Tesla’s data problem, rental car safety and police chases

h2>Introduction and Background

Anthony: For over 50 years, the Center for Auto Safety has worked to make cars safer.

Hey listeners, it’s September 3rd. Do you know what that means? It means we’re gonna start with some Tesla nonsense. So this happened a couple weeks ago. We’re just getting more and more details as time goes on. Tesla had that trial down in Miami, and part of it was this crash and Tesla said, oh, we don’t have any data.

We don’t have any data from the car. We don’t have any of this stuff. And then quoting from an article in the Washington Post. Then a self-described hacker enlisted by the plaintiffs to decode the contents of a chip. They recovered from the vehicle, found [00:01:00] it while sipping a venti sized hot chocolate at a South Florida.

Starbucks. Tesla. Tesla later said in court that it had the data on its own service all along. I love the slow drumbeat of Tesla just getting hoisted by its own batard.

Tesla Data Recovery Case

Michael: Yeah. This is a sexy story with the secret hacker, who’s is, is still not identified. I think we, we saw a Twitter handle or something in the article, it, the attorneys in this case were unable to crack this code for years in this case, I think was filed.

Five, six years ago, and it was

Anthony: 2019.

Michael: Yeah. And I don’t think it was until 2024 where they basically met this hacker in the Starbucks with the some of the instrumentation from the Tesla vehicle that was involved in the crash. And within a few minutes the guy cracked it. And basically that set the stage for what happened at trial, where, the jury hears how Tesla has this [00:02:00] data and is hiding it.

And basically it takes some, a minor miracle in some respects to, to get this data out of the vehicle by the attorney for the plaintiffs and their giant team of experts who were, struggling to get this information and then showing that Tesla had it all along. I think really put.

Gave the jury a lot to work with in, in making their decision on punitive damages. But it’s a very interesting story. And it looks like it, it almost didn’t happen with without them coming into contact with this hacker.

Technical Details of Tesla Data Storage

Anthony: Yeah. So to recap Tesla’s, they have a ton of sensors.

They collect a ton of data. This car had a crash. It had all that data on the local vehicle, on the vehicle that was involved. It then automatically sends it up to Tesla servers. When Tesla servers say, Hey, we’ve got it. It sends back an acknowledgement to the car. And then the car it doesn’t, I, we thought at first that it tried to erase it, but it removes references to it [00:03:00] locally.

So it’s almost like deleting a file on your computer, hard drive. It’s not actually gone. Just the obvious pointers to it are gone. And again, this is just a little message for software engineers at Tesla. Don’t be a dick. Come on. Don’t be a problem.

Michael: It’s concerning too, because the hacker, says in the article that, he doesn’t believe I, I’m assuming it’s a he, I didn’t even know since we don’t really have a name, but I, he doesn’t believe that he could do this on the newer Tesla models because there even more protected.

So it really makes you wonder, again, what’s going on at Tesla? What are their employees setting? What kind of systems are they setting up here, and what type of data are they removing from your vehicle? Or just whatever they’re doing, destroying the link to it. I’ve heard it described as that, removing references to it so you can’t find it.

Concerns About Tesla’s Data Practices

Michael: What are they doing? What kind of plan do they have for these vehicles post crash? Are they, do they have a new system [00:04:00] now in Teslas that e is even better and doesn’t allow for a, an owner or someone suing that owner? For a crash to retrieve the crash data from the vehicle that’s super problematic and it’s, it would, it’s borderline illegal.

I think we discussed this a month or so ago when we first talked about this issue, but it’s way past the line of Shady. And it’s entering the, in, in this case, the judge for some reason decided not to issue sanctions against Tesla saying that there wasn’t really any proof that they could find that Tesla was purposefully hiding the data because Tesla has come up with this sob story about how, they just missed the data and this is all just like a perfect storm.

Sounds a lot like what GM Cruise was saying when they ran over and pulled and. Hurt the pedestrian in San Francisco. They described it as this perfect storm of problems that prevented us from [00:05:00] doing the right thing. I don’t buy any of that. I think it’s pretty clear that Tesla’s designed this system to prevent folks from retrieving crash data.

And so that Tesla can continue to say that its autopilot and full self-driving systems are totally safe and continue blaming the driver into the future.

Discussion of Tesla’s Internal Systems

Anthony: A message to the judge in this case and to future attorneys that have to sue Tesla, there are definitely records and notes in their software development management systems.

There are messages and notes in their calendar applications saying, Hey, we’re gonna have a meeting to discuss specific features on this thing and this thing being, let’s hide the data from. Plaintiff’s attorneys from the people who bought the cars from law enforcement. This was not a one-off thing. This was not a perfect storm.

This was planned and they had meetings for this, I guarantee you, over months. And they released [00:06:00] software and they did testing on this. This is, this was planned and with all software. It’s not just, oh, it was a rogue employee like Volkswagen tried with their whole Dieselgate thing. No, they tried that.

Michael: They did try that at first.

This is gm. GM kind of tried that with the ignition switches for a minute, but it didn’t

Anthony: go

Michael: very far.

Anthony: No. So I would like future jurists. Don’t buy this perfect storm nonsense. This is engineered in, there are absolutely meeting notes on this, which if Tesla’s attorneys are listening right now, they’re saying delete the notes right now.

Software Development Practices

Anthony: Delete all records to meet, commit logs that have notes about this Fred as our chief engineer, would you. Agree with such a statement.

Fred: Which part of that, Anthony, you’ve covered a lot around there. All

Anthony: the that there, that this is, that Tesla definitely had meetings about this is how this software will function.

They have notes internally about all of this,

Fred: all of that nonsense [00:07:00] about elite call it lean, I’m thinking of the right word, but the Oh, agile programming. Agile, all that. Agile, right? All of the background of agile programming is consistently open communications, intensive communications, making sure that all the interfaces are correct and that all the software works together in small little bites.

And the only way that can work is if you have an overall hierarchy that is completely transparent to the people involved in the process. Make sure that all these little bits of software work together to achieve a. Competent global end trying to put together a brick wall. Unless all the bricks are working, you’re not gonna end up with a good wall.

