What’s the difference between Waymo and the Titanic?

[00:00:00] Introduction to the Podcast

[00:00:00] Anthony: You’re listening to There Auto Be A Law, the center for auto safety podcast with executive director, Michael Brooks, chief engineer, Fred Perkins, and hosted by me, Anthony Cimino for over 50 years. The center for auto safety has worked to make cars safer.

Hey everybody. Welcome to the excellence and broadcasting network. Oh, wait, no, that was. Some crazy right wing guy. Hey, welcome to that show because you keep driving cars, we keep telling you what cars not to drive. Is that right? Kinda? We just

[00:00:41] Fred: make gentle suggestions in good morning world.

[00:00:44] Anthony: Yeah, good morning indeed.

We’re all doing well in Chipper. Not as happy as Fred. Fred seems very happy in Chipper today.

[00:00:52] Fred: Life in New Nevada is very good.

[00:00:55] Anthony: Oh, okay. Know where life isn’t good?

[00:00:58] NHTSA Staff Layoffs and Public Safety Concerns

[00:00:58] Anthony: At NHTSA. [00:01:00] Because the U. S. agency that regulates the auto industry has laid off 4 percent of its staff. Because, regulations, safety, eh, not gonna happen.

We’re linking to an article from MSN, and Fred, this is a question for you. Who said this quote? Public safety should never be threatened at the political chopping block, particularly when clear conflicts of interest are in play. I can’t imagine. Michael Brooks! Michael Brooks said that. And I tried to twist it up by changing my pronunciation, annunciation.

Yeah, it’s a good one. Basically saying, um, it’s Elon’s world and he’s telling everyone, tell me five things you did last week. Because he wants to copy your answers and put them together.

[00:01:42] Fred: I noticed those cuts were heavily weighted towards the group that is investigating the full self driving.

They got rid of what, four out of seven of those people?

[00:01:53] Michael: Yeah, I don’t know that, there were, I think they were saying that three out of seven people in the office. I [00:02:00] believe it’s the office of automation safety, which is not the office of defect investigation, which is actively investigating full self driving the office of automation safety would be the group.

And that’s a, that is doing things like looking at the Ability of manufacturers to share data with NHTSA in exchange for exemptions from federal motor vehicle safety standards. So if the robo taxi became a thing I don’t know when or if it ever will. It is the part of NHTSA that would be evaluating the exemption petition filed by.

Musk in order to determine whether and how the vehicle can operate on US roads. So we’ll see, Waymo and Zooks and some of those other groups that are already actively trying to put vehicles out there that don’t conform to motor vehicle safety standards, don’t have a steering wheel, driver [00:03:00] controls, and that sort of thing they’re dealing with the office of automation safety already and in terms of their exemption petitions, but I don’t think.

And we’re not really too, there’s not a list that puts out that says these are the people who have left or been fired. The great majority of the folks leaving the agency seem to be to buy a two ways through the buyout offer for, basically an attrition related offer for people who have served the agency for a long time and are ready to leave.

I think. It’s not too hard to understand why some people might want to take that offer at this point. And also the employees who were probationary who had been with the agency less than a year who were effectively being removed from their jobs. I think that second group, the Office of Automation Safety was just started in late 2023, I believe they were, they had just started their hiring process and getting employees on board.

So the three out of seven that came from that office could have been probationary [00:04:00] employees that were let go. I it’s hard to tell if it was specifically targeted at that office. Any of this action, so it’s difficult to know at this point we’re still trying to figure out who’s left at the agency and whether there are any critical employees who have decided to leave or been, removed against their will.

But it’s. Certainly not a good thing. It’s, it made up about 4 percent of the agency staff. The new agency spokesman is claiming that NHTSA grew by 30 percent in the last administration. I don’t really believe much of what is coming out of that person’s mouth at this moment. I don’t believe that number is correct.

But yes, it did grow under the Biden administration because NHTSA is Sorely understaffed and underfunded and has been for many years. And in order to catch up on a lot of the technological things we talk about on this show, autonomous vehicles driving assistance systems, automatic emergency braking, a lot of technology that the agency [00:05:00] was sorely prepared to regulate over the last couple of decades.

The previous administration got engineers and people in desks at NHTSA in order to evaluate the. safety of those systems and to perform research and to do all sorts of other things. Yes, NHTSA did grow under the Biden administration and that was good for safety. And now it looks like, rather than focusing on what those people were doing and, there’s a lot of celebration of simply bodies leaving the federal workforce right now on, in some political circles without really a consideration for what those people were doing and how.

critical they are to public safety and other areas within our government. So it’s very concerning and it’s even more concerning because this is really just the first cut over at NHTSA. We’re concerned about, the new budget proposals that are coming through Congress and how those are going to impact not just NHTSA, but the entire DOT and a lot of other agencies that, that are.

[00:06:00] Keen on, public safety and preventing consumers from being, let around by the nose by corporations who are, engaged in sometimes fraudulent behavior. So there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of reason to be concerned here. Not just now, but going forward. And yes, public safety is currently on the political chopping block.

There’s not a lot of real work and introspection going on here. When these cuts are being made, we’ve seen multiple agencies where important people have been fired and now are being brought back because that, doge, the doge bag screwed up. So there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of things here to continue to watch.

[00:06:41] Fred: Is there any other part of the government that is responsible for safety regulations that affect or could potentially affect 40, 000 lives lost per year? The only other one I can think of is NIH, but but that’s a lot of people and it seems like if you’re really concerned [00:07:00] about public safety, you would probably want to preserve the, all the capabilities of a company that has failed to reduce.

Some number like 40, 000 deaths per year in this country.

[00:07:13] Michael: Yeah. And we’re not sure, some of the executive orders in the flurry of executive orders that have been coming out of the white house, some of them exempt public safety agencies from some of the cuts that are being made now, or it’s still unclear whether, obviously to us, this is a public safety agency, but does the administration consider.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a public safety agency, safety is in its name after all. But it seems that some of those cuts are going to be made, in a haphazard manner without a lot of, frankly, without the law, the federal law on how federal employees are supposed to be treated coming into play.

But, again, we’ll see how that plays out in the coming weeks and months.

