Waymo has the best PR

Anthony: You are listening to There Auto Be A Law. The Center for Auto Safety Podcast with executive director Michael Brooks, chief engineer Fred Perkins, and hosted by me Anthony Cimino. For over 50 years, the Center for Auto Safety has worked to make cars safer.

Michael: Okay, I see. It’s okay.

Anthony: Hey listeners, you just missed a pre-show talk where Fred said nah, because somebody thinks he’s right about something, but we don’t. It’s today, Tuesday, December 9th.

Listener Feedback and Show Support

Anthony: Keep the challenge alive and I’m gonna start off with some listener feedback. Got some good listener feedback from the last episode and I’m gonna quote, it says, Michael just opened my eyes to the obvious.

Auto emergency braking cost automakers and sales of replacement vehicles head floating emoji been staring at us in the face. Of course, as always, the rich can pay for premium safety features. Thank you, listeners, and that’s why you should [00:01:00] donate and support a show like this. Go to auto safety.org, click on donate.

How’s that for starting a show?

Michael: It’s not bad.

Discussion on Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB)

Michael: That was, I thought I was being fairly cynical when I pointed that out because, I don’t know that there is some bean counter sitting around in the, in, in an auto company saying, Hey, if we put all this automatic emergency braking into our cars.

We’re gonna sell, one third, few ve fewer vehicles or whatever it is next year. So a EV is an industry killer. I don’t know that, I’m sure someone has thought about that though. I just, who knows? I don’t know. But it certainly raises a question, when the auto industry is so opposed and trying to roll back an a EB standard that is, still not.

A perfect a EB standard. And it is and gave the industry some breaks because the technology is, 20 years old and not 40. And totally mature. I think we’re with the Nitsa rule, I think we’ve talked about this in term of grade school before, how the original agreement with the alliance and other safety [00:02:00] partners in Nitsa was.

For 25 mile per hour. So automatic emergency braking, which is, kindergarten level because it really doesn’t even reach the speeds that are most injurious or fatal in crashes. And the Nitsa rule, really pegged up that speed to, highway speeds and areas where, we think automatic emergency braking needs to be.

Effective to have an impact on safety. And the industry has come out in opposition to that rule and is trying to roll it back, suggesting that they want to go back to, a lower standard and for less effective automatic emergency braking. I think what primarily is behind that is they’re trying to.

Challenge NHTSA’s assertion that they need to, basically come out perfect on their pedestrian a EB test. Getting four outta six right doesn’t really work out well in practice when you’re on a real road with real people and they need to be able to prove in a test environment, particularly when they’re designing the a EB to beat these tests.

That they can do it. And there’s a lot of problems there.

Fred: I need to [00:03:00] jump in ’cause we have to remind people that there are companies, certainly at least one company that already provide automatic emergency breaking, that complies with this is proposed standard, right? So the Toyota. So the idea that it has to be rolled back somehow to protect industry is pure bullshit.

Michael: Yeah. And Toyota’s been doing it since at least 2023. At least one of the vehicles that NSA tested under their new protocols passed with flying colors. So we know it can be done. And it was a, it was a, not a Lexus or some luxury Toyota. It was a, I think it was a Corolla or a Camry or, one of the base model Toyotas that they’re selling to everyone out there and it has.

Good automatic emergency braking. Somehow the industry doesn’t believe that as a whole, they can reach that standard and we strongly disagree.

Anthony: All right.

News Segment: Fuel Economy Standards

Anthony: With that, let’s jump right into. This week’s news and we’ll focus on people who are not putting the wool over our eyes, not talking nonsense. [00:04:00] Good, hard American workers.

That’s right. We’re starting with President Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy. They unveil veil. The new freedom means affordable cars and it’s gonna reset fuel economy standards. ’cause more affordable cars, more asthma for all. Yeah, come on, Mike. You’re shaking your head. And this is your gaslight.

Come on. Let’s just jump right into gas.

Michael: This is a bad one. In fact this isn’t my gaslight, my gaslights are related. Related to it though. And, okay. It’s something that Trump and Duffy discussed that was a separate issue regarding small cars that they, I don’t think they had anything, any idea of what they’re talking about here.

I’m still not sure that either one of them knows what they’re talking about because what they’re doing is essentially saying. We are gonna cut we’re gonna cut fuel economy requirements down to where, by, I think it’s 2031 or something, instead of, the average vehicle getting somewhere around 50 miles per [00:05:00] gallon, they’re going to be getting, I think.

34.5 miles per gallon. Yes. So it’s a huge cut in what automakers need to do. Not only that, they’ve already, effectively destroyed the civil penalty system that, that, that makes manufacturers actually reach those goals. So we’re still uncertain. You know how you’re gonna get them to meet the 34.5 mile per gallon goal by 2031.

If there are no civil penalties forcing them to do that,

Gaslight Segment: Trump and Duffy on Small Cars

Anthony: Then this is my gaslight. If it’s not your gaslight.

Michael: Yeah. And I sent it to you a minute ago because I wanted you to focus on, one of these, one of these big deals here. See, I

Anthony: got confused what your gaslight is. I think my gaslight I chose is what your gaslight’s gonna be.

So Michael, they’re

Michael: taking this NITSA study, right? They’re taking this nitsa. Study that was done in the prev, I think in the Biden administration to show what it’s an economic analysis essentially that n is doing to show how much vehicle costs are gonna decline if [00:06:00] automakers pass along, right?

If automakers pass along these savings to their customers. That’s a question mark there, but they’re saying that if they do, the average person’s gonna save about 930 bucks on a car. When I first heard that, I was like, okay. You are saving what, 2% on the value of a vehicle when you buy a new one now that vehicles are on average $50,000, to purchase a vehicle.