And what they’ve done here is put it in the process for a very solid digital wall that nobody can penetrate except for those few people who’ve got the keys to the kingdom. And [00:08:00] those are basically resolved by the people who are chief engineers. It’s lot like compartmented secret organizations where nobody has an overhaul view of what’s happening except for the people at the very top of the pyramid.

Impact on Tesla’s Business

Fred: So yes, extensive planning. It didn’t happen by accident and it basically, it’s your basic evil empire, right?

Michael: Yeah. And the, I guess the, there’s a point brought up in the article too that kind of, we talk about this case as a positive thing, and it is, but the fact is, I believe that it’s going to take a lot more of this type of thing to happen to actually get Tesla to change.

Tesla operates in a pretty, pretty arrogant manner, I guess you could say, and I’m not convinced, we talked last week about how a 27,000 per dollar per day fine, that nips. Could assess Tesla for failing to appropriately report its crashes is not a deterrent. And [00:09:00] there’s a question given Tesla’s market cap, whether a $200 million product liability verdict is enough to get Tesla to change his practices.

Do we need more of these cases to come about? And, the hacker himself has pointed out a problem with future cases. Tesla’s already strengthened whatever backdoor has allowed them to access the data. In this case, they can’t access this crash data anymore. They can’t see into the system like they did.

Vehicle Data Ownership Discussion

Michael: Is that going to make, additional verdicts or finding additional wrongdoing on Tesla’s part even possible?

Fred: The judge didn’t seem to like the fact that overt lies were coming from Tesla about the composition and availability of data related to the crash. 200 and some odd million dollars.

It’s gotta be determined. I don’t care what the market cap is, somebody notices that kind of check being written. And yeah, it’s still tied up in appeals and I still think it’s certain it’s gonna end up being a lot [00:10:00] of money. I don’t think Tesla can ignore that because if they look at their sales, the trajectory headed downhill, you look at the margin available per vehicle also headed downhill.

Yeah, I think

Michael: Elon this week even said that that, Tesla’s future is 80% robotics. Yeah.

Fred: Which is nice. And there was a, there was an article in the New York Times recently that talked about the economics in China. And basically they’ve got 200 some odd companies putting out self-driving vehicles and electric vehicles.

Their market can support maybe five or six. And all of the companies are assuming tremendous amounts of debt. Financed by the government and financed by their suppliers. It’s a, looks like a Ponzi scheme, something’s gonna collapse here real soon and Tesla’s gonna find itself, I think, on the losing end of that vast debt collapse because they’re gonna try to sell their cars for 59 cents a piece [00:11:00] just to get rid of inventory, or they’re gonna plow ’em under the ground.

That’s what Tesla is competing against. And the least they can do is provide some kind of decent honesty about the capabilities of the car and your likelihood of being killed by the car. If you’re going to lay out your own money for one of these vehicles.

Rental Car Safety Issues

Anthony: Michael, the question I have, and we’ve discussed this in the past, is, so let’s pretend I’m a middle-aged white man who feels the system’s turned against me.

And I

Michael: you’re pretending, yeah,

Anthony: I’m pretending this, but I but I’m pretending the system’s aligned against me. And I’m like, I’m getting repressed and everything’s bad. It’s so hard being middle-aged white man in America. So I wanna feel better about myself, and I go out and I buy a Tesla.

Now, in this case, did I actually buy the vehicle? Because if Tesla’s recording all of this data in a car that I just paid money [00:12:00] for, but then they’re taking that data and sending it off to their mothership. What, who’s, who owns the data? Did I just give a bunch of money to be surveilled?

Michael: I think technically you should own the data.

However you, how are you gonna access that data? I don’t even know

Anthony: what data they have.

Michael: How do you know what data’s even there? What’s being collected? Technically you might even have a good legal argument to say you own the data, however, accessing that data and just most of us own our vehicles, but 99.9% of us don’t have the scanner required to download the information from the black box on our vehicles.

I don’t think that’s anything new, but we know what’s on that black box that’s federally, outlined, we know exactly what’s going to be there. As far as what data elements are collected about our driving or about the incident or the crash that we were involved in with Tesla, you have no idea. In fact, I think it was a few years ago when I first saw the [00:13:00] spreadsheet of all the information, Tesla’s collecting literally like a thousand different data points every millisecond.

So a million data points are being collected. What every second? Which is pretty crazy. Just how many and how much data is being collected by those vehicles that you’re just completely unaware of. And, and also, you don’t, when you don’t know what they’re collecting, you have no idea if they’re, collecting.

We saw some stories around Tesla employees looking at people, in compromised situations in their car, having sex, doing other things. The employees had access to those videos through the uploads to the company. So when you buy one of these vehicles, and I would. Venture to say that Tesla’s not the only bad actor in this area.

I’m sure there are other vehicle manufacturers collecting, video or other data from your car that you’re not aware of. And, you almost either have to say, I’m not going to buy a connected vehicle. Or, just go ahead and offer [00:14:00] yourself up to your potential loss of privacy.

Privacy and Consumer Protection

Michael: And there’s not a good solution there because the law is way behind here in terms of dictating who owns what data, who should have access to it. There’s, there are, there a mishmash of some state protections, very limited federal protections for privacy. We saw it happen to the folks who own GM vehicles, who had their driving habits reported directly to Lexus Nexus so that insurance companies could download them and determine their insurance rates based on that information.

So I. I think there needs to be, first, there have to be proper disclosures to people who are buying any type of consumer technology that, where it’s not obvious what the functions are, what kind of information it’s being collected. You need to have some serious disclosure of what’s going to be collected at the time of purchase or sale.

And even then, it’s, it, there’s a question as to whether, your average consumer is going to be able to digest and understand all that information. And not [00:15:00] only that, it’s, the world of surveillance goes well beyond that. If you wanna talk about flock cameras and things the government is doing to surveil you, it gets even more interesting.

Anthony: That’s a different podcast we have. Yes, it is. All right. So we’ll get back to Tesla in the future, but in the meantime, you can go to auto safety.org and click on donate. Oh, you did already. Can you do it again? Thank you. Let’s continue. We have another article in the Washington Post and yes, this is speaking of

Michael: flock cameras.