[00:07:58] Fred: Oh, so you’re [00:08:00] suggesting that a 19 year old named Big Balls may not be the best person to regulate these cuts?

[00:08:08] Michael: I don’t I’m, we’re still unclear as to the status of DOJ, what is it? Is it a government agency?

No. Is it some kind of special executive agency created for a singular purpose that’s going to go away soon? I hope it goes away tomorrow, but, it’s, they’re purposefully leaving the, they’re purposefully playing fast and loose with the legal status of the organization because there are dozens, if not more, lawsuits directed at what DOJ is and attempting to figure out what it is under federal law is difficult because something like this has never really been tried before and there’s not really a There are federal laws that address it, whether the courts, the administration doesn’t seem to be too concerned with following those laws, whether the court courts ultimately are willing [00:09:00] to uphold the rule of law is another matter.

And we’re seeing doge start to get boxed in many of its orders have been, stopped challenge essentially. Delayed there, lots of different cases. So there’s lots of different things going on. But it’s an ever developing mess at this point. And until we see, court rulings come in that restrict their activities.

And then we see if they’re even willing to follow those court rulings. Really won’t know what the full effect of this new movement is.

[00:09:32] Fred: So in the best case, big balls will be neutered.

[00:09:37] Michael: That is the best case scenario. All right. Thank you.

[00:09:40] Anthony: For more comedic stylings of Fred Perkins, listen to his podcast called I got nothing.

There’s a start of something. It died in my head. Sorry. But Hey, listeners, if you’ve been if you were employed by NHTSA say a week ago and you no longer are right to us at contactedautosafety. org, we’d love to find out [00:10:00] more about what you did to upset Elon Musk.

[00:10:04] Stellantis and Autonomous Driving Systems

[00:10:04] Anthony: Speaking of something that NHTSA would regulate and help make the world safer, let’s talk about a little company called Stellantis.

Stellantis. Now that’s a name that a corporate consultant came up with and charged a lot of money for. Stellantis. That doesn’t even evoke anything in my head except garbages. Garb? Yeah, anyway. An article from azcentral, I’m gonna quote from it. Stellantis says its new hands free and eyes off the road driving system would let users temporarily watch movies and engage in other non driving tasks.

Such as crashing into things and dying. Sorry, and other non driving tasks at lower speeds. A possibility that prompted warnings from some safety advocates. These safety advocates have recently been fired. The company, however, said it has decided not to make the system available right now. Because some of those safety advocates are probably still employed and we’ve got to adjust things and figure out which part of [00:11:00] our customer base we don’t mind crippling for life.

This is just, this is again, this is, I think somebody named Big Balls said, Hey, I got an idea. I don’t know how to drive, but wouldn’t it be cool if I didn’t have to ever learn how to drive? And I could watch the latest episode of Will and Grace? I hope the kids watch. I assume they watch a lot of these old shows because I heard Friends became popular again.

I don’t know why. Friends was a stupid thing. It always sucked back when it was on, but anyway.

[00:11:30] Michael: This is, there’s a lot of problems with this announcement. I’ll it’s my gas light of the week. So I’ll go ahead and get into that as along with this, they are, first of all, the first problem here is just advertising stuff as hands off, eyes off and talking and press releases about how people are going to be able to answer emails or watch movies, blah, blah, blah.

We are just not at that point yet. We know that the Driver assistance systems that are on the road so far carry a significant [00:12:00] risk of automation, complacency, people who believe they are believe the systems are infallible and that they can use them for convenience. and that nothing’s going bad is going to happen to them.

The opposite is actually true. We’ve seen, dozens of crashes in specifically in Tesla. We’ve also seen crashes in blue crews and in other manufacturers that are using these systems. And what it all comes down to is this is just a convenience. feature. The Insurance Institute studied this a few months back, and we talked about on the podcast that there are no safety benefits that can be quantified from the data that’s on hand about these systems.

However, we know there are safety risks, the risk of automation complacency. So when you’re advertising these things as hands off and eyes off, You’re giving consumers an inflated idea of how well they’re performing on the road. And not only that, [00:13:00] this is You know, you’re also when you’re using these systems, when you click that button and turn the systems on your liability, your future criminal and civil liability aren’t being transferred to the computer that is now making the decisions for you while you’re on the road while you watch a movie that’s staying with you firmly.

And if you get into a crash and you’re not. Paying attention to the road because this vehicle is advertising marketing and it’s convenience have, trapped you in this in this idea that the car is going to make these moves on its own and that you can just sit back and relax and do your thing.

You’re trapped and you’re going to be left. Holding the bag. If you kill somebody or cause a collision that hurts other people, there’s it’s, this stuff just isn’t ready for the road yet in many ways. And I think the number one way it’s not ready is we don’t really have. [00:14:00] Good, a legal system that’s prepared for the crashes that are going to happen here and finding who’s at fault, that type of thing.

And also, it’s just it’s far too early for anyone to really know the best type of. Systems that can be used to prevent that automation complacency. Driver monitoring is available and it’s working and some vehicles, it’s all over the map. When you look at the bad driver monitoring like Tesla has and its vehicles versus, driver monitoring that does.

built in and actually, I think in the Tesla, you can cover the camera up with a piece of tape and it, it continues working. It won’t shut off the system off. That’s bad driver monitoring because it can be evaded. And, other vehicle systems, there’s actually driving money that’s seems to do a pretty good job of making sure that the driver stays on task.

But right now there’s just not enough evidence to show that these vehicles and then these systems are safe for humans to operate. And until that happens, I don’t know that we should [00:15:00] be placing this convenience factor so high as something that that we should be looking for in our cars. We should be staying focused on the roads, for the next.

A couple of decades, at least, until this technology matures, rather than wandering off into the land of convenience. So that’s a big part of my gas light for the week. Basically if your hands are off the wheel, your eyes are off the road, then your brain is probably off the driving task.

And that’s not something I think that, that. Stellantis Chrysler is focused on enough here. And beyond that you have, the. The real gaslight here, which is they’re not even putting this in cars yet. They’re saying they’re going to wait until the market gets better or is more certain and they can put it in vehicles.

