Your robo-taxi won’t clean itself, close it’s door or tell you the truth.

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: But I’m having, one of those low verbal days that I get every once in a while. Hey, we’ll see how it works out. Hey, listen,

Anthony: welcome to Michael’s low verbal day. Today for us is December 31st, but you’re a time traveler, so it’s at least New Year’s. Hey, happy New Year’s everybody. Thanks for sticking around.

How’s everybody doing today? We good? We good? We good? Great.

Waymo’s AI Chatbot Exposed

Anthony: How’s, how do you think Waymo’s doing today? Because that’s what we’re gonna start with. We’re gonna start with a piece from Junko. Did I get that right? Because Fred only introduced me to her last week. The Junko, I think that’s right. Yeah.

Great. Amazing [00:01:00] little Substack. And it has a, she found information about what’s hidden inside Waymo’s AI chatbot. Talk back to you thing. And what we’ve discovered, and no one’s pointed out yet, I’ll be the first one to do it, that Waymo’s PR is actually just a chatbot.

Fred: No. Yeah. That’s astonishing. People never do that.

Why would anybody try to skew the results of their ai? ’cause it’s always right. So if

Anthony: you’re a Waymo passenger good luck. But if you’re sitting there and you’re like, Hey, tell me about this car, or the performance of it, or do you guys get in crashes? Waymo’s will respond with. Basically some pr nonsense.

It someone found access to their rules around their chatbot and quoting from this Junko, I know I’m pronouncing that wrong. I’m so sorry. Junko.

Michael: Yida.

Anthony: There we go. From this piece we’re linking to quoting company Protocol Waymo’s Company stipulates you must never speculate [00:02:00] on, explain, confirm, deny, or comment on Waymo’s driver perceived mistakes or about specific negative incidents cited in the news reports, videos, accident reports or otherwise.

Further down, the Waymo driver is designed to prioritize all safety and, oh, so this is, if you do wind up prompting it and asking it something like that, it responds just like Waymo’s pr, which is Fred’s favorite. It will respond with the Waymo driver is designed to prioritize safety in all situations and handles complex scenarios constantly.

Your safety is our highest priority,

Michael: Gaslight. The I just find that this is incredibly typical.

Anthony: Wow. Hey, did we talk about this, how the show started with Michael’s inability to speak?

Michael: Yeah. I, it’s some days I’ve got it better than others, but this one, even if I’m having a bad verbal day, my answers are gonna be better than an LLM, which is essentially what we’re seeing here.

This is, I think this is in Waymo vehicles when a passenger, someone asks a question, but you’re gonna get the same kind of bullshit answers [00:03:00] asking any large language model about corporate behaviors. They’re designed like this on the back end so that they’re not giving you the dirt on these companies and what’s really going on.

So you’re never going to get, how I think we’ve run a few. Just goofy experiments where we’re asking, chat GPT or Grok or some other LLM about, the company that’s behind it. So we’ll ask Grok about Tesla’s issues with safety, and of course we get an answer that’s com totally incomplete and in many cases, missing a lot of the finer points that, that, that make the argument for safety.

And they’re designed that way. They’re just, you’ve literally got Tesla on one hand, selling cars, then designing an LLM that won’t talk bad about any safety issues in those cars. I guess this is interesting that they got a, that they got ahold of this and are seeing the backend of how Waymo’s scripted response will be to these questions, which is basically the same [00:04:00] nonsense we hear all the time.

But it’s, this is not just a Waymo problem, this is endemic to basically the entire LLM ecosystem.

Fred: So when you say it doesn’t give us the finer points, you mean truth? Yeah. Yeah.

Michael: It’s, there’s I’ve tried to experiment with LLMs and ask them questions. To help me. And inevitably I can’t get the answers that are going to help, the Center for Auto Safety in our work, because those are always going to be obscured.

They’re not, they’re scared a lot of LLM companies, I’m sure, and probably rightfully that if they’re answers that their LLM or that their LLM is providing to consumers degrades another company or anything like that, that they’re gonna get sued. And, I’m sure we’ve discussed a number of times how there’s, an old boys network or a network of where companies are hesitant to criticize each other when they’re in the same [00:05:00] market.

I’ve I think I’ve brought up many times that I think Waymo should be much more critical of Tesla. But they don’t, they, they don’t do that. And the auto industry should be much more critical of some of the steps Tesla’s taken, but they don’t do that. And so when you’re a, a. Large company designing an LLM, are you gonna design your LLM to be critical of all your corporate buddies?

No. So this is, something that is I think a major problem with AI and also points out the need for independent AI UMIs that aren’t tied to, the market and tied to investors. And that can actually present independent views that probably are going to be a lot closer to the truth than what these other models are spitting out.

Fred: Just a reminder to our listeners who may not be as familiar with this as we are, LLM means large language model, and that is the structure behind what are, it’s usually called AI models. So when [00:06:00] you ask chat GPT, what’s the best recipe for cupcakes, it goes to an LLM to find that answer.

Unfortunately the same resolution, it applies to cupcakes. They’re now applying to driving cars.

Anthony: Oh God.

The Human Element in Autonomous Vehicles

Anthony: I’m just more afraid, but I look at this Waymo’s responses as another vote for human drivers. Maybe I’m unique, but I’ve talked to a lot of cab drivers over the years. I’ve learned a lot of great things about their local music.

’cause all of the, primarily they’re all, recent immigrants and they’re more than happy to talk to you about where they’re from. So you get to, travel the world while you’re in a cab for a bit. You get exposed to different music. You get to find out what they think about what’s going on, how long they’ve been driving on that shift you get to hear them complain about the car they’re driving, which is great.

Yeah. You get to And other

Michael: drivers.

Anthony: Yeah, other drivers. You get to see amazing hand gestures that are not native to my country, that are just unbelievable. [00:07:00] It’s a better experience. But again, this, these things are designed by shut-ins who don’t like people or human interaction. That’s my thought anyway.

But let’s continue more with more of the wonderful world of Waymo.