Anthony: No, this is about the coolest thing that people like to watch in movies, car chases. I’m gonna quote from the article, the pursuits, all of which began as traffic stops for nonviolent crimes and were initiated by federal task forces formed a response to Trump’s August 11th executive order. That was the one who was like, Hey, I love my daughter and I like cheeseburgers and I hate America.

I would’ve violated DC police policy. The district’s police department allows car chases only when the driver is putting other lives in danger or suspected of [00:16:00] committing a violent crime. Park police had imposed stricter rules, allowing purer pursuit only for people wanted for violent felonies. After two officers chased, then shot and killed unarmed motorist Jean Gasser in Northern Virginia in 2017, but last week.

Park police announced those restrict chase restrictions were gone. That’s right. If you’re park police, you’re no longer on horseback. You’re on full horsepower. That’s right. Go nuts. Tear it up. Chase down those people who failed to stop at a stop sign.

Police Chase Policy Changes

Michael: Yeah. I, there’ve been, so far at the time this article was written that there were 10 pursuits that had been initiated since August 14th, at least that the post was able to uncover, six of which ended in a crash.

Luckily, no one was killed. There was a really high speed collision on I 2 95, I think it was, 80 plus miles per hour that hit some other vehicles. Highlighting the fact that it’s not just [00:17:00] criminals who are at risk here. And that’s really ultimately our concern. I want criminals to be caught as much as anyone.

I don’t like bad guys. However, if you look at the why I mentioned flock, if you look at the underlying offenses involved in almost all these collisions, most of them were, the police were detecting a problem with the tag. It was false tags, expired tags, lack of a tag and then starting to pull these people over and these people fled.

Now, there was not a single one of these chases that involved, someone who is actively trying to hurt. Other human beings. There was not a pub, an active public safety threat involved. These were all some very minor traffic issues. Some of ’em, are indicative of a stolen car. But at that point you’re talking about, a property crime.

And by initiating a pursuit, you’re turning what is a [00:18:00] simple property crime into a potential public safety threat of the police chase going through a metropolitan area. So there’s a lot of problems here. Another problem here is if you look at the maps of where all these incidents occurred, they’re all in the poor parts of the city raises questions about what the hell.

Federal government is doing p patrolling those areas and trying to enforce license plate violations, which are clearly a Washington DC issue, not a federal issue. There’s just a lot of problems here. And, many of these problems are, I think stem from the fact that the leadership of the interior department is.

Kind of clueless on the issue, and this is, I’m gonna go right into my gas light of the week here. Go for it. In Interior Secretary, Doug Bergham former Chimney Sweep in Trump’s cabinet meeting last week, thanked the president for giving a green light to park police vehicle pursuits.

Here’s what he said The next night, [00:19:00] they had so much fun, they pulled people over, they started to take off. They chased them, they stopped them. Now. That is just, I don’t know. I it almost sounded like Trump talking when he, when he was saying they had so much fun, that’s really not what, making part police have fun at night is not their duty.

Waymo in New York City

Michael: They’re supposed to monitor the federal spaces in Washington and make sure those are safe. I don’t see how. They’re doing this. I laughed at one that said, the they pulled over a vehicle because of the odor of burned marijuana. I’ve probably joked this podcast a number of times that, you know the entire city of DC smells like burning marijuana.

If you’re driving around the roads, it’s virtually everywhere. I don’t understand why the park police are involved in that, this is the SEC interior secretary Doug Bergham, who is basically, he was the governor of North Dakota. He should have some experience in directing appropriate law enforcement responses to situations.

And this simply isn’t one. And the [00:20:00] callous way in which he, talks about police having fun doing a job that could put innocent people in danger over what are essentially minor crimes is it’s just this gleeful weird. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s a disconnect between, the reality of safety on our streets and our politicians.

And that guy gets my gaslight of the week.

Anthony: That’s pretty good. Go in

Michael: by Rambo. Cracy.

Anthony: Yeah. Fred, you ready for your gaslight? Now, before you start, I want you to remember passion gets a lot of points.

Fred: Action gets a lot of points, right? Passion. Alright and what is the fruit of Nevermind.

Continue. Passion fruit. You? Yeah. Yeah. Humor again. Yeah. Sorry. You’re,

Anthony: you’ve already lost before you’ve started.

Fred: That makes it hard. Okay, so I reread or read for the first time a document by a VIA, which is the Autonomous Vehicle Industry [00:21:00] Association that has originally earned the gaslight for this week.

What levels shall we address? First of all. Why did they claim to represent the industry? Because a DI membership doesn’t include Tesla, which is the largest supplier of self driving vehicles, does not include Mercedes, which currently has the only state certified level three operational vehicles. Nor does it include any Chinese companies which are producing huge numbers of avs.

So why is a VIA claiming to be representative of the industry? It’s not clear at all. But anyway, they put out a document named securing American Leadership in Autonomous vehicles 2025. It’s fun to read and there’s some subtle points in there that are interesting. So first of all, in the section called AV Safety, transparency and accountability, they include the need for collecting data include, [00:22:00] and they say include relevant safety, relevant data.

They don’t say what that is, which would be useful, but still, there’s some progress. They say it should be put in a repository. Quoting all information shared in a repository must be subject to strict confidential business information protections, which both federal and state regulators must uphold.

AV Industry Association Discussion

Fred: They also say that only state and federal regulators should get that data. So people like us who are third parties, advocates for safety will be excluded from the data, so we’ll academics. So that’s their vision of where things should go. They talk about enhancing public understanding of incident reporting by removing the current one day reporting deadline.

So their idea of enhancing transparency is to remove transparency by removing a reporting deadline requirement. So that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. National AV safety data [00:23:00] repository, again, including safety relevant data. But what the hell is that? Our ideas of what that includes is probably a lot different than what the industry thinks ought to be included in the public disclosures.

They say that the data should be available to relevant state transportation regulatory agencies and strict under strict confidential business information protections. That’s pretty much where we are now, except that other people like us can see some of the data, but the industry’s using blanket confidentiality re exclusions to make sure that nobody can see anything useful.

And this they want to be federal policy to support innovation. They recommend that nitsa clarify whether by interpretation or regulatory changes that requirements for manually operated driving controls. And certain indicators and tell tales are not applicable to level four. While level four by definition [00:24:00] includes vehicles that can default to human control.