So ultimately this announcement from Stellantis is, a great example of a gaslight because it’s not coming. To your cars. [00:16:00]

[00:16:01] Fred: Hey, I’m going to jump in with my gas light too, because it follows on what Michael was talking about here. My gas light candidate this week is Von Schmidt from Torque Robotics.

Torque is building self driving heavy trucks and Mr. Peter Von Schmidt was That sounds like a made

[00:16:21] Anthony: up name. No, I don’t believe it. That is a villain from a bad movie. Peter von Schmitt. Come on.

[00:16:27] Fred: You’re right. Yeah, it does.

[00:16:28] Anthony: This is all made up. Just listeners, Fred’s making all of this up. Just want to point that out.

[00:16:33] Fred: And following that up, the quote is, I’ll now make a bold statement. The technology is solved. Now it’s really about building a product and building a real business, which is safe, which can scale. This takes time. So basically what the quote says is we’ve done everything except the hard part, which is an interesting quote.

They’re targeting a 2027 commercial launch. [00:17:00] And I want to just hearken people back to a memorable event called the sinking of the Titanic. And there is a record of how an unspeakable marketing campaign led the Titanic to disaster. In that article, they say, be wary of word of mouth. And quoting from the article, many of the ship’s most assertive unsinkable claims came not from the official marketing campaign, which usually made a point to include qualifiers such as practically or designed to be unsinkable, but from word of mouth.

As Snopes notes, unsinkable is a pretty grand claim, even with qualifiers attached. Word began to spread among the public about the ship’s assured sinkability, and the White Star marketers did little to quash these rumors. Thus, thousands boarded the Titanic with a false sense of security after the disaster survivor, Margaret Devaney, confirmed that she had wholeheartedly believed the unsinkable claim [00:18:00] saying, quote, I thought it would be a safe steamship and I had heard it would not sink, close quote.

Sounds an awful lot like the claims that we hear about self driving and in particular what Mike was just talking about concerning the Stellantis. So I’m giving Peter Von Schmidt from Torque Robotics, my nomination for guest later in the week.

[00:18:24] Anthony: I apologize for Fred ruining the end of that movie. I never saw the movie.

I didn’t know how it ended. But apparently the Titanic doesn’t make it. It’s ridiculous. The final.

[00:18:32] Fred: It ended with a submersible that didn’t actually work out quite well, but. It was a very long ending.

[00:18:39] Anthony: Okay. I’d like to point out that the, things like the Elon Musk fanboys and people who could afford and did purchase tickets on the Titanic, maybe that’s just the way we thin the herd.

If you’re going to buy nonsense, you pay the price. That’s very dark. It’s okay

[00:18:57] Michael: if you buy nonsense and your car [00:19:00] drives off a road and doesn’t injure or kill anyone else who wasn’t part of that decision, there’s some issues there involving the social contract, and what your decision, how your decisions impact others that, that come into play pretty heavily.

I don’t think I would be a fan of. Thinning the herd that round. Oh, damn it. Come on, Anthony.

[00:19:18] Anthony: Look okay, my Gaslight of the Week is going to be a former cast member of The Real World MTV, Sean Duffy. With a name like Duffy, he’s got to be taken seriously. He is unfortunately the U. S., the head of the U.

S. Department of Transportation, and quoting from him, he says if you can’t come up with five things you did, maybe you shouldn’t be employed here. This is an easy task. It happens in the private sector all the time. And so I wanted our employees to actually engage and talk about what they did.

Now, I’ve worked in the private sector, and never have I ever been asked, List five things you did last week. Or, what did you do last week? Or, what did you do [00:20:00] yesterday? That has never, ever happened. I don’t know what horrible places this guy has worked for. He worked in U. S. Congress. But, and he was on a reality TV show.

Maybe that’s what it is. He’s used to TV producers being like, Okay, so recap what happened last week for the cameras, and get overly dramatic. That, oh my god, just solved it. That’s what it is. He doesn’t have any context of the real world. That’s my little gaslight. I don’t know if that’s really a gaslight, or that’s just me just, complaining.

Hey listeners, before you run away because you’re annoyed with my complaining and snark, have you subscribed to this podcast? Have you given it five stars and liked it? You have? That’s awesome. Thanks. Let’s continue. Where do I want to go next? Oh, this is pretty cool. Renault, the French car manufacturer they created a tool they call Fireman Access.

And it allows emergency service people to put out electric vehicle fires, car battery fires in the same amount of time that they can put out internal combustion engine [00:21:00] fires. And the cool part of this is they’re saying, here you go, everyone can have it, royalty free. It’s free. Let’s go ahead and put this tool out there, which is awesome because as Mr.

Fred Perkins has pointed out repeatedly on this show, in order to put out an electric vehicle fire, you need 30 fire trucks behind you, and you’re going to take forever. Whereas, if what Renault has built, and it works this is a potentially great life saving device. What do you guys think? I think it’s

[00:21:27] Fred: French.

Potentially great. I don’t speak French, so I haven’t read the haven’t read the technical specs on this, but there’s one part of it that I think is odd. The seal that they’ve got apparently is blown away by the pressure from the hose. And so just like pointing the hose at this orifice, you’ll be able to flood the battery, which is a great idea, but I thought that if the batteries failed and they still Generate a lot of pressure and hot gases, wouldn’t they blow off the seal in the other direction and pour them right into the [00:22:00] passenger compartment.

So I a detail that I’m, I’m sure they’ve worked out somehow, but I think it’s mostly all good. But I think there’s still a few points that need to be. Explored in this technology,

[00:22:14] Michael: It looks basically like a port on part of the battery that you would stick the fire hose on and it would allow water to somehow channel through the battery to get to the specific cells where, you know the battery could be overheating or catching fire.

It’s I think it’s a great idea and it’s great that Renault is. Putting this out there, but ultimately, I think what we really want are batteries that don’t catch fire. And don’t have this prop don’t have the need for this type of access system. So this, this might be a good thing for preventing for putting out vehicle fires in the 1st generation of batteries that we see on a lot of vehicles now.

But, I think.