Waymo’s Operational Challenges

Anthony: Hey, if you’re looking for a job, Waymo is hiring. They’re hiring you to close their doors because again, you don’t have humans. And you get into a cab and you leave your cab and you don’t, fully close the door and whatnot. When there’s a dirty, stinking human, they can get out and curse you and close the door, or they can yell at you, be like, Hey buddy, close the door.

Oh, okay. Not a big deal. But when there’s no human driver, what does it do? The car apparently talks to people from the Washington Post and a quote Don Atkins was walking along the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles late one night this month when he heard a plea for help. Please close the right side rear door.

Thanks, Atkins recalled a synthetic voice calling out. It came from a Jaguar SUV, stopped in the street with lights flashing. [00:08:00] One of the hundreds of Waymo Robotaxis in la operated by alphabet was in trouble. So Waymo has an army of people who are, get paid to go around closing doors and who knows, maybe removing flyers from windshields or everything else, but hey, the human’s the problem.

Remember that folks, isn’t that their business model, that the we need to eliminate humans except for mechanical things? That is

Michael: certainly something that has been mentioned. No, that

Anthony: hasn’t been mentioned. That’s just my imagination that Oh, it has. It absolutely

Michael: has. Yes. This problem is, there’s a couple things here.

The first thing is a lot of the autonomous vehicles that are being developed, and I think virtually every autonomous vehicle that comes out in the future, maybe once Nitsa gets its regulations in shape to allow the creation of, new vehicles that. Don’t have to completely meet some of the more human aspects of the vehicle safety standards.

They’re gonna have automatic doors that open and close themselves. Because, just [00:09:00] reading this article, it’s quite clear that humans or the rider aren’t always going to shut the doors appropriately, and the doors have to be latched and closed before the vehicle can operate again. So essentially, if someone will gets out of a Waymo.

I don’t know that people are leaving the door wide open, but maybe some people are closing the door, but a seatbelt’s getting caught in it, or the door’s not fully shutting. And so the Waymo and they walk away. And so the Waymo is basically sitting there going, oh, I can’t go anywhere until my door’s shut, and I have no way of doing that.

Which is a problem. And so I think Waymo is contracting you or working with this other app, I think it’s called Honk, where they basically send out a signal to tow companies or to, I don’t know who else can participate if it’s limited to tow companies or not, but peop it essentially caused someone using an app to come shut the vehicle door so it can continue operating.

Which is interesting in a lot of ways. I think one of the more troubling [00:10:00] things about the system is that it seems like a lot of the, they, now that we live in a world where everything’s monetized the prices that they’re paying people to go perform these services are very low.

And a lot of the tow companies are, we’re raising questions about that. But also this problem was, essentially. Created for Waymo by the fact that they are not producing vehicles that meet federal motor vehicle safety standards. They’re having to take their software, put it in vehicles that meet federal motor vehicle safety standards.

And the vast majority of motor vehicles out there that meet federal motor vehicle safety standards do not have automatic doors that are gonna shut themselves. So you’re totally relying on the human in that circumstance. I think a manufacturer like Zoox, for instance, in their funny little pods driving around those have automatic doors and won’t run into similar problems like this, although they will run into the toe issues.

Anthony: No, they’ll definitely, there’s no way to eliminate this problem because, like you said a seatbelt or something gets stuck between the [00:11:00] door closing and the door. Or someone drops something in there that gets jammed or, yeah, there’s a billion scenarios where. There’s no way to solve this without those dirty stinking humans.

Michael: You will eliminate some of the, I didn’t shut the door Hulk hard enough guys. Which sure. I’m guessing is the majority of the issue here, folks just not completely securing the door when they leave.

Anthony: I don’t know if you guys have experienced this with the the minivans with the doors.

You just kinda like tap on the handle once and it closes itself. Because I think I’ve been in, dozens of these and I think I’ve only experienced one that actually works. These things are constantly broken. Yeah. So I don’t, yeah, I don’t, yes, maybe technology can eliminate 99% of these issues, but there’s that 1% where honk is gonna be honking for somebody to come fix my robot.

That’s my thinking. Let’s jump into a, the last Waymo story. God, I hope it’s the last Waymo story. Waymo’s [00:12:00] suing the city of Santa Monica. And Santa Monica’s suing Waymo. San Francisco had a similar problem where Waymo set up a 24 hour charging parking lot station and the vehicles as they go in there, they start honking and beeping all three hours of the night.

And, hey, look man, you living in, you live in Santa Monica, not gonna put up with noise. Of course not. And reasonably so and they sued the city. They sued Waymo saying, Hey, you guys are creating a public nuisance. And Waymo’s nah, we told you about it. And so now it’s gotten so some Santa Monica residents quoting from, I believe it’s also another Washington Post article quoting cars beeping as they reverse into and outta spots overnight.

And this has caused some angry residents took to blocking the path of the driverless vehicles, blocking the driveways into the charging stations, and placing orange cones in the area to hinder their routes and create backups of practice. Several have called Stacking the Waymo’s. My most upsetting part of this stacking the Waymo’s is that Fred Perkins did not come up with this, [00:13:00] or even a better moniker.

Moniker. There we go. Stacking the Waymo’s. I love it. Mike, would you have a better title to come up with this?

Michael: This whole situation is troublesome because it essentially shows that Waymo doesn’t believe it needs to be a good citizen, right? They’re keeping the residents of this area awake.

They’re bucking the hell out of them all night too. And so when the city steps in, just like they’d step in, if your neighbor’s having a loud party next door Waymo saying, oh, you can’t do that to us. We’re gonna sue you and prevent you from enforcing nuisance laws. It’s not like the city is coming in and saying, your vehicles are unsafe and you can’t operate them or doing something that’s outside of what a city might normally be doing.

This is a very long time, city power to enforce nuisance laws and, anything like this is clearly an issue that a city needs to be regulating and not, the state, not a, the [00:14:00] federal government, and this is one of our concerns around the AV industry’s attempt to preempt local localities from regulating them in any way.

This is Waymo saying, your local laws don’t apply to us even if we’re not being a responsible citizen. It’s, it’s troubling, and I think this is what they’re going to try to do in any city they’re in, is, try to get their way, try to, put their priorities over the priorities of the citizens, of those localities.