So how does that make sense? Without having the re requested absence of driver controls that are accessible to humans makes no sense. They want to have a rule making informed by industry only to demonstrate a basic level of a DS driving proficiency. Now, the idea of demonstrating driver proficiency for an a DS makes a lot of sense, but to have that restricted to the members of the A VIA or some other industry organization excludes things like getting in and out of the car safely.

A lot of things that we can find in our own list of. Requirements, the AV Bill of Rights that we have posted on our website that are not included in any of the industry’s vision of what should be available By disclosure basically they want to leave consumer advocates [00:25:00] and academics completely out in the cold.

They do talk about some tests that would be good. But they talk about a need to devolve to a minimum risk condition without really talking about what it is. And they refer to the J 30 16, the SAEJ 30 16 minimum risk condition. But nobody’s ever demonstrated that is a safe operating condition or a safe destination for a fallback.

That’s just a sampling. It goes on and on, but. I am giving them my Gaslight nomination flower. A lot of flowery language, but a lot of dangerous precepts that are designed to confuse

Hot Car Deaths

Fred: the public and give industry a free reign to run rampant on the highways.

Anthony: Alright, I’m gonna do mine now. I’m gonna do some quotes from an article from Inside EVs, and you guys are gonna guess which part of I’m saying to you is [00:26:00] my gaslight.

This is a good one. Ready? According to this article, model Y is equipped with cameras and artificial intelligence promise to deliver a more generalized solution to autonomy July. Oh. He told, Musk told investors in July that ROA taxis will be available to half the US population by the end of this year.

And then Musk said on his social media platform x earlier month that the service will transition to open access in September. Meaning the broader public should be able to download the robotaxis app and order a ride. So out of those three things, which is my gaslight,

Michael: is there like a D? All of the above here?

Anthony: Ooh, there could be, but I’m actually not being that. I’m not being that. ’cause they’re all, all three

Michael: are, the first one technically. I guess depending on what you think about what that statement could be true. The second two are just not gonna happen,

Anthony: right? Yeah.

Brett, do you have any thoughts

Fred: on those three? I, no, it’s, it’s hard to pick among them. Okay. But I do think it’s great because my daughter is an attorney, and [00:27:00] this is gonna generate a health on a business for attorneys.

Anthony: Hey, speaking of attorneys who’ve generated a hell of a lot of business, you wanna share that larges, go to auto safety org, click on donate.

Anyway, so out of these three, the obvious ones are must talking about how this is available to the public right away and all this stuff. We’ve covered that a hundred times now. My gaslight is this. Statement from Inside EVs. Model Y is equipped with cameras and artificial intelligence. The gaslight being, what the hell is artificial intelligence mean?

No one knows and they’re just putting it out there and Tesla keeps falling back on. We have artificial intelligence. They have this super computer Dojo or something like that. You know what they did last week? Fired the entire Dojo team. That’s right. They have nothing, they do not have any artificial intelligence.

As best as anyone can tell, is they’re using some open source object detection software that any kid could have downloaded in like 2005. Maybe they’ve made adjustments to [00:28:00] it. We don’t know because they’re opaque. That’s my gaslight and I give myself the win because I gave you guys an option to weigh in.

That’s why, and I

Digital Billboard Trucks

Anthony: haven’t won in a while and I, that’s what I feel like Michael’s definitely second because he The pity win. Yeah. It’s dammit. Michael, you, I was gonna make these. Is that really a win? You were gonna be second ’cause you used a guy named Doug. That’s like a, by default a winner, but no.

Fred’s second now because, you’re not being nice to me.

Michael: I take pride in being the last, given the quality of the judging going on here. Ah,

Fred: yeah, I, yeah. We gotta address the systemic problem we’ve got here. Nope. Moving on. Move. Moving on. Let’s turn it over to ai.

Anthony: That’s, I’ll stop this.

Nothing to

Fred: see here. You think Anthony?

Anthony: I nothing to see here. Let’s go to a different story titled, the Man Escapes Car Fire While Driving Warns other about potentially Deadly Risk with recalls. I’m gonna quote from here. It was actually Mother’s Day, Daniel McAdams told Channel 11 I was going to get flowers for my wife.

I started smelling this strange smell. I said, [00:29:00] something doesn’t smell right. So I started coming back home. First of all, don’t buy flowers for your wife on Mother’s Day. Come on, plan ahead. Continuing McAdams says he crested the hill to his driveway. His car started to feel the smoke. It was like really thick fog.

McAdam said you could barely see. I could barely see at the windshield. It was heavy. McAdam said he got out of the fa, I got out as fast as he could and grabbed his garden hose. I popped the hood, saw the flames coming from back behind the engine, and that’s when it started. Dowsing it. This is horrific. And it goes on to deal with his problems with the insurance companies, but this was a Kia.

I don’t know if we know the exact model he said in here,

Michael: but I forget what it was. I actually, I wasn’t

Anthony: saying the article, but they do quote a man named Michael Brooks in the article.

Michael: Yeah, I got the vin number from him and looked up the, the recalls. And he had those, he had the fire recalls in the Kia.

Actually both of them. Not only the one that was due to the engine failure fires, that [00:30:00] was a really big problem. But also the heck u and the brake. Control system that catches on fire as well. This one looks like the engine issue, but neither one of them was fixed. And especially that init that Kia and Hyundai problem with the engines.

If you haven’t gotten that fixed, there were. Thousands of fires caused by that, I think in their reporting to nhtsa at one point, I wanna say there were, between Key and Hyundai, there were, and this was five years ago, there were at least four or 5,000 fires across the United States

Vehicle Recalls

Michael: that were identified in these cars due to that engine problem.

And so it is a, a very com a lot of times we’ll see a fire issue that’s very rare. It might happen to one in a million vehicles. This was happening at rates far higher than that. And rates that were, leading the auto industry at the time. I think IHS did a study on that after we filed our petition and said, yeah, there’s some problems with these Kia and Hyundais and fires.

The ultimate ultimately here, [00:31:00] thi this has been a recall that’s been available, and it’s not a great recall. It doesn’t really fix the problem. It’s a no sensor detection software program that’s installed that basically when your engine starts to detect that it is going to have this problem that can ultimately cause a fire, your vehicle is going to be shut down into limp mode where you can’t really drive it, you can barely drive at all.