Not a great discount. And not only that. The, when you’re, when the auto industry is only building vehicles that can average out at 34 point miles, 30, 34 0.5 miles per gallon, I believe is the number versus 50 miles per gallon. What does that mean? It means we’re all gonna be buying a hell of a lot more gas.

And the nitsa economic analysis said that we would be. Raising fuel consumption. You buy a hundred billion gallons through 2050, which is gonna cost Americans up to [00:07:00] $185 billion. So cutting to the, cutting, to the cutting, to the quick. Here Americans are being, gaslit in, in a, in, in large terms here they’re saying we’re gonna save you essentially a thousand bucks here.

Maybe if the manufacturers pass that money along, is that gonna happen? I don’t know. Every manufacturer’s probably gonna be different, but I’m skeptical of that. What we do know, and what is hard to deny, is that fuel consumption is gonna go through the roof because cars aren’t gonna be as efficient. And so ultimately here, this action, not only is it going to increase the rate of potential global warming, increase emissions, it’s also going to significantly increase American’s gas bill and destroy any chance of a discount that they’re hyping here.

It’s bullshit. There’s no other better way to put it.

Anthony: No. You’ve just laid out the perfect argument, Michael, for us to invade Venezuela ’cause then we can get their oil and keep prices low [00:08:00] at the pump. U-S-A-U-S-A-U-S-A. Okay. Fred. Voice of sanity. I was just

Fred: gonna say, any association between Trump’s recent business activity in Saudi Arabia and a promise to raise the consumption of oil is certainly iCal and that would never happen.

Anthony: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Alright, Michael, you did great. On doing my gaslight. Thanks. I’m in the lead right now. I’m loving this ’cause I gotta sit back and I didn’t have to do anything. Let’s get into your real gaslight with what Grandpa Putin brains thinks about small cars.

Michael: So this was, it was, there was an odd exchange between Trump and Duffy.

As they’re basically admiring these really small cars in Asia. Trump’s saying, I went to Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and they had this really small car. That could be really efficient. Why aren’t we building those here? Why can’t we do that here? They must be,

Anthony: let me slow you down what his quote actually is.

They’re very small. They’re really cute. I saw them getting dressed [00:09:00] backstage at the beauty pageant. They were, oh my God, that bumper on that one.

Michael: Yeah and they’re saying, essentially Trump and Duffy are both alluding to the fact that there’s somehow a prohibition on these cars being built in America.

That couldn’t be further from the truth. The, there is no prohibition on building those small cars. If you outfit them to meet federal Motor Vehicle safety standards, they can be built here. The problem is they’re, they won’t sell in America, and Americans have been buying increasingly larger vehicles for two to three decades now.

And little cars have, which used to represent a significant portion of the mark market, have now dwindled in the companies don’t offer them anymore because they can’t make a huge profit on them. But they are, ultimately if our roads were populated by much smaller vehicles, we’d be winning at fuel economy.

We’d be winning at safety because we wouldn’t have, massive pickups and SUVs in, involved in crashes generating, a lot [00:10:00] of kinetic energy. It’s, they’re essentially setting up a straw man here and saying, oh the federal government is prohibiting these vehicles from being built and being bought in America.

There is no such per. Prohibition. That’s completely false. And that is, about as big of a gaslight as you’re gonna get when someone’s pretending things are, not the way they actually are. So I was disappointed that Duffy got sucked into that, and it’s.

It’s one of those things where previous transportation secretaries, might have stepped back and, nodded to the person that is in charge of one of their agencies and let them take over because they might actually know what they’re talking about. Clearly, Duffy and Trump here had no clue what they were talking about.

Anthony: They’re gonna sell more small cars and they’re gonna be putting them in airports next to the Chin up bars. The, that Duffy’s installing too, to, it’ll help you lift out like you’re done with chin ups. You can lift your Ford Fiesta.

Michael: Yeah,

Anthony: that’s my [00:11:00] thinking now, Fred, when gonna get to your Gaslight?

Before we get to that, what is, so I can, I could, be on the border of being an expert in. Whatever the hell it is. I do for a living, something related to computers and software. But at the same time, I stare at a computer screen all day long. So I, I don’t know how this thing works.

I’ve never taken one apart, but I stare at it all day long, so I assume expertise in this. What kind of mental condition is this called Fred. Magic. Oh no. Oh, the magical thinking. I have suffer from magical thinking. Is that what is? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Fred: Because you’re nonqualified to tear down the east wing of the White House.

Anthony: Perfect. I need more asbestos in my diet. And with that, Fred, I wanna use that as the lead-in to your gaslight, which is as cute as a small Malaysian car.

Fred’s Gaslight: Self-Driving Cars Debate

Fred: Says I’m tired of losing the Gaslight competition, so I’m going in with a four dimensional gaslight. Oh boy. And you guys who are doing the one [00:12:00] dimensional gaslight, you’re just gonna have to stand by and admire.

So there was an article in New York Times last week, never heard of it. This week. This week. And there was an op-ed and the title of the op-ed is, the data on self-driving cars is clear. We have to change course. Which I agree with, but the course I would pick is different than the one the gentleman picked.

He’s a Dr. Slotkin, he is a neurosurgeon and complicit. Other dimensions are from Waymo, the New York Times itself, and some iCal peer group that’s out there somewhere. So New York Times made much of the website at Waymo. That said there were dramatic reductions, like 92% in all kinds of collisions based upon a peer reviewed article.

Title of that article is if you dig enough through the way Waymo website, you can find it Vehicles out output. Do autonomous vehicles [00:13:00] outperform latest generation human driven vehicles? A comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims at 25 million miles. A couple of interesting things about this.