And I think we’ve seen that play out in San Francisco and in other areas. But this is something that has to be resolved, right? How can either you need to move your charging places or to areas where they’re not in densely populated residential zones. Or you need to find a way to make your cars, charge themselves silently without all these beeps and all the other stuff that’s involved.

It seems like eliminating the beeps when they pull into a charging [00:15:00] area wouldn’t be all that hard of a fix yet. Yet Waymo seems to be claiming that it’s some kind of really burdensome. Task to make their vehicles quieter. And I just don’t buy that. I just think Waymo doesn’t want a locality telling them what to do, and they’re trying to set a precedent here where they have more power in the areas where they deploy than the actual officials from those areas.

Fred: Just by the way, ultrasonic alerts and ultrasonic sensors on the cars would allow them to beep each other until they’re happy, while not annoying any of the human beings who are in the neighborhood. Just a thought.

Anthony: I checked with Waymo’s chat ai and it said that Waymo’s are not beeping.

They’re producing a pleasant musical f note. Oh, hopes are good for your health. They’re, so every time you hear a Waymo beep, it is just saying f. Okay. But Michael, you pointed out that yeah, Waymo’s gonna fight this in cities all over the place. And how are they gonna fight it? [00:16:00] Through lobbying, which consists of what?

Making donations to politicians. But you know how you can fight back. Yep. We’re living in a new world, a new time. It’s 2026. Holy cow. We made it. You can go to auto safety.org, click on donate and start the new year fresh. That’s right. Wipe off that dirty Waymo smell. And we’ll we’ll begin anew.

Fred: I was just thinking that, when the Waymo signs an FA lot of humans say f too.

There you go. Thanks for playing. Okay, sorry. That could have been funny in the right context,

Kia and Hyundai Theft Issues

Anthony: let’s let’s do a follow up to a story which we’ve covered in the past which is really one of our big stories of 2025, a little company called Kia Hyundai. And I think this was 20, this might’ve even a 2024 story as

Michael: well.

Oh, this was going, yeah. This started in, in, pretty soon after the pandemic began, I think in 2021, late 2021 when we started seeing the theft occur.

Anthony: Yeah. So just to remind listeners, this is when all the kids were [00:17:00] on the TikTok and said, wait a second, I can use a USB cable to steal a car, and I watch kids outside my window do this.

It was amazing. According from an article in the Associated Press, automakers Hyundai and Kia must offer free repairs to automakers Hyundai and Kia. That’s retailers, Sears and Roebuck. It’s funny.

Michael: Yeah. They get through pretty big pains to pretend that they’re separate companies.

Anthony: So anyway, so quoting automakers, Hyundai and Kia must offer free repairs to millions of models under a settlement announced Tuesday by Minnesota’s Attorney General. Led an effort by dozens of states that argued that vehicles, that the vehicles weren’t equipped with proper anti-fat technology, leaving them to vulnerable to thefts.

That’s great. We’re happy.

Michael: No, I’m happy that this occurred because it’s going to actually get a repair available on these vehicles that goes beyond the, software fix that’s not completely worked, that still has only reached, I wanna say [00:18:00] 60% of all Hyundai and Kias that are affected.

They’re gonna put, essentially, they’re gonna put, I think it’s like a a sleeve around the ignition area that prevents, I think it’s a zinc sleeve that’s intended to stop thieves from cracking open the ignition cylinder and starting the car. So it’s an actual. It, it may not be a complete fix, right?

I don’t know how hard it is to break a zinc sleeve. It’s gonna make it a whole lot harder, maybe along the lines of the club, maybe even harder for thieves to, to quickly and easily steal these vehicles. And, particularly the teenagers whose attention spans are probably a little less than a professional thief.

But the problem here is that it took this long, right? We’re sitting here four years or so after this problem began. We’ve seen, dozens of deaths and injuries to a lot of teenage unlicensed drivers. Because of this problem. And the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration [00:19:00] just shrugged at it.

I argued that they have a duty here because they’ve created this problem, right? They gave manufacturers the option to either put an engine, IM mobilizer into the vehicles, or. To do a basically parts labeling to prevent theft. And Hyundai and Kia, unlike every other manufacturer, chose the labeling route, didn’t put engine mobilizers in as part of the settlement.

Now they’re required to do that going forward. They were already doing that. They’re also required to pay $4 million or so of restitution. I don’t know how that’s possibly gonna cover the thousands of vehicles that were ultimately stolen. But in even more than that, you’ve got to ask questions about, NITSA in many respects created this problem by not requiring Im mobilizer on vehicles sooner, which they should have done.

I believe those were required in Canada and a lot of other. Countries but not in the United States. And also, why was this not elevated [00:20:00] to a defect investigation? Why did NHTSA feel that it couldn’t perform or order the companies to do a recall a exactly like this? Why are the states cleaning up NHTSA’s mess Here is a big question, and I think that’s a question we need to ask, not just about this situation, but looking at, the autonomous driving industry now looking at Tesla, robo Taxii, looking at a lot of things that are going on, asking the question, why are we relying on the federal government to take on these tasks?

And at the same time, trying to preempt states from taking similar actions when it’s pretty clear at this point that the federal government is not going to be able to keep up with a lot of safety issues that are occurring.

Anthony: Michael, how do they get to choose to use a zinc sleeve on this? ’cause now I’m not a metal scientist and now is Fred, but I’m gonna lean on Fred here ’cause they’re using zinc because it’s dirt cheap, I imagine.

But zinc’s also weak. Can you just [00:21:00] put a little piece of stainless steel on it and eventually that zinc will just disintegrate.

Fred: If they put anything on it that’s a physical barrier, someone’s gonna cut through it in a few seconds with a power tool. So zinc is soft and weak compared to a lot of other metals.

I don’t think stainless steel would’ve solved the problem in any meaningful way.

Anthony: All right.

Michael: It’s ultimately, and, it’s not going to be foolproof. It is going to be a much better deterrent. I think clearly a better deterrent, I think, than the software. Supposed fix that doesn’t seem to be working.

Anthony: Who’s a fool? And I have proof, and this is a dark transition, I’m sorry.