It’s gonna be incredibly slow. Your only option is to go to the dealer at that point. The guy in this article, unfortunately, I don’t know if he bought the car, used or didn’t ever got his notices. He doesn’t appear to have been aware of the recalls at all. But it is a. A good reason to get your recalls recall would’ve been free.

And now he’s out of a lot of money. Probably is not going to get a whole lot outta Kia. Hopefully his insurances will help him cover it. But it’s important to get your recalls

Anthony: in this case. Fred, the guy’s car’s on fire and he takes a garden hose to dows it. In my mind, I [00:32:00] think oil. And is that’s not how you want to put out that fire or is that okay in this case?

Fred: Firefighters would use water too initially. Okay. So you’ve got three things that contribute to the fire, right? You’ve got fuel, you’ve got heat, and then you got oxygen. Unless your battery’s on fire, which case you’ve got a different problem. But in this case, the WA would remove the heat pretty much.

And so it worked for him, it took, put the fire out. So it’s, I think that what, if you can, you try to do it with whatever’s available. And if you cannot, you just get yourself to safety and watch it burn.

Anthony: I’m glad this guy is safe. I’m, that’s awful that he had to go through this loss though.

Moving on. Here’s a loss that you can prevent though about rental cars. And we’ve talked about this before. And this is about basically you can rent a car and there’s no regulations if the car rental companies are checking them [00:33:00] for recalls or really even maintaining them.

Michael: Now there, there is a regulation on the wall.

Oh, there is wall on recalls. Now, rental car companies cannot rent out a vehicle that has an open recall on it.

Anthony: Don’t listen to me folks.

Michael: Yeah, don’t listen to Anthony. But there are a lot of other concerns here, and I will say, this article is about rental companies cutting corners on safety checks.

And I will say not in defensive rental companies, they, they, a lot of the problems in this article cited to rental companies are also things that a lot of us who own vehicles don’t do as well. Like driving on bald tires, not conducting recalls. Like our last story was about having faulty equipment and lack of maintenance is something we see on vehicles all over the road, everywhere.

But when, when you’re renting a vehicle from a rental car company, you should expect that vehicle to be maintained better than your average human, right? You and the article goes through kind of some stories of consumers who. [00:34:00] Had, gone through problems, had to jump through hoops because the rental vehicles, they kept getting had problems.

And that’s something, everyone should do. When you get a rental car, I would not advise you to hop in and take off. First of all, if it is a Tesla or another vehicle with electronic door latches, I would advise you to read the owner’s manual and make sure you know where the manual releases are.

But beyond that, there’s just a you have to inspect it visually. I think I saw another article this week where rental companies now have AI that’s looking at the vehicle for dents and dings when you bring it back. And it’s resulting in people getting a lot of bills for things they don’t even believe they caused.

You can check for recalls. The odds are you will not find a rental vehicle with an open recall. However, there have been some violations of that provision, but most rental companies since for at least the last decade have been subject to a federal law that requires ’em to get the repairs done.

Also you should talk to the rental company about [00:35:00] their maintenance and the safety checks that they’re performing on these vehicles. And it’s, and a lot of people shop around for rental vehicles and it’s, it’s hard to familiarize themselves with the policies for every one of them.

But there are companies that do more than others and they might be worth a couple extra bucks a day in, in the long term. That’s really the advice. Also the advice in the article is, speak up immediately. If you have a problem with a vehicle, don’t feel like there’s nothing you can’t do about it.

The rental, the employees at the rental car company, you’re probably gonna be happy to get you into another car if you have problems with the one you’re in.

Fred: Yeah. But let’s be clear. No human being has ever done a complete safety check or rental car before they took it away from the lot.

No, that just doesn’t happen. And so it’s really incumbent on the rental companies to do it and to obey the law. So whatever mechanisms necessary to get them to obey the law and do the safety checks to protect the consumers is really what the focus ought to be. I think it’s unreasonable to say that, you as a consumer are going to do a safety [00:36:00] check.

You’re gonna take the VIN number, you’re gonna check with the nitsa. That’s just not gonna happen. But do check the tires folks and make sure that you got good tires. That’s easy enough to do.

Anthony: I rented two cars, I think it was last year. And the first one, I’m waiting online for an hour to get the car.

And by the time I get the car, I don’t want to be like, oh, I have to go back. And the first car they gave me was a Jeep. And I was like, ah, but it was brand new. ’cause if not, I’ll be like, eh, it says Jeep on it, which just says it’s return. But it was brand new and I could check the tires because I’m on this show and you guys have taught me, and the next time, like a week or two later, it was a different car.

It’s still waiting online forever, waiting for ’em to grind the car out. And it said Kia, and I was like, ah, also. But it was a really fun car to drive. But I did check the tires. I did check all the, but I don’t, I’m not, I didn’t. I admit I didn’t check for recalls. ’cause also I didn’t want to have to be explained to my wife, no, we just waited for an hour.

We’re gonna hang out for another hour.

Michael: Yeah. And that’s a lot of the issue with rentals is like the time pressure. You’re at an [00:37:00] airport, you’re ready to get to wherever you’re going. You don’t have time to do a full check of the vehicle, even if you have the capability of doing that. And most, and a lot of folks out there do, I’m, I’m certainly I certainly am not some super expert on maintenance that can look under the hood and tell you that there’s a problem.

I don’t think most of us are. And so it’s incumbent upon us to trust the rental agency and their processes of checks and safety checks are very important to ensure that you’re gonna get a safe vehicle.

Fred: I think it would be easy enough to put a what are those square things called? The, the windows, the code you can read with your phone.

Oh, QR codes. QR code. I think it would be easy enough to put a QR code on these vehicles and then link it to the company’s database as to what kind of service they’ve provided. It seems like a very straightforward and simple programming task. Anthony, that shouldn’t be a big burden on anybody. No, I love this idea.

You could do the same thing with the vehicle check [00:38:00] at nsa. There’s no reason why human beings have to plug in all those numbers. You could just use the QR code and zip it right through. Why would that be a problem?

Anthony: This is a great idea. It almost makes me wanna abandon our autonomous vehicle company that we’re building in Florida.