First is they neglect the other 75 million miles that Wamo claims to have driven, so clearly not the latest generation information they’ve got. On their website, they say that voting now when excluding a DS crashes with a delta V less than one mile per hour, about half of the a DS collisions were excluded.

Resulting in comparisons that showed a large statistically significant reduction in all comparisons except for one comparison from San Francisco. But if you actually read the study, and I don’t believe that anybody reporting on it has it excludes 100% of all the collisions reported to the NITSA through the standard general order stating general order.[00:14:00]

So that means that whatever conclusions they derive from their data is completely detached from the collisions they’re actually reporting to the federal government. So that’s an interesting structure for a paper, just talking about safety and also published on their website, voting from it. As we accumulate more mileage, it will become possible to make statistically significant conclusions on other subsets of data.

For example, fatal crashes as its own category closed. So that’s a quote. Now, taking that quote apart, it says it’s not now possible to make that correlation ’cause it will become possible in the future to talk about that kind of significant problem. And, the other thing that, and is imp implied by this, is that any claims for safety related to fatal crashes are not supportable by the data.

’cause they simply don’t have enough information. So in [00:15:00] looking at their conclusions, which they don’t explicitly say, you can’t draw any conclusions about the actual safety of these vehicles relative to fatal crashes or fatal certain, fatal consequences of any crash. You look at it a little bit further and it says the Waymo Safety Report was last published in 2021.

That’s four years ago, right? That’s a world Yeah. Apart from software. And it’s also true that they were using a completely different version of the software and the vehicles in 2021. So what they’ve reported basically has got nothing to do with what they’re doing now. Different hardware, different software, different environment, different streets.

So even going back to the article, that is the basis for all this, it says, do autonomous vehicles outperform the latest generation human-driven vehicles? The comparison to Waymo’s own liability, [00:16:00] auto liability insurance claims at 25 million miles. Okay, what about the other 75 million miles? They don’t, not relevant.

And they also say, and they slipped this in here, a comparison to Waymo’s auto liability insurance claims. So that’s the basis of this study. Now, if you live in a hurricane prone area, are building codes based upon the number of insurance claims that have been filed, or building codes based upon the actual data associated with a hurricane, like maximum wind speed and frequency and that sort of stuff.

I think you’re gonna recognize that it’s not really based upon the number of insurance claims or the number of claims sustained. It’s based upon hard data about how the system’s actually working. So this Waymo study on which they’re basing all of these pretty outrageous claims isn’t really even related to the operational data of the vehicles, except through a long, distant chain that travels through several insurance [00:17:00] companies and legal claims of liability.

A legal claim and legal process is a really lousy way of getting the data that you want to organize an engineering response to a hazard. So again, it’s complete. What they’ve done is completely neglected all of the NHTSA SGO data and three quarters of the miles driven by their vehicles in all later.

Now, current software and hardware versus now installed in way more cars. But it’s peer reviewed says New York Times. So who are the peers? They’re not identified. Peer group is not identified. The authors of this article are all either Waymo employees or Waymo clients. So it suggests a bit of a bias.

Anthony: Well, Fred the author of this op-ed, though, he’s a neurosurgeon. He’s saying this saves lives. How dare what? What is your background, [00:18:00] Innu. Wait a sec.

Fred: I appreciate his sentiment. He says, you know that car crashes are really ugly and we need to do something to reduce them. But the idea that Waymo’s are gonna be a silver bullet that’s going to solve that problem is just ridiculous.

But

Anthony: can I, clearly, you must have a background in auto safety and statistics and things of this nature if he’s making such bold claims. ’cause if not, I know exactly how my computer monitor works.

Fred: Yeah. But then that’s all good. But he is an investor. He is part of an investment group and clearly he’s done his homework because he is a smart investor and he is a smart neurosurgeon.

And how that relates to auto safety, I’m not completely sure, but. I’m drawing four conclusions out of this that justify my bullshit claims or my claims of bullshit or gaslight or whatever it is we’re claiming here. Number one, the New York Times makes much of the peer reviewed nature of the article, but they don’t identify the peers [00:19:00] and only identify way more employees and clients.

So it seems to be the reporter. Doesn’t disclose, not a reporter,

Anthony: is an opinion piece.

Fred: Rationale for analytic independence by these conclusions that they’re publishing without question. They claim the evidentiary basis can be the claims basis can be easily skewed if Waymo just decides to pay the claims themselves rather than go through the insurance industry, right?

So everything is based on insurance claims, but there’s, since this is completely disassociated from. The actual reported collisions through the SGO. What does this really mean and why are the data useful and who are these peers? What else I’ve got here, assuming is assuming the Neurosurgeons investment Group, Dr.

Slotkin Investment Group is not aligned with Google or Waymo, and we don’t know if that’s true, but we’ll make that assumption. Dr. Slotkin credentials, sentiments and ignorance have been [00:20:00] unfairly exploited by Waymo. Waymo’s exploited other sympathetic groups in the past. The blind, the people with mobility problems, all those communities that are gonna be solved by the magic of Waymo.

It’s not the first time Waymo’s done that. I think it’s really unfair to Dr. Slotkin to take advantage of his ignorance, to exploit his credentials and sympathetic call for traffic safety in this manner to develop their own IPO and their own financial future. Waymo’s claims are a stretch shame on New York Times for not reporting.

Along with the claims that the peer review they cited for their gullibility was by Waymo and those clients and its clients, and that it neglected a hundred percent of the available collision data through the standard gen standard general order which currently includes less than half of the currently accumulated wa Waymo driving miles [00:21:00] based on different vehicles and different software versions.

Nobody knows except Waymo what the real story is and they’re not talking. So in summary, I would advise the doctor to try to get a second opinion.