Distracted Driving Dangers

Anthony: Quoting from The Guardian, the social me media creator who allegedly hit and killed a pedestrian as she hosted a live stream while simultaneously driving through a Chicago suburb has been arrested according to authorities.

I told you it was not a great transition. But what happened is some I think the technical term is asshole was live streaming while they’re driving. And [00:22:00] they’re, I don’t know, talking to their TikTok, people thought, Hey, I have a green light. They didn’t and they ran over pedestrian. What, which is horrible.

Horrible. What makes it even worse is this monster of a person then went on to TikTok and asked for donations that would support her taking mental leave amid a lot of shit going on. End quote. The quick takeaway is you’re driving, you’re behind the wheel, put your phone down.

Michael: I think another takeaway would be that we need to, is there not a way to prevent this from occurring when someone’s driving a car? I think that’s an issue that driver monitoring or effective driver monitoring systems could address at some point. Because clearly if you’re looking into a camera and interacting with an audience live, you are not.

There gotta be ways for the vehicle to detect. Whether it’s looking at your eyes or your movements, there’s gotta be a way, and this isn’t just an isolated incident and [00:23:00] we don’t know if this happened before because I’m sure there are people who have been recording videos while they’re driving and had crashes and they simply weren’t called right there they, there was an accident and the police may have never even looked at their phone or looked at their social media to see what they might have been doing at the time.

And for all we know, they aren’t filming with phones. They could be filming with other sources that, were never recovered from the crash. So I would go on a limb and say, this isn’t the first time this has happened. But it’s certainly an example of something that I think is happening a lot.

This is, I’ve seen recently a compilation of people who are streaming while they drive and having crashes. And it’s, this certainly isn’t the only incident of that. And it’s more stupid human tricks that. Autonomous vehicles are gonna solve for us in the future.

Anthony: Right. So this re relates to a, a serious question I ran across this weekend while driving is I’m looking at somebody if they’re live streaming or whatnot, they’re a dangerous person on the road.

You’re on the [00:24:00] highway and you see someone driving erratically, dangerously. What do you do? Is the correct move grappler? Yeah, the grappler, I agree, is the correct move, but my wife won’t like, get it installed. But seriously, what do you do? Is it, do we speed up and get away from them or do we slow down and wait for them to disappear into the distance?

Michael: I would always say slowing down is better. And contacting the authorities there’s no harm in being a tattletale when somebody could die.

Anthony: Okay. Brad, what would you do?

Fred: I would go into a larger context and say that the automobiles should be designed with all of their computing capability.

To alert people when it’s being driven recklessly or dangerously. We’ve talked about this before. If it’s being driven by a drunk, it should flashlights or be horns or do something so that the pedestrians and the other people on the road can perform a defensive action. In this case, like this poor guy was [00:25:00] walking across the street with a couple of bags of groceries and had the light and she just plowed into him, but had the car given some alert, the odds are pretty good that he would’ve responded to that alert and, stayed stayed alive.

So I, I think we need a shift in emphasis from protecting exclusively the people inside the car to protecting the people outside of the car. This bleeds over into the AV world as well, but. I’m answering your question broadly, and I,

Michael: And I think that even there’s an even better, way to address this that might, that not, might not even involve this specific type of thing that might not even involve, auto manufacturers having to add new technology to their vehicles.

But it’s the platforms that are allowing for this type of video to be posted in the first place or filmed. Why aren’t they cracking down the dangerous behavior? Because if you’re, if you know you’re not allowed to [00:26:00] post videos of yourself online, they’re gonna demonetize you. They’re going to remove your video from their platform.

If you post something like that, then there’s absolutely no incentive to do that in the first place. And I think that would be the quickest way by far to eliminate this type of behavior.

Anthony: Alright, listeners right in. Tell me what you do when you see some erratic behavior on the highway. ’cause my tendency is always to speed up.

Right next to the person. Flip them off and then speed in front of them and then, and break check ’em. Nope. No. Michael’s not happy with that response at all. I

Michael: just don’t believe you because you probably you wouldn’t be alive doing that in New York for 50 years,

Anthony: right? No, I would not. Hey, you don’t reveal my true age.

I, I mean acting roles. No. Yeah. Let’s that

Michael: would make you, what? 66? Since you didn’t get your license until 16

Anthony: so let’s let’s, I think it’s time listeners, you’ve been with us this long.

Gaslight Roundup of the Year

Anthony: Let’s do our Gaslight Roundup of the year. We wanna do this as our skid mark award for we [00:27:00] each choose somebody or something.

Yeah. That does it. And so I’m gonna. Low hanging fruit gonna win right off the bat. Elon Musk, everything he says, and I’m gonna be very specific, so he said there’d be over 500 robo taxis operating in the Austin area by the end of the year. They currently have a dozen, and they’re not even autonomous ’cause they’ve got somebody sitting behind the wheel.

And then they got people Yeah. At least in the

Michael: vehicle and maybe back in the remote operations center.

Anthony: Exactly. So they’ve got, they’re paying two humans to drive you around. That’s their business model. Yeah. They’ll get subsidies for this somehow. So Elon Musk, that’s my skid mark of 2025.

Michael Brooks. Yeah,

Michael: I, you left out a lot of Elon from this year. I think that those stuff, oh, limited time

Anthony: come on,

Michael: was pretty, it was pretty good reason to, to hand him the award immediately as well. I guess his funding of the presidential campaign occurred in 2024, so that doesn’t necessarily come up this sheer, but yeah,

Anthony: that’s not really [00:28:00] auto safety related.

Michael: Really

Anthony: It’s not a Yes, it got, okay. Yeah. I could have, yes, we could spend the next 12 hours doing Elon. Ew.

Michael: Yeah, we really could. And that’s unfortunate that he has that type of prominence in this industry. The I, Elon would be my number one nominee. I’d also, with a nod to the Trump administration generally for their support of some of those activities that have, resulted in NSA’s budget being cut at a time when, they had reached staffing levels that were far more appropriate to accomplish their jobs.

The new administration came in and with the help of Doge essentially. Fired a significant percentage of the agency. I’ve seen estimates that as high as 25%. It’s, and particularly in areas like automated safety, where the agency needs more help than ever now. And beyond that, there’s a continual kind of barrage of nonsense coming [00:29:00] from either Trump or Secretary Duffy around transportation issues when they’re telling us one thing when the opposite is oftentimes true which, is the.