That’s how good of an idea this is. One thing, the article, does

Fred: that get me a higher ranking back on my gaslight, or am I still stuck with being a perennial loser?

Anthony: No. You’re second place again this week because again, Michael’s got some monetary issues. One thing this article points out is saying is say, Hey, look for if it has any of those little stickers that most of us have on our cars, like last time inspected, that’s always a good one just to quickly check and be like, oh, last time inspected was, during the Bush years.

And then probably ask for a different car. But hey, speaking of Fred and everything about you, Fred, let’s talk Ga what’s that segment called? Oh, the Tower, Fred, let’s talk about that.

Fred: We have a guest appearance this week by guy named Mr. Semino. Hey, that’s me. Alright. [00:39:00] And so for some local content folks, there was an article in a.

Newspaper that I actually have never purchased and I’ve only really looked at, which is called the news, if I remember right. Anthony, is that what you No, it’s the New York

Anthony: Post. It is the favorite newspaper of fish mongers

Fred: post. Okay. And so what was that article about Anthony? That article is about small town.

Anthony: Yeah. This small town called New York City and Waymo saying hey, we wanna put our robotaxis in New York. The article is titled Buses, bikes, Jay Walkers and Aggressive Drivers. Can Waymo really make it in New York City? The answer’s no, but I, that’s just my opinion. But anyway, you may have a different opinion.

Fred: My opinion is that every vehicle that is being presented as a self-driving vehicle should first not be allowed on the streets until the company has revealed what their safety. Standards [00:40:00] are, what their safety requirements are and the method they’ve used to establish that they do conform to their safety requirements, which have incidentally been endorsed by the local authority, responsible for traffic regulation.

That should be the bare minimum. But instead the Waymo approach is to just put the cars out there and try to enforce their standard that we haven’t killed anybody lately. That seems to be the only thing that they really want to have out in the public domain. New York presents a lot of basic difficulties with traffic.

For example, how do you navigate the New Year’s Eve celebration that fills up about, oh, I don’t know, 130 different blocks of New York with drunken people. There’s no other environment in the United States like New York City. Even the people who live there have to dodge vehicles, have to dodge other pedestrians, they have to dodge [00:41:00] motorized bicycles on the sidewalk.

This is really a chaotic environment.

Anthony: You regularly have to break traffic laws in order to drive.

Fred: Yeah.

Anthony: There’s just no way around it.

Fred: Anthony, as the resident of New York City, are you happy with the fact that you don’t even know what the hell they’re trying to achieve and they’re just stirring stuff against the, throwing drivers against the wall to see if their vehicles are acceptable from a public relations perspective without any bearing to their technical compliance with unknown standards?

Anthony: No. And the interesting thing is, about eight years ago, I wanna say, Waymo had test vehicles running around the Brooklyn Navy yard, which basically, you can think of this as like a giant mall parking lot type thing with a lot more obstructions. And they had them running out there and I don’t know if they were actually learning anything.

’cause what are you gonna learn by driving in a parking lot for years on [00:42:00] end? Or is it just some PR thing? But no, I don’t, I think trying to get Waymo’s to work in New York City or any other AV company is going to be very hard because these things are programmed to follow traffic laws, right? And in order, like I said, to navigate New York at times you have to actively break traffic laws.

You have to contend with Jay Walkers as you’re trying to turn. And so by the time you actually get to make your turn or progress, the light has changed to red, but you’ve. Gone out far enough that everybody else knows that you’re gonna go ahead. Whereas a Waymo, I imagine or an AV couldn’t be programmed to violate the law like that.

Fred: Well, lemme ask a related question, Anthony. One of the, one of the things that Waymo touts is the fact that they are environmentally sensitive, that they’re much better than the alternative vehicles. So could you please [00:43:00] explain to me, if you can, how introducing thousands of new vehicles to the New York City streets and removing the revenue that would otherwise go to public transportation.

By putting these thousands of new vehicles on the street, each of which is extremely energy intensive, using rare materials in huge amounts. How that’s environmentally sensitive. ’cause I’m a little confused by that.

Anthony: I, I don’t know, since New York City gets a lot of its power from natural gas. So I

Michael: so a little bit of a problem.

Okay. I’ll accept that. What about, the thing that I think about most in this whole Waymo and New York thing is the obvious, like we’ve talked a lot about how driverless vehicles, humans have a hard time interpreting the potential actions of other humans. We talked a lot about how with driverless cars, there’s a big gap in the terms of the car’s ability to understand human movements, human behaviors, which are often [00:44:00] unpredictable.

And New York City is the heart of that in America. More humans, a lot of unpredictability. And that’s where I really think there’s gonna be a hard time for these vehicles. Just the crush of humanity that they encounter in the city.

Fred: I once drove on Broadway from end to end just because I could.

And what was interesting is as I was driving through the upper reaches of Manhattan, I found that the whole idea of painted lanes was something that was just a notion that was, interesting, but not necessarily a directive to the local residents. The moment somebody had room to squeeze a car through, regardless of where the lines might have been painted here they come.

I don’t know, like you said, Michael, how conformance to traffic laws in any way can allow Waymo’s to operate in New York City. That just isn’t gonna happen.

Anthony: Perfect example, the other day, I’m going down the [00:45:00] street and the traffic lane that I’m in, traffic stopped moving. Couldn’t figure out why, because a whole bunch of city buses stopped in the traffic lane.

Four in a row. So what everyone had to do, and we all knew, was you had to cross over into the opposing lane of traffic, go around these four city buses, and then come back into the correct lane of traffic. I, I think it might be easier for Waymo to try, navigating the streets of Rome first and the insanity of New York and Fred has been muted but he’s very attractive.

So we allow it.

Fred: We used to have a saying in one factory I worked at that we lose money on everything we sell, but we make it on, make it up on volume. And I suspect Waymo was doing that. They’ll be dumping thousands of vehicles into this capital abyss of their operations in New York before they finally back off.

So I, I still think that this is basically just an AV bubble. They’re trying to put a PR wrap on it. They may think of [00:46:00] people think that it’s necessary and desirable. If they can make it in New York, they should be able to make it anywhere. I don’t think they’ll make it there, but it’s gonna be tragic to watch it evolve.