Anthony: Ooh, that’s my guess

Fred: light.

Anthony: That’s pretty good.

Waymo’s Safety Claims and Critique

Anthony: So right now, Waymo’s are operating at internet restricted ODD operating typically under 30 miles per hour.

Is that correct?

Michael: I think it’s more, I think they’ve increased that to significantly. And now they are operating on interstates in some circumstances

Anthony: but what the data that they’re citing is for restricted ODD typically on city speed limits, which is Yeah. 30 miles per hour and under.

Yeah. And so car crashes happening at that. How often does a victim of a car crash, a low speed crash, move out of the ER and go to a neurosurgeon That’s i, that’s, I, it’s hard

Michael: to say. Anything can happen, particularly if someone’s not wearing a seatbelt or something like that. If you have a 30 mile per hour vehicle hitting a head on another 30 mile per hour [00:22:00] vehicle, that’s a significant crash.

So it’s really hard to say. And, I sympathize with his basic point, which is that yes. If these cars were operating perfectly and very safely or at least they’re not gonna be perfect, but at least you know far more safely, not just than the worst humans, but then, even the good drivers, then yeah, if we can scale them and get them to consumers at prices, that make sense?

This could all work out, but there’s a lot of ifs in there. And frankly, the technology that could do a lot of the safety that driverless cars put into play. Speed limits in cars could be enforced by much cheaper technology that we already have. Intelligent speed assistance that actually prevents cars from speeding would be a great start there.

Alcohol detection. And, driver monitoring. When you put all those things into play, then I think you could see the reductions for far cheaper, [00:23:00] far quicker than we’re gonna see, every American in the United States adopt these expensive, autonomous vehicles. I don’t even think it’s a, I don’t think there’s.

Even a comparison there as to how much faster you can penetrate the entire US fleet if you’re standardizing safety equipment and putting it in non-autonomous vehicles while we wait for that big, bright future that these companies keep promising us. That’s not gonna happen in 10 years. Not gonna happen in 20 years, maybe 50 when you know, everyone on this podcast is long gone except Anthony, who might be drinking green tea in Japan somewhere.

Fred: The other thing that is interesting, interestingly, neglected is that Waymo’s objective is to kill the taxi industry. Nobody has ever shown that a Waymo is any safer than a professional driver who has to be a taxi driver. So if you were replacing taxi drivers with Waymo’s, you must also show that the Waymo’s are significantly [00:24:00] safer.

And the professional drivers that you’re replacing. Otherwise, you’re just putting people out of work for no good reason.

Michael: And also, it’s, I think we should definitely say here that Waymo is doing this better than anybody else out there, right? They’re,

Anthony: They are, in terms of sharing some data, but it’s not as good.

Michael: These statements about autonomous vehicles are the future. I wanna say, look. There’s really only one company that is really, doing this in some way that isn’t just absurd at this point. I think we, if you’ve listened to us enough, we, you think, I think, that we, let’s

Anthony: look, Michael’s getting a little too worked up while he readjust his score.

I was think, just make sure you’ve clicked and subscribe.

Michael: If you’ve listened to us enough, you know what we think about Tesla’s, I don’t even know what to call it now, if it’s a robo taxi, if it’s an RC car, they just don’t give us enough information about the background operations for us to know whether this is a vehicle that’s being [00:25:00] controlled by a computer or by a human sitting behind a screen with a steering wheel and an accelerator and brake pedal.

Waymo has done this slowly and carefully, and although they’ve made some pretty outrageous. Predictions about the timeframe in which they’re going to accomplish all this. For all intents and purposes, we haven’t seen, carnage or a level of, problems on the roads. We’ve seen a lot of things.

We’ve seen dead dogs and cats and school bus problems that we’ll probably talk about later in the podcast and other things, but nothing, they’re not. They’re not doing as bad as your average drunk driver on the road. And I think that’s an easy comparison for them to make. And that’s why they’re constantly comparing themselves to the human statistics because the human statistics include the very worst drivers and frankly, people that shouldn’t be allowed to operate vehicles on our roads anymore.

And that’s a failure of our states and of, the feds to some extent. To get those folks off the road and to, we need [00:26:00] better punishments for people who are driving drunk. We need a more focus on, making sure that drivers are up to speed and that their skills don’t deteriorate over the time and that their skills are good enough when they’re first getting their license and that they’re training properly.

That’s a system that is frankly, I think, broken in America and we’re just letting, essentially anyone who wants to get a license out on the road without any consideration of their training of their. Issues that they face in their life and a lot of things. It’s a long road for me, for Waymo to be able to prove that, their operations are actually comparable to a, a great human driver.

Fred: Oh, Michael. Just not to be the pain in the ass that I inherently am, but to say that the Waymo’s are way better than a drunk driver. I’ve never seen a test that proves that. I’ve seen aspirational claims that of course it’s gotta be because a computer’s better than the drunk. But no data that I’ve seen supports that and [00:27:00] no, I’d really like to see that.

And some, I don’t even know if we can

Michael: get that data because there are so many millions of Americans who are out there driving drunk every day and not being involved in crashes or serious collisions, and who we’ll never find out about. So I guess I’m wondering if it’s a comparison that can even be made.

Fred: Yeah, I’ve got my doubts, but I know that it has not been made in any convincing way.

Anthony: The takeaway from this is don’t believe neurosurgeons when they step outside of their lane and say, claim expertise in something they have no experience with, especially when they get funding. From, there’s no proof of that.

Just because I didn’t say anything. I just say, guy is involved in a

Michael: private equity,

Anthony: that he’s a private equity guy. He’s doing health research. Look for all we know, the guy

Michael: is, the guy’s never talked to Waymo in his life, even though this looks like a plant,

Anthony: right? This is a Waymo PR piece. Waymo PR is the winner.