[00:22:58] Solid State Batteries and Future of EVs

[00:22:58] Michael: Long term and [00:23:00] looking at, what Mercedes has announced that they’re doing this week with solid state batteries, that’s really what we’re hoping is going to happen. We’re going to end up with lighter batteries that don’t catch on fire in the future and don’t pose a lot of these concerns for emergency responders and for crash victims.

[00:23:17] Anthony: Yeah. As Michael just pointed out, Mercedes has said they’ve started. Testing a solid state battery a, on their prototype EQS vehicle which I think is what, Michael, you drive a prototype EQS, right?

[00:23:31] Michael: No.

[00:23:32] Anthony: Ah okay. Besides having up to 620 miles of range which is pretty cool, solid state batteries, in theory, should be lighter, as Michael pointed out.

Less and less prone to fire like we have with thermal runaway with current lithium ion batteries and seeing by the way that Mr. Fred Perkins has leaned in much farther to his camera where I can count his beard hairs. He has some thoughts.

[00:23:58] Fred: I do and I [00:24:00] think this may be a great thing. But unfortunately a couple of facts.

Suggested maybe it’s less than you might be. So Mercedes says the solid state technology has the potential to increase the gravimetric energy density, which is the amount of energy you can store per unit weight, for vehicle batteries up to 450 watt hours per kilogram. So that’s a good number. But then I did a little checking, and according to physics world, in April, 2023, quote, researchers have succeeded in making rechargeable pouch type lithium batteries with a record breaking energy density of over 700 kilowatt hours per kilogram, or excuse me, 700 watt hours per kilogram.

Close quote. So this is a lot more than what Mercedes is doubting is their benefit. So there’s more room to grow in the efficiency of the lithium ion batteries. Number 1, and [00:25:00] I’m puzzled why they’re going so far out with their 450 versus a potential of 700. The other thing is, we don’t know that these won’t burn.

Semtex and dynamite are also solids. There’s no guarantee that simply because they’re solid state, they’re immune to fire. So more details need to emerge. Sounds like it could be a good thing, but there’s

[00:25:24] Michael: still more to learn about this. Yeah and the other warning that I always like to bring up in these cases, Mercedes is not lower, they’ve got a battery that’s, I think, one third lighter than many of the batteries that are going to vehicles now.

And they’re not using that. technology gain to make the vehicle lighter. In this case, it looks like the vehicle is gonna weigh about the same, but they’ve just put more battery and to increase the range. So that’s our number one concern here with even if new batteries are manufactured that are lighter, manufacturers are inevitably just going to put more [00:26:00] battery in the vehicle to increase the range Versus leaving the range the same and making the vehicles lighter, which is better for crash results.

So that’s the major concern as bad for us as batteries do get better. How are they being deployed? Are they being deployed simply to increase consumer range and convenience, or they have an eye towards safety and actually reducing the weight of vehicles on our roads?

[00:26:27] Anthony: Listeners, I’m curious, what do you think?

You want a solid state battery, or do you want to power your car with Semtex? Could be fun, either way.

[00:26:35] Automatic Emergency Braking Rule and Legal Challenges

[00:26:35] Anthony: So Michael you sent around this link to a a legal case and you know I didn’t go to law school so I, I didn’t want to read it but this is an update on automatic emergency basing A ba oh god We knew it would happen eventually Automatic emergency braking and the DOJ is what’s happening here?

[00:26:56] Michael: So the Alliance for Automotive Innovation filed we covered [00:27:00] that they filed suit I believe in January to challenge NHTSA’s Automatic Emergency Braking Rule. There weren’t a lot of details planned. And this is

[00:27:09] Anthony: a rule that we liked that we thought was relatively weak, but we liked it.

[00:27:12] Michael: We know.

Yeah, we like it a lot in many ways. Obviously any rule can be better and safer, right? But this was probably the most important rule that this is put out in the last decade. As far as potential life savings. And as far as addressing some of the really bad things we’re currently seeing on roads, which is a, a giant rise in pedestrian deaths, and it would prevent a lot of crashes that we’re seeing involving speeding.

There, the sky is the limit for AEB when it’s You know, properly I implemented. But manufacturers who have now had, developing it for 20 plus years are dragging their feet at the prospect of having to make systems that work well over 25 miles an hour. And the in, in the speeds that we see, most of the [00:28:00] crashes that are deadly or that cause.

significant injury. So what essentially has happened here is that the Department of Justice has come in and said wait court, we’re going to, they filed for an abeyance, which essentially saying we’re just let this court case sit here for now. Nothing’s going to happen until the Department of Transportation and NHTSA get a chance to review this rule and to make our own changes.

I think the exact Language that they use is that they were going to the department is under new leadership and is reviewing the rule at issue in this litigation, which could lead to its modification. Now, I think we’ve spoken in other episodes about just what they can modify there. Can they go back and modify the rule that was?

Put forth last April, may in that timeframe, there’s not really a good legal argument to suggest that they can do that unless they’re willing to go back and redo the entire rulemaking. Which, you know I don’t know what [00:29:00] they’re, what, we don’t really know what’s going to happen next here, but for now, it looks like the lawsuit filed by the Alliance is going to be held in abeyance.

And the government is, and the current NHTSA is going to try to take a hack at the rule. And as with most things in Washington right now, there’s no telling what direction that’ll go.

[00:29:22] Anthony: Oh, sounds like fun. Stay tuned to this program for all of your automatic emergency braking needs and comments and concerns.

But while you’re at it, go to autosafety. org, click on donate, click it once, click it twice. Get your credit card, get your friend’s credit cards. If you’re a kid listening to this, go into your dad’s wallet, steal his credit card and donate like crazy. Sound good? Sure. Okay.

[00:29:46] Waymo vs. the Titanic: A Safety Comparison

[00:29:46] Anthony: How about a little tau of Fred?

Apparently you’re on a Titanic kick this week cause this one of my notes is listed as Waymo vs. the Titanic. I’d rather see Godzilla vs. the Titanic, but, okay. What do you got for us? [00:30:00] You’ve now entered the

[00:30:00] Fred: I’ve got a few parameters that I’ve looked up and, So I’m just gonna run through them in the comparison.