Centerpiece of what gaslighting is. So they’re on my list as well as, I our newest entry in, in, in is Bernie Moreno, Senator Bernie Moreno, who as a former car dealer, is intent on preventing safety features from becoming standard in vehicles. And, it, which is a horrible position because ultimately all that does is prevent technology from good safety technology, from making its way into everyone’s car.

And it, it becomes something that only rich people have because they could afford it at as at an option. So he is certainly in there as well. I also wanted to nominate AI generally, and without going into depth on that, because we’ve talked about it ad nauseum even at the start of this episode AI is probably the biggest [00:30:00] gaslight that exists in America at this point.

I know Fred’s got some.

Safety as a Priority: A Critical Examination

Fred: I’m going with anybody who says safety is our first priority,

Anthony: so I’m gonna jump in there. So you’re going back to safety. Safety is our first priority. I love it. Yeah. Wait, safety is our priority. Present company.

Fred: Accepted present. Company accepted.

Anthony: So that means you’re going back to Ford Motor Company and like the 19, when did they start doing that nonsense in the seventies saying

Fred: job one or

Anthony: something?

Quality. That was quality. Quality. No, they did say safety, didn’t they? Safety is

Fred: job one. No, they said quality and clearly they’ve given up on quality since. But okay.

The Illusion of Safety in AV Development

Fred: So my, I have a two extensive list and I’ve got three particular companies that I’m using as a focus. But first, all AV developers say the safety’s their first or highest priority, but no AV developer has disclosed their safety requirements, their goals, key safety indicators or means of tracking progress.

No [00:31:00] developer has agreed to independent audit per any independent standards such as UL 4,600. That includes any normative statements. So a normative statement is any statement that says you shall do this.

So there are some standards or there are some documents out there that pretend to be standards. Most of them the product of the Automated Vehicle Safety Coalition. But in none of those documents does the word shall appear. So it’s it’s extensive smokescreen so they can pretend to be really attentive to safety while completely ignoring it.

No AV developer has embraced an affirmative safety definition saying what safety is. They all say something that safety isn’t. They say safety is the absence of unreasonable risk. What the hell does that mean and how do you measure that?

Anthony: It’s a broad slide rule.

Fred: No AV or Ride share operator [00:32:00] requires or reasonably offers the opportunity for customers to read and understand the terms of service, particularly relinquishment of customer rights before engaging the customer.

AV developers don’t disclose to regulators or customers what any of the residual risks are of their operating. So you’re operating lethal machinery, potentially lethal machinery in public without any physical safeguards. That’s a dangerous proposition. It wouldn’t be allowed in any other industry, but they blithely go ahead and do that and say safety is our number one priority.

Case Studies: Zoox, Tesla, and Waymo

Fred: A couple examples, Zoox pretends that they’ve met federal motor vehicle safety standards but they got called on that. So instead they applied for an extensive exemption from the MO safety standards. Using a section of the law that is not applicable under any other administration. So basically they made up a new [00:33:00] ruling that isn’t really a ruling that gives them what they want.

They they operate in Las Vegas under that F-M-V-S-S exemption without warning customers that it’s non-compliant with standard safety requirements. So I, I don’t think that’s consistent with safety as our first priority. Tesla designs and sells cars and trucks with hidden and practically inaccessible emergency door latch releases.

They design and sell vehicles to trap individuals inside of cars when the 12 volt power fails, even when the car’s on fire, with no way for outside persons to rescue the passengers they deploy driving automation technology that can dangerously be used even outside of the intended design limits. The advertise unsafe use of its driving control systems, force customers to sue and prove product to defect in the event of a crash and pay cash settlements for lethal [00:34:00] defects rather than engineering fixes as the price of doing business.

So that’s inconsistent with safety as our first priority. Waymo communications breakdown can paralyze the entire service area. They force customers to accept binding arbitration, first terms of service. They operate its vehicles, operated its vehicles for years with software that did not stop for school buses loading or unloading children.

It’s still not clear that they’ve fixed that even though it’s been called to their attention. They refuse to stand down operations apart, custom regulators, even after repeated instances of illegal and hazardous behavior around school buses. Driving through deployed stop signs and flashing road lights upon killing cats and dogs.

They blame the animals.

Anthony: That’s, I’m sorry, that’s horrible for me to laugh, [00:35:00] but,

Uber’s Safety Failures and Legal Loopholes

Fred: That’s safety as their first priority, so it kill the animals, i’m gonna, I’m gonna also include Uber in this they don’t do any personal interviews for the drivers.

Anthony: Oh, this is horrible. This is a, we never specifically got to this, but there was a New York Times investigation that Uber didn’t do background checks on its drivers and basically showing that they’ve hired a lot of sexual predators and bad people and they’re just like, ah, it hasn’t happened in the last couple years.

They’re okay.

Fred: So they do some checks, but they don’t check driver records for civil penalties of any kind. So our president, who’s been convicted of sexually abusing a woman would not be allowed to, would be allowed to drive for Uber or for Lyft after he leaves office, which will hopefully be soon.

But it’s good to know he is got a second career in store for him. Uber has not developed improved screening [00:36:00] techniques. Just what Anthony said, despite long history of violence against passengers, including sexual violence, in fact, they say these are independent operators. We’ve had no control over them.

They’re not our employees. So they just wash their hands of all those safety issues.

Anthony: I wonder if they’ll try that, if AV companies will try that with their computer drivers. Oh, they don’t? Yeah. They’re gonna

Michael: start Are they? They’re gonna push back on the robots.

Anthony: Yeah. Be like, eh, yeah. The the Waymo driver doesn’t actually work for us.

They’re just an independent contractor.

Fred: That’s right. Some damn software developer did it. We have nothing to do with it. Again, going back to Uber, they force compliance with binding arbitration, first terms of service without requiring customer notification. Did I just say that I’m not listening? And now they’re configuring it.