Of this week’s gaslight, but no between. Who won the, this week’s [00:28:00] gaslight. Fred, you had the good topic. But Michael wins ’cause he did my gaslight for me. That’s, come on, Anthony. That’s so unfair how that works. I, Hey, look, that’s how it goes. But let’s continue with Waymo. Wait.

Michael: Did my gaslight that I did for you win? Or did my Gaslight win?

Anthony: What, which will make you happier neither. Okay, great.

Waymo and School Buses in Texas

Anthony: So let’s go Waymo’s and school buses in Texas. Oh, my the Austin Independent School District, their general counsel has been. Writing letters to the general counsel for Waymo saying, Hey guys, and this is actually great.

I love this letter ’cause it’s not, it’s pretty casual and it’s Mari and Jeff. Not Dear Sirs. No. Mr. Mrs. Davidson and Mr. Claire or anything like that.

Waymo’s School Bus Violations

Anthony: It’s first names. And it talks about saying, Hey, since our email communications a couple weeks ago, we pointed out a bunch of violations your Waymo vehicles are doing now.

There’s a total of 19 different [00:29:00] instances of Waymo’s illegally and dangerously passing. Austin independent school district bus school buses in violation of Texas law. Alarming alarmingly five of these violations occurred after Waymo’s number November 5th, 2025. Letter reassuring us that certain software updates were in place to resolve the issues.

So basically the Austin school district says, Hey, Waymo’s, our school buses stopped. They put out that little arm with that flashing stop sign, which is the law in most states. I think that vehicles behind it, you have to stop. I remember as a kid, and and it doesn’t matter but you have to stop there.

And so way, the school district points us out to Waymo. Waymo says, don’t worry, we fixed it over the air. Man. It’s magic. And then Austin comes back and says, yo, we caught you five more times. Just doing this. Your magic software fix is bullshit. I don’t believe Waymo has responded to this yet. I think they did respond, didn’t they?

Did they? Oh, they did respond to this

Michael: letter. Oh, I [00:30:00] don’t know. They’re actually filing a recall. Oh boy on this. It’s unclear. The recalls, the recall filing hasn’t come in yet to nitsa, so we haven’t seen it. But apparently, this is gonna be, the. I think that the recall software that they will be installing, I think will be their third attempt at fixing this problem.

So it really only raises a lot of questions. I’m not sure if they’re operating some, I’m not sure how much of their AI stack is operating here. Are they trying to retrain these vehicles to recognize school buses and that’s taking time or they’re, it’s, who knows? They’re not telling us.

So we have no clue, but it’s very concerning that something, it’s very similar to my feelings on Tesla’s hitting emergency crews on the side of the highway. If you can’t recognize these big, bright light safety hazards, how are you gonna recognize the small ones? And it just gives me a lot of concern.

Anthony: I, I agree. Especially it’s a stop sign that extends from the bus. It’s not like it’s some obscure sign that they have no [00:31:00] training data for. It is literally a stop sign. And not

Michael: only that, it’s, it’s a fricking school bus, it’s huge and it’s yellow and you can’t miss it.

Fred: And it’s got big red flashing meatballs all over the place.

Yeah. I’m not sure of the color of the

Anthony: Austin school buses.

Michael: But this is happening in Atlanta now too. So Atlanta has noticed this problem with the Waymo’s operating there, and they are, they didn’t, I don’t believe they’ve at least not publicly drafted anything to Waymo, but they have told their school bus drivers to look out for Waymo vehicles oh, really?

We’ll see where this goes.

Fred: They’ve also asked Waymo to stop operating during school hours where they’re letting passengers in and out, and Waymo has not agreed to do that. So yeah,

Michael: Waymo basically said, screw you look at our safety data, which is Yeah, exactly. Our safety data, which we’ve just spent a lot of time talking about.

So

Anthony: we’ve eliminated 75 million miles from our data, pick and choose what year we got. But w Waymo’s what is it? Their Chief Safety Officer, their response to this has been we will continue [00:32:00] analyzing our vehicle’s performance and making necessary fixes as part of our commitment to continuous improvement, which is, their pr Again, Waymo’s PR is Orwellian to the next degree.

It’s an Orwellian with a Smile. Three. Cheers to Waymo’s pr. All right, let’s what are we. What we got next here and

Fred: Giving them their due. They do have great PR people. There’s no doubt.

Anthony: Do without a doubt.

Tesla’s Controversial Texting Feature

Anthony: I’m gonna, let’s jump into some fine. Let’s just do it. Let’s just look.

Trigger warning folks. Tesla. Okay. Elon. Elon is an idiot. I say that without hesitation or reservation. From an article in electric, Elon Musk has confirmed that Tesla’s full self-driving supervised system now allows drivers to text and drive. Though we added a caveat that it depends on the context of surrounding traffic listeners, that you should read that as if there’s [00:33:00] traffic or if there’s a road or if you’re in a vehicle, don’t text and drive.

No, this does not absolve you of any legal ramifications that will come from this. It, this is dumb. This is still a level two nonsense.

Michael: If you haven’t started ignoring Elon by now, you probably should, especially when he’s telling you how you should be driving. This is just the next, this is a problematic for a lot of reasons.

Essentially, he’s claiming that. You can use Tesla’s full self-driving and text and drive, even though it’s illegal in 49 states plus DC and the territories. Montana, by the way, is I think the only place where it’s not illegal to text and drive. What the hell are they doing?

It’s, I can’t emphasize enough and I doubt there are a lot of Tesla fan boys listening to us right now, but do not text and drive. You, we know that you have to keep an eye on Tesla, whether it’s, their autopilot, full self-driving, whatever [00:34:00] automated Tesla system is engaged.