Number one in terms of safety certification, the Titanic had three different seaworthiness certificates, but they were issued locally and apparently there was no international organization or governmental oversight of what safety Meant then, and as far as I can tell, the only real requirement they had was for watertight doors.

Parallel with Waymo is that there also is no safety certification and the only authorities who are concerned about the safety are local authorities. Very similarly, there’s no overriding specification and the locals are put in a position of having to determine whether or not these are safe enough to operate.

That’s

[00:30:53] Anthony: the best situation. And the local authorities, as we’ve seen in California, are a little

[00:30:59] Fred: suspicious. [00:31:00] And they seem to be subject to just a little bit of what is the word? Michael conflict of interest, I think is expression, but it was

[00:31:08] Michael: definitely the case when we had the public utilities commission with one of its voting members as a former employee of cruise.

I don’t know what the composition of that board is.

[00:31:18] Waymo’s Regulatory Oversight and Safety Requirements

[00:31:18] Michael: Currently, if that remains a concern they did take action against crews and fine them for lying about the crash that occurred. They are, they are the group that oversees, when Waymo expands its territory where.

They’re the one that approves that in consultation with the DMV. So there’s, it’s definitely a situation where the local authorities are doing any and all regulation, but they remain questions. So

[00:31:46] Comparing Titanic’s Safety Measures to Waymo

[00:31:46] Fred: going back to the comparison safety requirements what did they have to do before launching a voyage with passengers?

As far as I can tell, and I’m no expert on this, so you nautical historians, please correct me on [00:32:00] this, but apparently before Titanic set sail, they were required to have watertight doors nothing about anything else. And by the way, they apparently used brittle rivets to hold the hull together.

So when they nudged the iceberg, it unzipped along a seam. All of those rivers popped off, but I digress. So the Titanic disaster after the fact prompted the 1st International Convention for the safety of life at sea and decided on such momentous things like every passenger should have a space on a lifeboat.

That was that was not the case before. The Titanic sank, but getting to Waymo, the safety requirements that they have are none for AV specific features. The only requirements they’ve got are FMVSS, Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, for conventional vehicles, which were developed a long time ago with the [00:33:00] implicit understanding that there’s a human driver in control of the vehicle at all times.

Very similar to the Titanic. There are really no specific regulations associated with the unique risk hazards or unique risks and hazards of that vehicle.

[00:33:17] Anthony: I have to ask you, Fred given what we’ve seen with parents in San Francisco, they say, okay, Waymo has no regulations, but hey, I’ll put my 12 year old kid in a Waymo and have a drive to school.

Back in whenever the Titanic launched, people were like, yeah, I want to send my kids to the new world. Let’s put the 12 year old in the boat. Probably that was poverty though, right? Is that according to the

[00:33:38] Fred: movie, according to the movie, there was a lot of that, but I’m not sure that’s authoritative.

[00:33:43] Anthony: Again, you’re ruining this movie for me.

I,

[00:33:45] Fred: I’m sorry. All all right.

[00:33:46] Passenger Risk Factors and Catastrophic Failures

[00:33:46] Fred: Moving on passenger risk factor warning. Nobody on the Titanic warned the passengers of the risks involved in a transit. All the things that came up after the fact, the safety [00:34:00] risks, none of them were informed to the passengers. And similarly, Waymo does not inform its passengers of any of the risk factors associated with.

It’s AV operation. They just like to minimize those, in fact, in their publicity. Time between catastrophic failure and death. In the Titanic, you had several hours. A lot of things could have happened in those several hours. Some did. Orchestra got to play Nearer, My God to Thee, all that sort of stuff.

But hours are available. In the case of Waymo, you have a fraction of a second, in many cases, between a catastrophic failure of the A. V. specific features, and the death of the passenger, or the pedestrian, or the unfortunate, vulnerable road user who happens to be nearby. So that’s a significant difference.

And not in favor of Waymo.

[00:34:56] Good Samaritan Rescue and Liability Issues

[00:34:56] Fred: Another, ability of good Samaritan rescue. When the Titanic [00:35:00] was going down another ship rescued the passengers who were in the lifeboats, which was good. Unfortunately, another ship ignored the distress signals and thought it was a, some kind of celebration. And really moved on and went on about its business,

[00:35:13] Anthony: wait, what was the distress call that somebody thought it was a celebration?

[00:35:17] Fred: Rockets. They were shooting rockets into the air as a way of alerting other boats in the area. But there was no radio communication to back it up. That wasn’t required at the time. So the other boats saw the signals and said, Oh, they’re having a good time over there.

Good for them.

[00:35:32] Anthony: Okay. I don’t know what maritime safety standards were back in the day, but right now there’s three separate types of rockets and smoke signals you can set off to indicate your distress level and rockets are. Oh, my God, we’re going down like I can’t imagine it being much different back then.

[00:35:50] Fred: Yeah it apparently was and if you were a pastor who survived the Titanic, your ultimate thought would probably [00:36:00] be in the future, everything will be better. And apparently it was. So for the ability of a good Samaritan to rescue in Waymo. You’re pretty much out of luck. The only one we could think of is that it might be possible for Good Samaritan to help somebody escape a burning car, but that presumes that it burns a lot more slowly than a battery powered car and because the batteries go up in just a few seconds.

I think you’re out of luck as far as Good Samaritan goes. Nobody’s coming by in another vehicle who’s going to save you in the event of a catastrophic failure in the Waymo. Acceptance of liability, so in the case of the Titanic, I’m quoting from an article I read despite hundreds of claims seeking more than 16 million damages negotiations outside of court led to a total settlement of 664, 000.

And return for their funds claimants agreed to end their claims in the [00:37:00] United States and England. The owners initially argued that their liability should be limited to the value of the lifeboats. So. And that’s actually very similar to Waymo because Waymo is touting the safety, but they don’t talk about their acceptance of liability nor the means for liquidating damages if somebody’s killed.

So I’ve, I’m giving them a TBD, so another contrast between them.

[00:37:25] Potential Risks and Final Thoughts on Waymo

[00:37:25] Fred: Two more number of people at risk. In the case of the Titanic, 2,208 people were at risk. In the case of Waymo, they’re claiming 150,000 people per week are riding in their cars. So Waymo is putting a huge number of people at risk compared with the Titanic.