Anthony: Yeah. This New York Post article, I think sums it up perfectly with the last line is that quoting from somebody saying You don’t have to make small talk with a driver. That’s what this comes down to. These are sociopaths. I was in a cab last night and the small talk I had to make with the driver was explaining to him where I lived.

That’s it. And then I was like, just take this exit. I’ll guide you from there. It’s not that hard. It’s, I don’t get it. But I also see the other downside is the New York City taxi drivers are, it’s commonly an entry first job for recent immigrants. My dentist, when he was going through dental school, he is a guy who immigrated from Russia.

He’s yeah, I drove a taxi for a few years. He’s ’cause that’s the job I could get. And that’s a very common New York story. Now the robots will [00:47:00] take it. Next thing I’m going to the robot, dentist. I won’t have to make small talk with that thing.

Michael: I read this week that there’s, they’ve crunched the data on how much employees of rideshare and taxi taxis are earning.

And in, in the places where autonomous vehicles has started picking up passengers, I think it was probably Phoenix, San Francisco, Austin, maybe a couple others, they’ve seen the hourly rates for cab and ride share drivers go down. So it’s already having an impact on on, on what you can make as a driver in the, in those cities where, at least, where the technology’s been deployed and is operating and taking passengers.

Anthony: All right, I gotta go into a less than happy story. This one is from Consumer Affairs titled Hot Car Children’s Deaths, continual Washington Does nothing. And we’ve talked about this with our friends from kids in Car Safety. And unfortunately, quoting from this article, authorities confirmed that a four month [00:48:00] old infant died on August 25th after being left inside a vehicle in South Carolina.

The case marks at least the 24th Child hot car death this year in the United States continuing a tragic pattern that is claimed more than 1,150 young lives since 1990.

Michael: And since that article was written last week, there have been three more. Oh. So it is, this is the worst time of the year. I’ve, I think I’ve mentioned this before, I get an email from kids in car safety every time there’s a child that’s.

Found dead in a vehicle after being left there. And it’s horrible. We know we have the technology available. There are co only a couple of manufacturers that are actually putting good tech into cars to prevent this. I believe Volvo and Hyundai and some of their very luxury models have technology that can detect children in the rear seat.

The industry is pushing kind of this. Door sequencing technology that doesn’t detect a child, but simply, basically tells you if you opened a door, closed [00:49:00] it, and then reopen and didn’t reopen the door after you reached your destination. Just to simplify it, it’s a little more complex than that, but it’s not the solution here.

And this continues to happen. It was supposed to require manufacturers to put detection systems in their vehicles. The industry is continually pushed back on that and the current Washington, the industry is going to get what they want. And it’s sad, but it’s probably, we probably won’t see a rule here until 2030.

Anthony: Yeah. I was explaining this to friends of mine who have a newborn and I said, Hey, this is a problem. And I brought this up because I’m a lot of fun at parties and explaining this, and they had the normal reaction than everybody does. How could who, what horrible parents would do this, how bad.

And then explaining this is these people are no different than any of us are that. They the story we were told where oh, I drove to daycare, dropped the kid off, but it just didn’t happen. It’s this Yeah. Cognitive dissonance. And they’re not, most of the time. Yeah. Or a

Michael: lot of the time it is.

[00:50:00] Sometimes it, sometimes it is bad parenting, sometimes it is people going into the Walmart and leaving their kids in the car thinking they’re gonna be fine. But a lot of times it is literally people who do not believe their child was in the car. They just cognitively thought they had dropped them off and just did not realize.

And there’s a good, for everyone who questions or has, negative feelings towards all the events. I would always encourage you to go back and read an article by Gene Weingart in the Washington Post from probably 20 years ago now that looked into the stories of people who had been involved in these types of events.

And, it, there are stories that clearly outline the need for technology that can intervene here. Because the technology that detect children. Could alert, nearby good Samaritans or police to the presence of children in cars, in, in all cases, whether someone was left, whether a child was left in the car purposefully or own accident.

It doesn’t matter. It’s, the technology is directed towards saving the child no matter how it [00:51:00] happened. And blaming the parents does not help doesn’t really help push this forward because it’s, it’s like you’re blaming, it, this is something that’s going to happen, whether or not there’s a bad parent involved, people there, there’s just a problem in the human brain, and, this isn’t the only.

Type of circumstance in which it arises, but people just cannot always, a hundred percent of the time track exactly where their children are. People forget things. And the technology really is the solution.

Anthony: Yeah. If you’ve ever had white line fever where you take a drive and you come home and you’re like, I don’t remember how I drove this, then you’re susceptible to that.

That’s happened. I think everybody’s driven a car. But anyway, let’s go to a somewhat not really a lighter topic, but Yeah, a little lighter. We’ll do this one before we jump into recalls. This is an article we wanted to get to last week and couldn’t this is from Yahoo titled, driver Raises Concern After Spotting Dangerous Trend [00:52:00] on Roads that cannot be Legal.

And this is bizarre. Someone’s going down the road and the back of a panel truck is an LCD screen or some sort of screen playing advertisements. Full motion video. You’re driving down the street, you’re, it’s illegal for you to look at your phone. We’ve discussed this with the sheriff that was on the show, that the most dangerous people on the road are distracted drivers.

And now this is a vehicle actively playing television commercials at you. Michael, is this legal?

Michael: It would be a state level legality. There wouldn’t be any federal ban on this. I think it’s a horrible idea to put moving motion pictures or anything that, that would distract people on the side of big trucks.

I thought it was so absurd that it might be an AI generated video just to generate outrage and clicks for somebody online. There are rolling digital billboard trucks. They appear to be in use. I’m not sure if you can use them in every state. There’s a [00:53:00] company called Rolling Box Media just to name one that can, that advertises, dunking Donuts on their website.

Is their main thing. And I can’t tell, if, there’s probably a difference here. We see a lot of city buses that are roaming around that have static advertisements on them. You things that don’t change, which, could still be somewhat distracting. I think we all get distracted by anything in our field of view on a long, boring drive.

But movement and video, essentially a TV riding down the road, I think most everyone is going to agree is something that’s not safe and something that we should look to get rid of. And I’m sure there are some lobbyists working for these companies, selling these that are not excited about that proposition.

But, come on guys, it’s a pretty clear distraction and a safety issue.