You’ve gotta keep your eyes on the road and you certainly like. Don’t need to be taking your mind off the entire, thing. Hands off, eyes off and brain off are not a good way to be operating a vehicle at all. Even a vehicle that has been, promising you autonomy for 10 years and failed it’s a terrible idea.

And I just wonder. What states Attorney Generals think about, a company that is essentially designing and promoting a technology intended to help people break the law, right? I don’t think that the, that most state statutes involving criminal conspiracies extend to traffic violations.

But, essentially here you’re. Creating a massive criminal conspiracy to violate texting and driving laws across America, promoted by the CEO of a large company. It’s incredibly odd and it’s something that, ano yet another thing that I don’t see any traditional auto automotive leader advising their [00:35:00] customers to do because I think there could be some significant blowback from it.

And, Elon will just file more lawsuits and get on Twitter and yell about it. But it’s, I, it’s a terrible idea to even propose to people who aren’t monitoring full self-driving or they’re, whatever automation they’re using to just propose to them that you know they’re gonna be safe soon to text, to drive in their cars.

Is the height of stupidity.

Anthony: Yeah. Listeners don’t text. Don’t allow your friends to text and drive. And I do this all the time. Whenever I’m watching the Real Housewives of Mormonism or whatever the name of that show is, and they’re always texting and driving and FaceTiming and driving. I yell at the TV and you stop it.

It’s not what your show should be about. Okay.

GM Cruise’s $12 Billion Investment

Anthony: Let’s go to my favorite topic of all time, GM Cruise. How’s this sound? Oh, yeah. Website called gm authority.com. I love it. And these guys sat down and did the math on how much General [00:36:00] Motors has spent on their GM crews. Remember GM Crew, of course you do listeners, and they went through all of it.

And $12.1 billion General Motors set on fire to create GM crews for a kid named Kyle, like the Make of Wish Foundation has just really gotten outta hand. That’s the only way I can look at this. This is, yeah, absurd.

Michael: I really noticed this in the context of, last week’s gaslights and the announcement of that ary come up in January around the, the cost of safety equipment going on into cars and, the assertion by certain, conflicted or misguided senators that, that, that safety equipment is driving up prices for consumers versus a million other factors that, we don’t have any control over. At least consumers don’t. And if so, if you look at, just this article, Cruz has spent, GM has spent $12.1 billion on a, essentially.

Failed autonomous [00:37:00] vehicle company. And meanwhile, in op when they were coming out in opposition to the automatic emergency braking rule earlier this year the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, proudly proclaimed that automakers had spent. $1 billion on automatic emergency braking, which, pales in comparison to what one company has spent on autonomous vehicles that, that, haven’t arrived and won’t arrive in any substantial form for 50 years.

Meanwhile, they’re trying to get automatic emergency braking, which is here and could be rolling out to every vehicle. It’s just nonsense that we’re having to actually. Listen to CEOs go to the Senate and claim that safety equipment is driving up their prices when they are burning money and passing those costs down to consumers on autonomy that doesn’t even work yet and won’t work for decades.

So that’s. The real reason I wanted to point that article out just to point out just the bald hypocrisy that’s taking place in the industry as they [00:38:00] try to make us all think that we’re gonna be saved by autonomous vehicles in the next 10 years. Meanwhile, the actual safety equipment that can be going into cars that’s available and that’s cheap is being held up by those same automakers.

Anthony: I imagine that amount of money is, maybe the same amount that the Chinese have put into developing their EV systems that CEO of Ford thinks it says is his favorite car. I’m like $12.1 billion. He can design good things with that.

Fred: Another perspective on that, $12 billion, it’s about enough to pay the tuition for 1 million students in state universities per for a year.

Anthony: For only one year. That’s it. For one year. But still it’s a lot of money. It is a lot of money. I could spend it in a weekend.

Fred: If anybody wants to hire me to squander half that I’m available.

Anthony: I’ll do it for less. I’ll squander your money for less. Don’t

Fred: chase me to the [00:39:00] bottom

Anthony: $1 billion.

Regulatory Checklist for Autonomous Vehicles

Anthony: Alright, Fred, let’s do the latest update on the CDVO checklist.

Fred: Computer driven vehicles checklist for regulators. Again, when I say applicant, it means the company that’s approaching you to give permission to use a self-driving vehicles on your public highways. So number 17, as the applicant proven the safety of occupants and other road users in the event of a loss of external communications or connectivity.

Particularly with regard to notification and controlled response to emergency ODD restrictions. It’s a mouthful. What does that mean?

Anthony: This is an important one because this just happened to Porsche owners in Russia. Where their vehicles lost connectivity to the mothership and none of their cars would

Michael: work.

They, it’s a separate thing, they wouldn’t drive

Anthony: well, they, they wouldn’t drive. We, I [00:40:00] think it was GM Cruise or Waymo that ran into this problem in San Francisco where there’s too much traffic on the cell network and they all just parked on the middle of the street.

Michael: And I think here we’re more concerned about, power outages, natural disasters, whatever it is, dead zones where well,

Fred: you could, you’ve got a five alarm fire downtown.

Michael: Yeah.

Fred: And you’ve got a couple of blocks that are blocked off so that people can, if you were the fire response.

And how do you communicate that to all the Waymo’s scooting around town? You need to use a cellular communication network to do that. There’s no other way. If that network goes down, the cars aren’t gonna know that the roads are and highways are blocked off purposefully. So it’s gonna create a mess as a minimum.

Michael: And not only that, if any remote operations, which we know are taking place around all these vehicles would be impacted.