So we’re not sure when the Titanic moment’s going to arrive for Weill, but they’re sure giving it a lot of opportunities to arrive. Final parameter? Go ahead.

[00:37:57] Anthony: No, I gotta ask. So I googled and I saw what happened to the [00:38:00] Titanic. It hit an iceberg, which is nuts. Waymo, no one’s paying, there’s no human paying attention, there’s no one watching.

But on the Titanic, even back then, they had a position called Officer of the Watch, where somebody should be watching for things. Did they not have that? Did that person fall asleep? What happened?

[00:38:20] Fred: Fog and dark. Okay. It was, it occurred at night. Sure. And the iceberg was not particularly well illuminated.

. There, there were other problems with it, which is it had inadequate steering to get outta the way, and the owners had insisted that the captain run at full speed all the time. It turned out that they didn’t have enough rudder authority to steer away from the iceberg because they were blasting along at full speed, didn’t have adequate notice,

[00:38:50] Anthony: thinking. But they did,

[00:38:51] Fred: there was, they were notified that there was an iceberg ahead, but it was just somebody yelling and. And then, the wheelhouse wasn’t able to [00:39:00] respond adequately.

[00:39:01] Anthony: Because they’re busy letting off the party rockets. Like a Waymo on a freeway, it’s operating at highway speeds, let’s say, full speed.

And their notice is going to be BRICKWALL! Like that, yeah. Ambulance! And just, so it’s Oh okay, I like your, But again, 2, 200 people,

[00:39:17] Fred: 2, 208 people at risk on the Titanic. Well over 150, 000 per week, according to the Waymo publication of their frequency of use.

[00:39:28] Anthony: And that’s the only people inside the car.

We’re not talking about the other people that they’re hitting.

[00:39:32] Fred: That’s correct. Okay. Which gets me to the last parameter, which is potential deadly crashes per trip. And apparently, Titanic had one. And Waymo has thousands. Thousands every week or thousands per trip, if you think of it driving through a city.

Okay. You’ve got all the pedestrians. You’ve got all the cars. You’ve got cats and dogs. You’ve got any graded passengers being bounced off the [00:40:00] hoods of other cars. There’s a lot going on, so I conclude my my talk this week by saying, oh man, good luck. There’s a satanic moment coming for Waymo, I don’t know when that’s going to occur, but I’m sure they’ve got their PR people busy working on it right away to minimize the public damage.

[00:40:21] Anthony: Michael, you had a thought there.

[00:40:24] Michael: I only thought there’s, we’re, I guess we’re just lucky that 2, 200 people can’t fit into one autonomous vehicle that could never been

[00:40:32] Anthony: to the circus. Have you, we can get a lot of people into one vehicle.

[00:40:36] Fred: Yeah that’s coming. They’re working on self driving buses and self driving school buses.

Way more clown

[00:40:41] Anthony: car.

[00:40:42] Fred: Musical. It’s it’ll be fun.

[00:40:45] Anthony: I don’t think it’ll be fun. . It doesn’t sound fun at all. All alright, we’re gonna do one more, then we’re gonna go into recalls.

[00:40:52] Pedestrian Safety in Washington D.C.

[00:40:52] Anthony: DC apparently is twice as bad for pedestrians as a decade ago, which is frightening ’cause we’ve talked about.

How a lot [00:41:00] of cities, including D. C., I believe, were striving for Vision Zero, which I believe the Swedes invented or came up with this idea of, hey, we’re going to completely eliminate road fatalities. And part of this is public safety campaigns, redesigning intersections and roads and making them better.

And D. C., I believe, stop me if I’m wrong, they were Part of this to say, yeah, we’re going to make things safer for pedestrians, but apparently it’s not from an article in MSN. Pedestrians are now twice as likely to be killed in the D. C. area as they were a decade ago, even as more local leaders promise safer streets.

For the third consecutive year in 2024, the Washington region recorded more than 100 pedestrian deaths. Oh my god. What’s going on, Michael?

[00:41:43] Michael: I don’t think it’s just DC and this article was DC centric, but pedestrian deaths have increased, over 80 percent since 2009 when they were at their lowest period and this is something that’s happening [00:42:00] across America and it’s happening, for a variety of reasons.

One of the main ones that appears, and at least according to a triple A study that came out this week, it looks dark city roads that are arterial roads where speed limits are slightly higher that are unlit seem to be where most of this problem is. is occurring where most of the increase we’re seeing is coming from.

And it mostly seems to be happening to people who are socially disadvantaged and live in areas where the infrastructure is not being updated and, where even where street lighting is not. Going is as well as it should. So it’s, I guess my, my, my observation here over this article is this isn’t just a DC problem, although DC is certainly experiencing it as bad as almost anywhere else.

And we’ve seen, we’ve discussed recently some of the issues that [00:43:00] DC has faced. That we know that they’re not, they, they haven’t until recently actually been able to enforce a lot of their speed camera zones. We know that speeding is contributing to some of the pedestrian problems.

We and also on the Vision Zero thing, a lot of places said, Oh yeah, we’re going to do Vision Zero, but then when, when the rubber hits the road, which in local politics, the money hits the road, we did not see. See the investment in infrastructure necessary to reach those goals.

And DC paid a lot of lip service division zero, but ultimately didn’t follow through on everything that was needed to, to achieve the safety goals of vision zero. And in the midst of that we saw this burgeoning pedestrian crisis that, that just has not stopped yet. And it’s something that, that, you know.

I’m concerned that with a lot of the cuts to federal funding of state activities in the [00:44:00] transportation sector, we’re not going to see a lot of gains in safety in this area in the next few years.

[00:44:07] Anthony: So when you’re driving your Stellantis, watching a movie and you hear a thud, that’s nothing to worry about.

Let’s do recalls.

[00:44:16] Vehicle Recalls: Maserati, Rivian, Tesla, Ford, Kia, and BMW

[00:44:16] Anthony: First up, Maserati. 27, 354 vehicles hold. What? 2023 to 2024, the Maserati Grecali, which is, I believe, a pork cheek. Some of these have been built with radio software that may prevent the rear view camera signal from passing through the screen. Oh my God. I have a number of questions.