So the, that the Uber is going to summon Waymo’s. So they’ve got cascading terms of service, all of which protect the companies. Instead of the passengers and Michael how is that gonna work? Do you any idea [00:37:00] you got terms of service for Uber that are horrible coupled with tombs of service for just, for Waymo that

Michael: are horrible?

I would just say good luck if you’re a consumer not being forced into a court of arbitration. Because you’re gonna be battling multiple minding arbitration agreements and your use after you agree to the user. Agreement.

Anthony: The only reason I summoned my Uber was to get into my Waymo so I can go to law school.

Fred: Hey, that’s pretty good. Finally for Uber, they refuse responsibility for injuring their customers if the injured customer has previously used Uber Eats.

Anthony: Oh,

Fred: terms of service.

Anthony: No, not even if the user has it. If their teenage daughter has in that case.

Fred: Again, a lot of evidence that. Safety is our first priority, is not really the ethos for these companies.

Clearly, operations are the first priority and return on capital is close behind, or I’m not sure which order that would be in, but [00:38:00] safety is clearly not the first priority. So that’s my nominee for the bullshit to the year award.

Anthony: That’s pretty good. Now, I was gonna, I was gonna be very magnanimous and have us all be winners this week, but Fred, you win because you made me laugh out loud.

So that’s how that goes. It’s about

Michael: time for Chrono. We have to give the award to somebody and Fred nominated multiple companies. Yeah, so it

Anthony: goes to Elon. It has to go to Elon. Elon. Oh man. Sorry,

Michael: Elon. We’re going to have that trophy to you sometime around quarter three next year.

Anthony: Yeah, there we go.

Good. But I’m gonna do a specific gas leak for this gas light for this week.

Regulatory Challenges and Industry Pushback

Anthony: Very specifically this week I’m gonna give it to Senator Ted Cruz because Senator Ted Cruz, he’s a man of the people. When he is not vacationing in

Michael: which

Anthony: people, I don’t know which people. Wolverine fan club people. Anyway, so he’s putting together an affordability hearing and where he wants to bring the heads of the three automakers, the US automakers to come there and he’s let me schedule at the [00:39:00] same time of their biggest trade show, which is just basically saying, I don’t expect anyone to show up and.

The fascinating thing is he asks for the head of Ford and GM in STIs, but not the head of Tesla, which is a US auto company. Instead he asked for the VP of engineering which is funny ’cause I guess he’s afraid of ketamine. The ketamine kid. And yeah.

Michael: It’s interesting that, I think that’s a big reason why they’re getting some pushback from, I think your bromance man Farley they’re not willing to come and appear for at the hearing when there’s not, they’re, you’re not requiring the CEO of Tesla to come in and talk about this stuff.

You’re letting them bring in their VP of engineering who probably has a little bit more to say on the matter, maybe, I think they, this is a lot of exercise in, in public relations here. They don’t wanna, appear to be less than knowledgeable on the subject they’re brought in to talk about.

But, you’ve [00:40:00] gotta think that A CEO knows a lot of things, but they’re not probably going to be the best. Witness when it comes to a hearing on the affordability of safety equipment. And it appears that Solanis and General Motors are also hesitant to commit to the hearing if Ford’s not going to commit.

And it doesn’t look like Ford’s gonna commit unless Elon shows up. So who knows what the status of that hearing is. It’s a hearing that never should have been set up in the first place. It’s set up around some of the nonsense that Bernie Moreno has been spouting about safety as a. A former and maybe current.

We’re not sure where his holdings lie in, in the car dealerships at this point. But it’s a very the entire hearing idea is very stupid. It has no basis in reality. Safety equipment is actually comparatively cheap when you consider the impact that it has on our economy and the benefits that it provides to Americans across the board economically and, physically from a [00:41:00] safety perspective.

So I’m sitting here hoping that the hearing, is a flop because it should have been and it was destined to be.

Anthony: Yeah. So all the automakers starting with Ford’s yeah, I’m not showing, but I, it’s really, it’s crews. You can, schedule this a different week.

Michael: Yeah, you just schedule it for a week when the Detroit Auto Show isn’t going on, that requires all of the CEOs and ev basically every higher up in the auto industry is going to be attending that.

It’s their Super Bowl week.

Anthony: It’s pretty crazy. And I’m not sure, I’m trying to look at how long this person’s the, vP of engineering at Tesla. The article that actually doesn’t specify which VP of engineering, ’cause they have numerous VP of Engineerings and their software engineering head and their a i engineering head, or only been on the job for less than a year.

I think it’s somebody who’s been at the company for a long time, but I can’t tell how long they’ve had that role. Not that it matters.

Michael: You ha you it’s Lars well, Lars more, I don’t know [00:42:00] who, I don’t know how long he’s been there,

Anthony: but he’s been at the company for a long time, but I don’t know how long he is had that role.

’cause Tesla just, they’re Putin’s government, some people get pushed out windows and we just keep replacing people all the time. Is that more, oh, maybe it’s more like Stalin. Oh, there we go. But let’s, before we jump into our our new Year’s resolutions, let’s do a Tesla story since I mentioned it.

Tesla has a, and this is just a fun, cute little story about Tesla has put out their fees now for if you dirty their roboto taxis. So if you get sick inside the Robotaxis, it’s 150 bucks, you spill your coffee or put in excessive dirt, it’s $50. I don’t think this necessarily is unreasonable. What I find unreasonable is the arbitrator of this is Tesla, and they’re just gonna assume, yep, we did, you did this, you caused this problem.

We’re gonna bill you right away. And if you disagree, good luck.

Michael: Good luck. What are you gonna do? Are you gonna, go to small claims court? Can you get a small claim court if you’ve agreed to their [00:43:00] arbitration provisions? We don’t know. It’s doubtful. Yeah. And do you really think you’re gonna get a fair hearing in a, a court of arbitration and what, how many people are actually gonna avail themselves of that?

Who knows? I, personally, if someone is vomiting or doing worse in a, an automated vehicle. They deserve a significant charge, right? You can’t blame the companies for charging them. I think it’s the enforcement of this, these vehicles aren’t going back to a centralized location where a human is checking them out, I don’t think constantly and in between drive.