Fred: And no, this is not just, this is not just the Waymo’s, this is computer driven vehicles writ large, which some people call level two. Some people call level three. Some people would call level four, but they’ve all got the same [00:41:00] characteristic that they’ve given over operational control of the vehicle to a computer that needs to have situational awareness of where and when it’s allowed to drive.

Anthony: So we’re, ’cause the main thing here is that this is a computer driving and it requires network connectivity to know where it is and where it’s going, whereas. If we’re driving in our cars and your Google maps goes down, you’re still driving in the car and you still know where you are. If you’re a pilot, autopilot fails.

You’re still highly trained to fly the vehicle. If you’re on a, on an aircraft carrier. They’re all trained how to use a sex stint still. And Fred, this might be sound crazy, but somebody told me this the other day, that in, in missile systems that they would have a backup sexton system if they lost communication.

Is that true?

Fred: They have what’s called a star tracker in general, depending on the missile. But they have a star tracker and they have the ability of seeing where the earth limb is, which is being the edge between the atmosphere and space. So given those and knowing what time it is, [00:42:00] they can identify where they are in space if they’ve lost direct communications to fire control.

That’s not every missile. There’s just some missiles.

Anthony: Sure. But as far as we know right now with AV systems, that there’s none that has any sort of backup or redundancy that is separate from cellular networks.

Fred: I don’t know that to be the case. I suspect it is the case because you can have high quality inertial navigation systems compared to a map that would give you a pretty good idea of what you know where you are.

So submarines use one under the ice, for example. Even though they don’t have a direct view, they still have a pretty good idea of where they are. But that requires a guidance system and it costs a zillion dollars.

Anthony: There’s other ways to do it and, okay. Sorry, I had a, didn’t mean to hijack you, but hey, if you want a portion, you live in Russia, you have enough money to leave, what are you doing?

Fred: Alright, next up. As the applicant shown that computer-driven vehicle operation would not replicate dangerous, injurious, or lethal [00:43:00] circumstances for which prior use or other known prior computer-driven vehicle control system, software perception or physical configuration have been a factor, right? So if a self-driving vehicle has killed somebody in the past, the manufacturer should verify.

It can’t do it in the future. That’s what this is all about. And I don’t think that people are doing that now. I know that there are circumstances where people have lost their lives in Waymo’s and, or excuse me, not in Waymo’s, but in Teslas in previously injured in cruise. I don’t know what the injury statistics are in Waymo.

They don’t really reveal them. In any case, if you know the one happened, if you know that a previous the vehicle previously crashed into a trailer truck crossing a highway, you should make damn sure that the one that’s applying to be operated on your roads [00:44:00] doesn’t have that same fault. Next up as applicants shown that safe disposition of the subject commuter driven vehicle in the event of loss of data processing capability for electronic sensors.

So if your computer fails, you kill the occupants or you kill the pedestrians around you, or is it somehow going to safely shut down? People simplistically say we’ll go into an MRC and everything will be fine. That’s not necessarily the case, and you should have to have the applicant really demonstrate what happens, and if they have a full understanding of that fault and the critical failures associated with that fault.

Anthony: We’ve run into that with recalls where cars will lose motive power at highway speed. Sure. And that’s, again, you have a human on board who can at least hit the hazard lights and make some sort of corrective action versus you’re a passenger in a [00:45:00] Waymo, you’ve got nothing,

Fred: right? You’re asleep in the back of the Waymo eating, or you’re just eating a piece of apple pie.

I’m sleep eating. All of a sudden the computer goes out. What happens?

Anthony: Spill my apple pie everywhere.

Fred: And it occurs when you happen to be approaching a school bus train of five-year-olds crossing the street, going on a field trip from the daycare to the zoo. These things happen next up, as the applicant’s shown that expedited emergency egress on demand is enabled, including in the event of loss of electrical power.

So can people get the hell out of the car when they want to, whenever they feel like they need to? Or are they trapped in a and are effectively a prisoner in the car? That’s important to know, and it’s important that passengers have that capability that they’re in, ultimately in control of their own life circumstances.

Anthony: We saw that earlier this year with the, there was a Waymo, the guy got stuck in a week in a parking lot last week.

Michael: Last week. What happened [00:46:00] last week? Last week we saw the Waymo drove into the shootout. Oh,

Wouldn’t you wanna hop out before you got into that? Or

Anthony: that’s when you were like, I wish I was in my cyber truck.

’cause it’s bulletproof. All right. Can we save the next few for the following week? Absolutely. Alright.

Fred: Just want people to remember you’re not local. Manufacturer, oh, we’re, we are the source of this information and we’re happy to share and we’re happy to get your feedback.

Anthony: Yeah. And if you go to auto safety.org and you’re like, where is this? It is listed as AV checklist right next to lemon laws on the top, navigation of the site auto safety.org. You go past lemon laws, go to AV checklist, and then you go over to donate and you click the hell outta that button. That’s right.

Latest Vehicle Recalls

Anthony: Let’s do some recalls. Great. Rivian first up, 34,824 vehicles. The 2022 to 2025 Rivian. E-D-V-E-D-V. That’s a weird one. Rivian has determined that on [00:47:00] certain EDV vehicles, the driver’s side, seatbelt, pretension, or may be damaged from repeated misuse, such as the driver sitting on the seatbelt while buckled underneath the driver.

Oh, those people are just jackasses.

Michael: Yeah, part of you wants to say they’re. They deserve whatever they get here because they’re misusing the seatbelt. But I’m not sure if you know it, I don’t know that’s the case with every one of these instances where the seatbelt has been damaged and, you just don’t know.