First of all, they sell 27, 000 Maseratis? Like,

[00:44:43] Michael: there’s, there’s about six, surprise. You didn’t go through all the names here. We always, kind of him and all about BMW and some of the manufacturers who name everything like XQC 43, 44,

[00:44:55] Anthony: these are good names. The grand

[00:44:57] Michael: has great names, right?

[00:44:59] Anthony: What [00:45:00] throw Tory, which is a four cheese Maserati. And then they got the Mc 20 Cielo, which is a type of cloud. Oh, the, ooh, this is a good one. The 2021 to 2020 4G Ghibli is a it’s also known as the sweet breads of the Maserati. It’s the the thyroid gland of the Maserati.

Okay, they’ve got better names. Sorry, I’m going to keep going on and on. Alright, this is another rear view camera nonsense.

[00:45:30] Michael: Yeah, it’s rear view camera nonsense. And it’s particularly nonsense because this is another Issue with the interface that we’ve probably talked about ad nauseum at this point. But, you’ve got radio software interfering with the safety system and that just shouldn’t happen.

We shouldn’t have these systems operating in a way where a radio software convenience feature is interfering with the backup camera image being seen by the driver. So [00:46:00] Maserati needs to get it straight and they’ve got a, note here that owners are probably going to be notified around March 21st, and it looks like they’re just going to be updating the radio softwares.

If your vehicle is capable of receiving over the air updates, it looks like those might beam right into your car or otherwise you’ll need to visit your dealer and get a patch via USB.

[00:46:25] Anthony: As noted in here though, that the radio software fails only depending on what you’re listening to.

[00:46:31] Michael: Yeah, it’s not Z ZZ top.

[00:46:33] Anthony: Yeah. Yeah. Hey, what’s wrong with ZZ Top? Next up Rivian 17,260 vehicles. The 2025 R one s, the R one T that’s it. Lamps. Diminished lighting performance may cause reduced visibility. Apparently if it’s in cold temperatures, the low beam lights won’t work, and you’ll get a message. Says, serviced lights, now wait.

Serviced low beam soon. Like, how [00:47:00] soon, if you need these soon is like right now.

[00:47:04] Michael: Soon is, how do you drive in the dark if your lights aren’t working, right? There is no way. So a warning message isn’t going to help you out a lot.

[00:47:11] Anthony: Especially if you’re on the North Atlantic, it’s

[00:47:14] Michael: nice.

Yeah. If you’re on the North Atlantic you’re You’re probably going to experience cold more than your average bear too. And so you would probably run across this condition. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a problem with Rivian headlights. I don’t believe the other one had anything to do with the cold, but that’s an area where it looks like they need to improve.

In this case, it looks like they’re going to be doing a physical repair. Of all of the headlamp control modules on the vehicles that are affected. So presumably they are, they’ve created a control module that isn’t impacted by extremely low temperatures. That’s going to keep your headlights on, which is good.

They

[00:47:51] Anthony: probably just put those hand water packs in there, those hand warmers, yeah, that do that.

[00:47:56] Michael: Owners are probably going to hear about this in about a month and [00:48:00] then we’ll be able to go in and get their replacement. In the meantime, do not drive with no headlights.

[00:48:04] Fred: Hasn’t Vervian distributed flashlights to these people?

[00:48:11] Anthony: Seems like an easy

[00:48:12] Fred: fix.

[00:48:13] Anthony: Put them on top of your head. I love it.

[00:48:15] Fred: Yeah, I’ve got one of those. I use it when I take the dogs out for

[00:48:18] Michael: a walk at night. We are not recommending operating a vehicle using a flashlight as your illumination source. Oh, okay. Thank you for clarifying that.

[00:48:28] Anthony: All right, fine. Next up, Tesla.

Aw, this might be their final recall ever. 3, 000, oh, 376, 241 vehicles, the 2023 Tesla Model 3, the 2023 Tesla Model Y their electronic power assisted steering has an overvoltage breakdown, which may overstress the motor drive components. Oh. By design, if the overstressed conditions occur while the vehicle is traveling above zero miles per hour, steering efforts will not be affected and visual alert will [00:49:00] illuminate.

Confused. Wait. It’s Tesla. It’s, It comes with a copy of MindConf in the glove compartment. Sorry, is that too much?

[00:49:10] Michael: I know, I don’t mean, you do you. It’s And for legal

[00:49:16] Anthony: purposes, that is right. Michael makes you point out that everything that comes out of my mouth is not a reflection or opinion of the Center for Auto Safety.

[00:49:24] Michael: In this circumstance, you’re gonna see an over the air software update that essentially Supposedly prevents the overvoltage breakdown and overstress of the motor drive components on the printed circuit board. In these types of recalls, I always question whether it’s a software problem or a circuit board problem.

And you should you be replacing the circuit board? But Tesla is going for the free call route, which means they’re going to be doing an over the air update for all the customers that they should. It looks like they’re going to receive sometime in late March,

[00:49:59] Anthony: bro. It [00:50:00] wasn’t even a recall. I just like I was out of my driveway and it just, it fixed itself,

[00:50:04] Fred: bro.

So I, it seems to me that the fix for this in some manner reduces the performance capability of the power steering, because all of these parameters are talking about affect the amount of power that’s going into the. Power steering motors. It’s going to be really interesting to see how this works out because if they do reduce the steering capability, there could be a lot of impacts pun intended.

[00:50:33] Anthony: All right, coming up next, Ford, 240, 510 vehicles, the 2020 to 2021 Ford Explorer, the Lincoln Aviator, and it’s those two the seat bolt buckle anchor bolts at one or more seating positions may not have been properly secured during seat assembly. Oh, is this a late Friday afternoon problem? When did this happen?

But

[00:50:57] Fred: Technically seatbelts need to be [00:51:00] attached to something in order for them to work.

[00:51:03] Michael: And that’s true. And Ford is actually saying that the They were produced at, by a supplier who screwed up. So they seem to be throwing shade at the supplier of these, but they’re taking responsibility.