Anthony: Crazy. Crazy. All right, let’s jump into the recalls. Ready? Yes. All right. First one up. Chrysler [00:54:00] 219,577 vehicles. The 2029 to 2021 Ram Pro master the 2019 to 2020 Dodge Journey. These are two vehicles that I’ve never heard of. The rear visibility system is this rear view, God dammit.

Really? Yes. Really. Michael. A rear view image that is blank, blue, black or inverted, reduces the driver’s view of what is behind the vehicle. This is the rear view camera again. Yeah, it is.

Michael: This is one of the less. The less common causes here. Usually we’re encountering software issues, cable problems, interference with the infotainment system.

This one’s water intrusion into the camera. So essentially

Anthony: oh, they didn’t seal it properly, it

Michael: looks like. Yeah. And is this one water intrusion? Maybe that’s another recall for today. Anyway, this one may not be water intrusion but either way, these cameras are the bad thing here. Not the software.

So essentially folks are gonna get a new rear view camera for these vehicles. And this one’s been going a while. These are 20, 19, [00:55:00] 20 20, 20 21 vehicles. So they’ve been having problems for a few years now and have just now decided to do a recall. Owners are probably gonna get notified sometime around the first week of October.

And then I, it’s hard to say if that, if the new camera is gonna be available right then or at a later date. So we’re not really clear on when you’ll be able to get the repair at this point.

Anthony: Up next world leading Champion Ford Motor Company, 105,441 vehicles, the 2024 to 2025 Ford Mustang.

Please don’t tell, oh no. This is a intermittent operation of signal. Lamps may make the vehicle less visible to other drivers.

Michael: This is the water intrusion

Anthony: one, but this is not a rear view camera.

Michael: No, this is rear light lamps. See I had a little brain fart there. It’s okay. Water intrusion basically gets into your the BCM.

What’s the BCM you ask? I’m gonna say that is the body [00:56:00] control module. I’m not sure exactly where that is. If that’s in the rear where they’re having these problems with the lamps, maybe it is, but the solution here is you’re gonna have to bring your vehicle in and Ford is going to do their best to seal the vehicle to make sure that no more water comes in.

It looks like they’re going to be, doing some work on your side panel cows and your cal top inner, that’s not cow, that’s Cal with an L and your cow top to try to seal the water to prevent it from getting into your b body control module. Yeah. And it is the body

Anthony: control module. The internet told me

Michael: this one’s got a weird, it looks, I don’t know, this is a weird remedy that doesn’t look like it’s gonna come out until between January and March, January 1st, and March 31st of next year. So owners are gonna be waiting for this one for a long time. God, you would think there would be some, something you could do in the meantime with [00:57:00] your body control module, like Rapid and Saran wrap or something to protect it from water.

But we’re not advising that ’cause we have no idea if you can even do that. But it might be worth looking into if you’re if you have a dealer that you, you’re good buddies with.

Anthony: Hey, Jim Farley. Can we wrap our body control module in Saran Wrap or spandex? A better choice. Come on the show, discuss.

Our last recalls from another company I’ve never heard of called Ford Motor Company. Oh my god, what are these guys? 100,900 vehicles. The 2024 to 2026 Ford Ranger oh. Side curtain airbags that may not meet the displacement requirements of FM BS 2 26 S four 2.1.

Michael: And the reason they might not meet those displacement requirements is because for some reason when they’re deploying, these airbags are catching on the B pillar.

They call it the B pillar, inner reinforcement flange that tears them [00:58:00] and prevents them from building up any pressure. ’cause they’re losing all their pressure from the gases generated by the inflator module. And so you essentially, your airbags starts to deploy tears and you don’t get any, inflation in the airbag and therefore no protection. So they are tr look, I don’t know, this one’s gonna be another one where owners are waiting a few months. It looks like they’re not gonna be getting an owner notification till the end of the year at best. So Ford is making some folks wait on recall repairs this week.

Anthony: They’ve got, how many of them open at this point this year? A million. 109. I think it was the last check. But that’s covering about a million vehicles because it seems all of them are like a hundred thousand.

Michael: There are I’m sure it covers more than a million vehicles with that many recalls, but there were a lot of smaller ones.

Remember last, I don’t know if we covered it last, right? There was some, but there was a guy who got, there was like one owner who had a recall twice, had his vehicle recalled which is [00:59:00] interesting.

Anthony: And maybe Jim Farlow would come to his house and fix it for him. Not, he can come on this show anytime he wants.

And with that, Anthony’s

Michael: love continues.

Fred: I do wanna point out that or is doing its best to let people know about these deficiencies and their safety systems versus Tesla, which is doing its very best to make sure people never find out about the deficiencies in its safety systems after. Yep.

After any critical event. So

Michael: yeah. And that’s a point I like to make when asked about it, is Ford may just be doing a better job on safety than anyone else. Even though it looks like, and there probably is an a very good argument that a lot of this is due to poor quality and a lack of safety focus in the past.

But the fact that after Nitsa brought, has brought this to their attention, find them a few million dollars and put some restrictions on ’em, they are really recalling things at a faster pace than we’ve ever seen in history from any car manufacturer. Which suggests that it could be a good thing.

Anthony: Yeah. It

Fred: may

Anthony: ultimately be good news. [01:00:00] Yeah. And then you’re showing that fines do work.

Michael: Yeah, they do. And Nisa Enforcement works,

Fred: right? Hey, look at that. Hey, if we’re getting towards the end, I want to give you guys an interesting conversation stopper. For your next cocktail party. Good thing.

I’ve already stopped this recording. I’ve got a lot of those, so gimme one That’s better than all the ones I have. Alright, so I did a calculation and I discovered that an individual snowflake has roughly as many molecules of water in it as there are observable stars or stars in the observable universe.

So we’re, we as human beings are right in the middle between the smallest useful things and the biggest useful things. There you go. That’ll stop any conversation that will

Anthony: this episode brought to you by magic mushrooms.

Michael: Thank

Anthony: you. Thanks everybody. Thanks everybody. Have a good day and we’ll see you.

We’ll you can, whatever. We’ll be back next week.

Fred: Alright, bye bye. For more [01:01:00] information, visit www.auto safety.org.