I don’t even know if Rivian knows or if they’re just trying to pass the buck onto their owners and try to blame it on bad behavior versus taking responsibility for not putting a seatbelt pre together. That can withstand this type of misuse. So essentially e everybody’s gonna have to bring their car into Rivian.

There’s an over the air update that’s part of this that’s gonna enable automatic detection of seatbelt misuse by the driver, which I like. And also Rivian is gonna inspect your seatbelt pretensioners. And repair them if they have been [00:48:00] damaged. Despite the fact that Rivian is trying to shove the blame off onto bad guys here it looks like they’ve, come up with a pretty good plan.

Looks like owners will be hearing about this and be able to take their cars in starting in the third week of January.

Anthony: Excellent. Next up Chrysler 72,509 vehicles. The 20 25 20 26 Ram 2,500 pickup Ram 3,500 pickup. They’ve been built with a 12 inch IPC containing software that causes the Custer go.

You know why? Why? I don’t even, I don’t wanna be here anymore.

Michael: It’s pretty easy, the instrument panel goes out here. That’s, oh, okay. That’s not only a non-compliance, it’s also a safety defect. And for whatever reason, this is traced back to. Bad software. And I think the the recall is simply going to be, either a reprogramming of that part or a potential replacement.

I guess depending on, how bad the [00:49:00] IPC is impacted. I, who knows. That’s a weird one where they’re saying, we can either replace the software or replace the hardware. You would think they would trace the problem to one or the other, but. Who knows? Looks like owners are gonna hear about that later.

Later in January,

Anthony: Volkswagen up next 311 vehicles. I always like it when it’s a small number like that. 20 23, 20 24 Volkswagen ID four. That’s why it’s a small number. Individual battery cells in certain high voltage battery cell modules manufactured during a certain production period may contain misaligned electrodes that can lead to a fire.

Yeah. That would be, and that’s why we

Michael: brought this one up, right? ’cause it’s a park outside warning. And we’d like to let people know, do not park this in your garage and get it fixed as soon as you possibly can. It looks like you’re going to be able to do that at the end of January. So keep an eye out for that.

If you’re one of the, few people who own one of these vehicles. I haven’t seen one of those yet. Have you guys seen any of those on the road? I think I’ve seen a [00:50:00] couple. But

Fred: nothing recently.

Anthony: No.

Fred: Everybody I knew with a Volkswagen Microbus way back when only used it to travel back and forth to California for Massachusetts.

So they don’t, these new electric guys don’t really have the range to make that useful. This is

Anthony: That in Weeds legal in Massachusetts now. You don’t have to do that run anymore.

Michael: Yeah, and this is the SUV version. It’s not the mini, the, the cool. Microbus band, right? Oh. I thought it was, yeah.

These have been around for about four years now. I think the microbus was just released last year. But this car is, they’ve had significant problems with these ID fours, and I think this is the 12th recall on the 2023 model. So they’re beating the cyber truck.

Fred: You know how old I am. I’m this, I am so old that when I was a kid, Coors was an exotic brand of beer that you could only get if you’d been.

West of the Mississippi River, which very few of my friends had been.

Anthony: Please follow Fred’s other podcast called When I Was a Youngin. [00:51:00] You’ll get such great anecdotes as such as lawn darts should have kept them. Not everybody makes it.

Michael: Wasn’t that a Saturday Night Live skit back in the day? Back in the old days?

That’s it. Maybe.

Fred: The other problem that, that those had is that the phone cords didn’t really stretch very long.

Anthony: Last one, and I, this is the most interesting recall we’ve ever come across. I thought it was pretty interesting.

Michael: Love this. Yeah.

Anthony: So this is Hyundai 483 vehicles, the 2023 to 2026, Genesis G 90.

And so what’s going on is the car’s, HDA, the Highway driving assist feature. It’s not quite their version of Blue Cruise Super Cruise, but similar. Anyway, that thing, it relies on radar sensors placed around the car. But in cars painted il silver, the aluminum content of that shade can cause the front corner radar singles to reflect off the paint itself.

And when it does, the system believes it’s [00:52:00] detecting an object in the opposing range, and it applies the brakes.

Michael: That’s weird.

Anthony: It’s it’s his own, it’s stealth. It’s gaslighting

Michael: itself.

Anthony: Yeah. It’s his own stealth paint job.

Michael: It’s it’s really interesting that the, there’s this one color that does it, presumably because of the aluminum content.

I wonder what this color or, that aluminum content in there does to other vehicles radar that are trying to detect, the Genesis vehicle that’s something that we’ve never come across before. And certainly something I think that, sensor manufacturers and automakers need to look at, the aluminum content and paint or other metals that might impact the sensing and detection capabilities of these vehicles.

Anthony: Is it just where those radar sensors are? Like if they move them back an inch or forward an inch, maybe the problem doesn’t exist anymore?

Fred: It’s probably like a lot like chaff, which he dropped outta bombers. So when the that’s a problem for the near term or near range reflection off the paint, but it’s not a problem for detection by other vehicles because it just appears as a [00:53:00] maybe slightly fuzzier cloud and it would’ve otherwise.

So that’s my guess.

Anthony: Also, my guess is what’s happening here is the 12 year olds in the paint shop at Hyundai maybe aren’t applying things as well as they should.

Michael: That’s a possibility. They added too much aluminum to the paint.

Anthony: Kids are like, we misled. And school and child labor loss. Ah, alright.

That was a show. Ah, show. Thanks listening. Great segue. Great segue, Anthony. Yeah, we’ll be back again next week and we’ve recorded on a Tuesday again next week. Hey, if something exciting happens on Wednesday, we’ll have missed it in the show, but we’ll follow it up the following week.

Thank you.

Michael: Thanks everybody. Thank you. Bye-bye. For more information,

Fred: visit www.auto safety.org.