And what, what’s going to happen? I, this isn’t every one of these vehicles. What is it? How many vehicles are involved? 240, 000. So a fairly large recall. There are only a small number of these vehicles that have this loose or insulated. I believe they’ve discovered that it’s only in the second row, center seatbelt anchor.

Although it looks like,

[00:51:42] Anthony: although it

[00:51:43] Michael: looks like they’re going to inspect all of the seatbelt anchors in your vehicle when you bring it in just to make sure. And they, if there’s a problem, it looks like they’re going to either tighten them or replace the affected seatbelt bonnet. That’s something you can expect to hear [00:52:00] probably at the start of April, if you own one of these Explorers or Aviators.

And this is a critical recall. Especially, it may even be something you want to, if even before the recall comes out, you might want to. You give your rear seatbelt a good jiggle and make sure that there’s not something going on there because you can’t have anyone sitting in a seatbelt position in the vehicle with a bad seatbelt.

[00:52:24] Fred: Oddly enough, the same person starred in both the Titanic movie and the aviator movie. So I think there’s some kind of conspiracy here.

[00:52:33] Anthony: Hugh Jackman, no? Alright. Kia America up next, 137, 256 vehicles, the 2021 2023 Kia Seltos, the Kia Soul. And this is a piston and ping and snap ring assembly, which, this just It sounds like, a Gilbert and Sullivan Opera all of a sudden.

Oh, the piston and the pinging and the stuff. No, that it made it sound like the Clancy brothers now all of a sudden due to a quality [00:53:00] deviation by the piston oil ring supplier, the piston, they’re throwing the supplier under the hood too.

[00:53:05] Michael: Rivian, by the way, Rivian did too as well this week. We had a lot of suppliers being thrown under the bus this week.

Yeah,

[00:53:09] Anthony: I like this bro. It ain’t me, man. Just the guy I buy stuff from that I paid a very detailed specif specification. Specific. It’s getting late in the show. I can’t talk anymore. All right. What happened here? So

[00:53:22] Michael: this is very similar to the large recall, the fire recalls that we saw a few years back. Here it doesn’t appear that there is a fire hazard.

No, actually it is. A fire may occur. Same hazard. Basically their fix for this is to put in a ping piston ring noise sensing system, which is if you followed us, we’ve also talked about the knock sensor detection system that was in the previous Hyundai’s and Kia’s that were engines were failing the Vehicles in the engine compartment was catching on fire in some cases, but, [00:54:00] thousands of engines were failing which was a huge problem.

And Kia and Hyundai’s response to it was, okay, here’s this knock sensor detection system that if this starts happening on your vehicle, we’re going to basically put you in limp home mode and you can drive five miles an hour to your destination and come in and get your engine inspected and hopefully replaced or fixed.

That whether or not that happened, depending on a lot of factors, this is a very similar measure that’s being taken here. And I would advise everyone who owns one of these vehicles to get this piston ring noise sensing system installed because. the folks who did not get the knock sensor detection systems installed on their vehicles were ultimately basically told that they weren’t going to qualify for any warranty reimbursements and also weren’t able to qualify for any reimbursements through the subsequent class actions that came out.

[00:55:00] Basically this piston ring noise sensing system is going to be determined whether or not, these relatively new vehicles, 2023s are involved here. You’re probably going to want to get this recall done like every recall, but this one particularly, because it could lead to some trouble down the road for you and your warranty.

If you don’t get it installed.

[00:55:18] Anthony: Michael, is this the same Hyundai Kia engine, the ICE engine that they’ve had problems with for over a decade at this point?

[00:55:25] Michael: This one is not the Theta 2. Yeah, the Theta 2 was the most problematic. There were probably two or three engines that had problems. And this one is the new MPI engine, which I believe there were some issues with, but, this one’s been installed, the other issues were on vehicles that were from around 2010 to 2019 with the theta two. This is a newer engine that It’s not the same problem. It was a bearing issue, but they the ultimate result In both is the piston going through your [00:56:00] engine And creating a hole essentially for the Oil or gasoline inside of the engine to leak out and cause a fire.

Ultimately, the same thing happens here. And owners, you’ll expect to hear from them around April 4th. And you’ll bring your vehicle in for an inspection and to install the software. If they find a problem on an inspection, they might replace the engine, but I believe most vehicles will be getting a version of the software to monitor for the problem.

[00:56:33] Anthony: Alright, last up, BMW, 40, 736 vehicles, the 2022 2024 BMW X3 S Drive 30i, oh my, if you got a BMW, there’s some issue, okay? This issue involves second row seat side door locking modules and they may not fully conform to FMVSS 206 section 4. 3. 1. What I’m the, you have to do something extra to make the seats lock and [00:57:00] unlatch?

[00:57:00] Michael: It’s the door. So the second row door, it’s basically your door in the back seat.

[00:57:06] Fred: Right.

[00:57:07] Michael: Can be unlocked and open with just one motion, which would mean that all you, all a child in the back would need to do, grab the handle and the door is open without. Without even being unlocked that violates FMDSS 206.

And so they’re going to have to go back and replace the modules in, in all of those side doors to comply with the federal motor vehicle safety standards.

[00:57:30] Anthony: All right. Folks, kids are expensive, so decide if you want to do that recall or not. I want

[00:57:34] Fred: to, I want to point out here just before we leave that if you average out the Complaint about this rear door versus the absence of a safety latch in the Tesla rear door.

The average of those comes out to be a perfectly good performing door. So the industry’s stepped up to now, this is too obscure, isn’t it? Nevermind. The joke. I was,

[00:57:56] Anthony: it’s okay. Yeah Fred Perkins has unfortunately just canceled his comedy [00:58:00] podcast. It’s the shortest lived podcast in existence.

It lasted a total of 28 seconds.

[00:58:05] Concluding Remarks and Farewell

[00:58:05] Anthony: And with that, listeners, for tuning in. We’ll be back again next week. I know I apologize in advance, but we’ll be here. It’ll be fun. We could leave more people driving cars still. Till then, bye.

[00:58:16] Fred: Thank you. Bye bye. Bye, everybody. For more information, visit www.

autosafety. org.