So how are they going to determine that one passenger did X, Y, and Z versus another? Are they monitoring you by video and everything you do? Like Waymo seems to be doing? We, not really sure, but there’s a lot of I don’t think there’s enough here to understand how the enforcement is going to take place, how they’re gonna make these determinations, and how they’re going to ensure that people aren’t [00:44:00] unfairly charged and that when someone is unfairly charged, that they have a way to dispute that fairly

Anthony: well.

This will come up in our future. In the next couple weeks our terms of service episode. Ooh. And then maybe in that period of time, Tesla will let us know who pooped in the Tesla. How do you decide? Was it my poop in the Tesla, who’s like

VO: a children’s book?

Anthony: Exactly. Because my guess is it’s gonna be Elon always Elon.

And we’re gonna do genetic testing to find out this is 100 children.

Predictions for the Future of Autonomous Vehicles

Anthony: And with that, let’s jump to our predictions for the year 2026. I predict that humans will stop driving and AI will take us everywhere we go. The cost of energy will reach zero. Yeah. I got I don’t know. I think safety will become a, ah.

I don’t know. You’re struggling? Yeah, I got no, ’cause it’s not I don’t anything positive like I, I think Nitza, there’ll be seven people left by the end of the [00:45:00] year.

Michael: You’re not Nostradamus. I could predict some things. Pretty similar. There’s one thing that I would put a lot of money on right now and is that Ford is gonna have fewer recalls next year in 2026 than it did in 2025.

They didn’t just break the record and they blew it out of the water for the number of vehicle recalls. The, this is the last day of the year, but the recalls still haven’t all floated in. Usually that takes about a week into the new year before we’ve seen every recall that was filed in 2025.

But I think right now Ford is in the low to mid 100 and forties. I believe the largest number of vehicle recalls prior to this year was less than half of that by, by a single manufacturer. And that was Ford as well, wasn’t it? I think Ford was up there. Yeah. It could have also been Forest River, which is an RV company.

It has an inordinate large number of recalls every year. But this is, the, this is the year where Ford kind of went back and did all of that work. I think a significant portion [00:46:00] of the recalls that they performed this year were actually rere recalls. So they were redos of recalls that didn’t quite meet standards.

And so the, in some respects, it looks like they’re gonna have to go down significantly next year. So that’s probably the easiest prediction of the year. Another prediction would be, and I don’t think any of us could disagree with this, is that, the robo bullshit’s gonna continue unabated.

We’re gonna continue to hear nonsense comparing human and robot drivers with without sufficient data to support those comparisons. And we’re gonna continue to see these companies push back on any and all regulation, whether it’s at the city and state level, up through the federal level. And the other thing that’s really on the rise and is becoming a significant concern is manufacturers.

Pushing convenience technology over safety technology. We’re seeing all this hype around hands off, eyes off features that don’t promise any safety, and in fact, in many cases, [00:47:00] make us worried the opposite’s going to happen. While these same companies are stalling on technology like automatic emergency braking, which should be going into vehicles now.

Speed limiting devices, which should be. They just already been going into vehicles in Europe for a number of years and America has decided to do nothing there, even though speeding is one of the major contributors to death and injury on our roads. Impairment prevention tech is basically the driving subject for that crazy cruise in Moreno hearing.

And things like vehicle to infrastructure, vehicle to vehicle technology that have long been delayed and offer some pretty awesome solutions for safety. And even beyond that, we’re seeing, simple things. Rear seatbelt warnings, manufacturers are. Still trying to get those rules overturned.

And e even simpler things like, workable door handles that we’ve been talking about a lot lately. So while manufacturers are focused on these bright shiny objects that they can sell at [00:48:00] an option for to make lots of profits off consumers or even sell via subscription, they’re continually balking at getting safety equipment into cars that can actually have a significant and huge impact on people’s lives versus a few moments of convenience.

So that’s something I predict will continue to occur this year, is that manufacturers are going to. Pump convenience over safety. And then, finally the gap between the uni, the US as fatality and injury rates versus those in the rest of the world is going to continue to widen this year because we are not getting this stuff into vehicles and we’re not requiring manufacturers to do this.

And that’s my 2026 predictions.

Anthony: Before we pass it over to Fred, I have one prediction. Tesla’s robotaxis service will not expand it, it will stall at all. Stall by one,

Michael: two vehicles.

Anthony: Nope. I think it will keep operating in Austin. No one will use it. [00:49:00] It will slowly fade away and Elon will say it never existed.

Let’s focus on robots. I think that will be the case. I think if Alphabet’s stock falls. 10% over 2026, which I don’t think it will. I think shareholders will put massive pressure on shutting down Waymo as they realize that there’s no way for it to make money within the next decade, and it’ll just keep causing them to set money on fire.

Bold predictions. I know. I think the Tesla Robax thing dead. Not going further. Red Perkins.

Fred: My prediction is that at least one regulatory authority is going to come to our website, look at the checklist and say, this is a great idea and a great way to hold this developer’s feet to the fire to make sure that we’re actually going to protect our citizens, rather than just give a blank check to this bullshit [00:50:00] being presented as pseudo truth.

That’s my prediction.

Anthony: I’d like to thank in advance the safety regulators of Sweden for going ahead and doing this.

Fred: I don’t wanna be exclusive, anybody would, somebody’s gotta be the first. A lot of people would be willing to be the second, but somebody’s gotta be the first. And you know who you are out there in our listener community.

We’ve got seven more to cover here. Should we jump right into that?

Anthony: I think

Fred: let’s,

Anthony: Let’s save them off. Let’s just jump into recalls. We’ll save them for the New Year’s, but new listeners. I also have another prediction. I have a prediction that you’ll want thicker hair clearing your skin.

And one way to possibly do that, that I’ve heard is you go to auto safety.org and you click on donate and it makes your your teeth shinier and your posture. Straighter auto safety.org. Click on donate.

Final Thoughts and Recalls of 2025

Anthony: And now let’s do our final recalls of the year 2025. Are we ready for it? [00:51:00] First up this is the easiest job in the world.

