer-driven vehicles to operate with impunity in the state.

Anthony: I love it. If I could re-score gas lightly, both would be winners.

Fred: I’ll accept the win. I’ll take the win. I

Anthony: said if I could rescore it, but I can’t. It’s, wait a minute. I thought you

Fred: were the judge. Yeah. Thought you were the Yeah, my hands are tied. I thought you were the, I’m taking s today taking slate. I’m

Anthony: sorry. I love this. I’m looking forward to this coming out there.

I think this is great. Now let’s jump into some recalls. How’s that sound? That sounds awesome. Sounds great.

Fred: That sounds great.

Anthony: I have no idea how you made that sound and go see your doctor. Alright.

Toyota Recalls Overview

Anthony: First up, a rare entrance to the field Toyota. 54,631 vehicles. The 2025 Toyota Sienna Hybrid doesn’t say if it’s sienna colored, though due to a change setting of a welding machine during assembly, there’s a possibility that certain seat rails contain wells that are [00:52:00] not fully penetrated.

A weld that is not fully penetrated in the seat rail assembly can lead to a loss of structural integrity of the seat system in certain high speed collisions if the seat is occupied, increasing the risk of injury. Wow, okay. They changed the welding machine. Is this like when Michael changes done, microphone

Fred: welding’s done automatically.

On almost all vehicle parts. And of course, somebody’s got to set the controls for the welder. In this case, somebody screwed up on some of them. Wow.

Anthony: Okay. What’s the what’s the remedy?

Fred: The remedy? The remedy is to fix the weld. And so that’s what they’re doing. They’re, they’re, if the weld is not fully penetrated, what that means is that you’ve only got half the metal sticking together versus all of the metal sticking together.

’cause that’s what a weld does. It joins two pieces of metal. It’s assumed that the weld is gonna have enough [00:53:00] penetration to achieve full strength when you’re in a situation like this and you’ve got safety critical design parameter. So they they are going to install fully capable rails. And then, solve the problem that way.

Anthony: Listeners, if you haven’t subscribed, I recommend checking out Fred Perkin’s Other podcast. What a weld.

Michael: Yeah, this’s a tough one. If, luckily, according to Toyota’s report, they haven’t received any reports of crashes or injuries or deaths related to this condition.

But as you can imagine, if your seat is not fully and appropriately attached to your vehicle, that can lead to some really horrific results in a crash.

Anthony: Up next, a rare entrant in the field. Toyota, huh? 59. 5,960 vehicles. The 2025 Toyota Tacoma Hybrid and the 2025 Toyota Tacoma. If the ball cage deforms or [00:54:00] brakes, a driver may experience limited steering rotation, and Nate may not be able to complete a turn as intended.

Oh. This may also move the transmission. Wait, this is not good. That’s the simple part, right? No one ever wants their ball cage into deform or break.

Michael: I think this is a, that’s clever, Anthony, but I’m just gonna let it go. Yeah, just let it go. This is I think this may be the issue related to, anyway I don’t remember. I don’t think I reviewed this one, but, oh, no. Essentially you’ve got axle problems that are occurring and what you’re gonna, essentially, what you’re gonna have happen if your ball cage breaks. You’re not gonna be able to turn your vehicle like you’re expecting it to turn or as you intended to go.

And it’s also a problem because it looks like there could be roll aways related to this. It says the vehicle may move while the transmission is in park if the electronic parking brake is not applied. So that’s a kind of a dual safety concern [00:55:00] here. Owners, looks like owners will get notified about this sometime around the end of next month.

So be on the lookout for that folks.

Fred: You gotta remember that when you put your transmission in park, it locks the transmission. It does not lock the wheels. So in this case, if the ball cage breaks, your wheels are no longer connected to the transmission. There’s just an empty gap there. So that’s the problem.

This is a really horrible problem. They say you may not be able to complete the turn your car is gonna go any which way it wants to go if the ball cage breaks. So you’ll have virtually no control over the direction that they worded it as though it’s really benign. Oh gosh. You are not gonna be able to complete the turn.

The truth is your car is gonna go full ass out of control and this is really bad.

Anthony: Again, it fixed last recall a rare entrant to the field. Toyota. What’s going on? [00:56:00] What do they think? They’re Ford 393,838 vehicles. The 2022 to 2025 Tundra Hybrid. The 23 to 25 Sequoia hybrid, 22 to 25 Toyota Tundra.

If the lane counters advance independently, counter deviation will occur, and camera lane data may become unsynchronized. Is this a rear view camera thing? God dammit.

Fred: Yeah.

Anthony: Oh man. Oh, I like this. Go on. Sorry. You

Michael: got another rear view camera recall? This, you one is, you have to put it in there, don’t you?

This? Yeah. I there’s just so many. I think we’re at a round, maybe a little on over, but one around about one in every 10 recalls this year is a rear view camera recall, so they’re impossible to avoid. Apparently, in the recall list as well as for manufacturers since virtually every company that makes vehicles has submitted one in the last couple years.

This one is going out around the same time as the other [00:57:00] recall. We talked about late November, and it looks like there’s going to be a an update to the software for the multimedia display to fix this problem.

Anthony: Okay.

Conclusion and Farewell

Anthony: And with that listeners. That’s our show. Thanks for joining us. We’ll be back next week and thank you comrades Fred.

Now become the communist. Everyone’s very confused. Goodbye. Thanks everybody. Bye-bye.

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