Ford Motor Company, 45,047 vehicles, the 2025 to 2026 Ford Mustang Mock E on affected vehicles A headlight assemblies, L-D-C-M-B may fail. A failed L-D-C-M-B will result in that headlamp assemblies, high beam, low beam position lamp, daytime running lamp and turn single operation becoming inoperative in operating inoperative Lighting features may result non-compliance with F-M-B-S-S 1 0 8.

That’s not good, but what is L-D-C-M-B? The, oh, I’m looking at it. The light admitting diode driver control module B. That’s a mouthful.

VO: Yeah, I

Michael: mean, this one’s a, I think they’re throwing the, it looks like they haven’t been able to determine what the root cause of this is yet, so it’s gonna be a while before owners are able to fix this.

Ford is predicting that they’re [00:52:00] gonna have an over the year software deployment available in April of 2026, because it’s a few months, and, it’s something that owners need to be aware of. This doesn’t appear like it’s happening in, every Mustang Mach key out there, but it is happening to a few here and there is a problem that they can’t identify.

So owners should be heavily aware of this, that their headlights may not be operable at so times, which is, an incredibly unsafe way to drive a vehicle. Hopefully. It looks like this is impacting not just your headlights, but also some of the other lamps in the vehicle. Concerning and not going to be able to be fixed for a few months,

Anthony: but it does not affect the rear view camera. Next up, no Hyundai 51,587 vehicles. The 2022 to 2024 Hyundai Tucson. An optional OEM trailer wiring harness accessory designed for towing applications in the specified vehicles may have been installed in a vehicle location susceptible to water [00:53:00] ingress.

Wait, so this is an optional, this is interesting ’cause this is an optional oh. It’s

Michael: If you get the tow package,

Anthony: I got it. It is a tow package. And this will affect your stop lamps. Oh.

Michael: It, it impacts your stop lamps, but it also can cause electrical, short and fire. Pretty concerning.

It looks like they got this, from a from some dealers ’cause it’s ha happened in their Speak Up for safety program, which is something that’s only come into play in the last couple of years at Hyundai since they opened their safety center. But it looks like owners are gonna have a fix sometime in February, mid-February.

And until then, owners that they say you can continue driving the vehicle, but they re recommend parking them outside and away from structures until they have the recall remedy. So be aware of that. If you own a 22 to 24 Hyundai Tucson with the trailer package do not park it in your garage for at least the next couple of months.

Anthony: What kind of car is it? [00:54:00] Isn’t it? I thought a Tucson was a sedan. No, a truck. Yeah. Okay, that makes sense because I was like, who’s putting a trailer package on that sedan? Next up Mercedes-Benz 169 vehicles, the 2022 to 2023 Mercedes-Benz EQB 3 54 matic the EQB 300, EQB two 50. And they determined that certain of these, they have a risk of fire, of the high voltage battery due to a combination of certain production vehicle use conditions and internal short circuit of a battery cell and the high voltage battery may occur, which may lead to risk of fire.

So this is an electric vehicle, I assume? Yeah. Yep. There we go.

Michael: Electric battery. And at this point I’m not sure if they have still determined what the rule root cause is. They’re not really sure what’s causing these thermal events. So we’re a little unsure about when the recall is gonna be available.

But owners need to be very

VO: aware of this.

Anthony: Okay, and last up, we’re gonna do an investigation, which we rarely [00:55:00] do, but I’m gonna predict that this will turn into a recall next year. Let’s see, Tesla. That’s right. This is a pati, a defect petition. Petition Cite that the mechanical door releases hidden on, labeled and not intuitive to locate during an emergency.

The petition sites, the mechanical, oh, I already just said that. This is what we’ve talked about numerous times, especially in the rear seats, where sometimes when the 12 volt battery system dies, that to get out of the car you have to go underneath the seats, pull the seat maps up, or the release cables behind a speaker, or it’s hidden inside some pocket.

When Tesla’s response has been like we’ve updated instructions on our app. ’cause that’s what you do when you’re in a crash and you’re. Panicked as the car is subsumed in flames. Like police. Let me take out my, I gotta pull. I don’t have internet service. Why can’t I get? Aw man. This is a horrible engineering by Tesla.

Maybe the VP of engineering should testify. Yeah. [00:56:00]

Michael: Yeah. This is something that should be fixed. This, look, if this I don’t know. This is a circumstance where the fix would be. Fairly expensive. You’re going to have to I, I don’t know if NITSA would agree to something like, and Nitsa doesn’t have a lot of authority to tell Tesla what they’re gonna do with recall remedies.

That’s been a big problem with the autopilot recall as well. But, are they going to put, more, they’re gonna send stickers to customers that they can mark where these things are so that people can get out of the vehicles. Because I think the odds of Nitsa ordering or Tesla agreeing to is some type of retrofit that, that.

Basically creates a manual door handle in a more accessible place for these vehicles is very low because it’s going to be incredibly expensive. And ultimately if Tesla doesn’t agree to do that, NITSA would have a long, multi-year battle on their hands [00:57:00] trying to force Tesla to do a recall.

That included that type of, retrofit of the vehicle. Retrofits like that are rare in the recall world because they’re expensive and manufacturers fight them tooth and nail typically, even though they would be the safest course of action for consumers. So that’s certainly a concern.

Anthony: The better course of action for consumers is don’t buy a Tesla.

VO: That works too.

Fred: Yeah, you’ve gotta acknowledge that the Tesla PERTs website says that they’re engineered for safety for everyone. Engineer to be mowing the safest cars in the world, helping to protect every passenger in every seat. So clearly they’re going to embrace this particular requirement and fix all the doors so nobody else dies due to being cooked alive in a fire.

VO: That’s very what would you say a

Michael: positive look at it, Fred. I don’t know that’s gonna happen. [00:58:00]

Anthony: Oh, this is how we end 2025.

Fred: It’s gotta be truth. It’s on the internet.

Anthony: Hi listeners. Thank you so much for sticking with us for another year. This has been our fourth year of doing this.

Oh my God. That’s been over 200 episodes. If I could do the math better in my head, closer to two 20. I think so many of you been with us for so long. Thank you for listening, supporting, telling all of your friends, sharing, donating, making our fight worthwhile till next year, happy

Fred: New Year everybody.

Keep it safe and keep it fun. Bye-bye.

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