AV’s:  An Attractive Nuisance

Introduction and Podcast Overview

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.

Tesla Controversies and Public Reactions

Anthony: Hey folks, don’t set a Tesla on fire. I know you want to, they can just do that themselves. Welcome to another episode of the Center for Autosafety podcast. Yeah.

Michael: Are you referring to that? Was that a, was that an attack in Vegas or something like that? I think I briefly read about that yesterday.

Anthony: Yeah.

People apparently if you do a Nazi salute, your customers and potential customers turn against you and they respond by, it looks like they’re setting some Teslas on fire and smashing windows at Tesla’s dealerships. There’s no need to do that. Just [00:01:00] Don’t buy the things, or as Do you think

Michael: those folks are doing that because they don’t think that autopilot and full silk driving are up to snuff?

Or is it, a different grievance?

Anthony: I think it might just come down to what the Anti Defamation League referred to as an unfortunate gesture. But, from there’s a little quote I came across this morning in the New York Times quoting Senator Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat, and former astronaut, said in a post on Twitter last week that he was selling his Tesla and getting a new vehicle.

He later said he had purchased a Chevrolet Tahoe. Oh. I bought a Tesla because it was fast like a rocket ship. And he would know, he wrote in the post, but now every time I drive it, I feel like a rolling billboard for a man dismantling our government and hurting people. Tesla, you’re fired! Yeah, he didn’t set anything on fire.

He didn’t break windows. If you want to protest, I get it. But, violence isn’t the answer. Today.

Michael: Yeah. And if you really want to do something positive and work, against some of the bullshit Tesla’s doing, you can always make [00:02:00] a donation to the friendly center for auto safety, right?

Anthony: Oh, I go to auto safety. org. Click on donate digging it. That’s the second time you’ve ever done that in the entire series. Love it. And Michael,

Fred: you’re going native. This is very interesting.

Anthony: Wow. Soon, Fred and I won’t even need to be here. Oh. That is not gonna happen, kids. Okay. All right, let’s let’s continue.

I listeners, brace yourself. I think the first 20 minutes or so, maybe a little longer, is gonna be a lot of Tesla focused. From an article in Politico there’s law firms representing Semble.

Government Oversight and Tesla’s Self-Driving Technology

Anthony: Families who’ve died or seriously injured in Tesla crashes involving their self driving urge the transportation department to continue scrutinizing the electric vehicle company because they are afraid that Elon, since he’s in charge, he’ll cut all that stuff.

Quoting from the article, We are deeply concerned that NHTSA’s oversight of autonomous vehicle systems may be weakened. Especially when it comes to the potential for that rule to be repealed. We fear that this [00:03:00] important measure is under threat given recent media reports and the influence of Dare Leader Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whose company operates the most widely used ADAS systems in America.

Oh, perfect timing for Michael to chime in and he’s run away. But he still had his headphones on so you heard the whole thing.

Michael: I did. There’s, there are a lot of victims and families of victims out there who’ve, family members have died in Teslas that were operating on either autopilot or full self driving and they know how important it is.

for the government to continue collecting data on this. We talk a lot about level two, level three, this supervised autonomy where there’s really just no widely established scientific basis for how these systems are supposed to be able to work and keep the human involved at the same time.

So there’s, there are just the systems that [00:04:00] are being created by manufacturers are all over the place and how they monitor drivers. And how they ensure drivers don’t become complacent and continue to watch the road, but the and really the only way that NHTSA and the government have a way to exercise any oversight of this was the standing general order, which collects.

or requires manufacturers to report all crashes involving this kind of technology that was set up in 2021. We have expected it to be killed under the Trump administration because of not only just Ilan’s presence, but also because of just the fact that it is a, an order that was created by the administrator of NHTSA that can be rescinded at any time.

It’s not a rulemaking that the agency would have to go back and dot a lot of I’s and cross a lot of T’s to get rid of. It’s something that they could suspend at any moment. So having had an acting [00:05:00] administrator for a month now, I thought it might already be gone. But on Monday, when I click through to the NHTSA website on the SGO.

They had updated the data through February crashes. So it means it’s still running. The data is still being reported. And the data sets are still being made public. So there’s good news there. Although, we’re still the standing general order on a death watch because we expect at some point that this administration is going to get rid of it along with a lot of other rules that Try to rein in some of the what automakers might call innovation, we call unsafe in many respects, but they’re willing to put it on the roads because it makes them money while it only threatens consumers.

So we’re, we remain concerned along with the victims and their families that this administration is going to do bad things, not just to the standing general order, but in the area of autonomy, partial autonomy as well.

Fred: Hey, Anthony, I got a question for you. If they were building a piggly wiggly in your neighborhood, how [00:06:00] close could you get to the actual construction site?

Anthony: I don’t, in New York, I can get up to the fence line. I don’t know. Oh, they have a fence

Fred: line around it? Why do they have a fence line around it?

Anthony: Because of a case in the late 1800s where kids fell in. I’m making that up, but probably. Yeah, they put fences around it. And in New York City, they have, part of the regulations is the offenses, they have to have a little windows, little peep holes in it so you can pop in and see it.

But yeah, Isn’t it

Michael: An attractive nuisance or something like that? Sorry, I’m reaching into my

Anthony: legal terminology,

Michael: but it’s something that you would expect people to be attracted to and want to do, but yet it has a danger that they can’t really recognize and that, that makes it need to be protected.

Fred: Okay. I’ve been in lots of factories. Let me interrupt. I’ve been in lots and lots of factories and whenever there’s dangerous machinery. There’s always some kind of barrier around us so that only people who are specially trained and are qualified to work within that environment are [00:07:00] able to access the dangerous machinery.

Safety Concerns with Autonomous Vehicles

Fred: Michael, I have a question. How is it that AVs Which are dangerous machinery are allowed to operate in public with no safety barriers or no safety provision to keep the public away from them. These are clearly dangerous. They’re clearly not immune from danger to the public. Is it just because people started seeing cars a hundred years ago?

And, they were driven by people and they got used to them. And have we just allowed these Vehicles through incrementalism to just creep into our society. These would all be, these are dangerous vehicles. They’re dangerous machinery. They should have barriers like any other dangerous machinery that the public can access.

Anthony: I think full self driving should be just referred to as an attractive nuisance.

Michael: I when you have a backdrop [00:08:00] of all of these companies making billions of dollars and lobbying to ensure lobbying in every state and federally and locally to ensure that rules aren’t put in place under the guise that all innovation is good.

All innovation that makes us money is a great thing. And they need. to be supported is essentially their philosophy. Then you run into this problem. And functionally the American public becomes a test bed or we all become Guinea pigs in that system. You could make a similar argument for non vehicle related issues like, YouTube or Twitter or TikTok, we’re unleashing these.

Supposedly awesome innovations on the public without having any idea of the negative impacts they’re going to have. And then when it comes time to regulate them, the people behind them have so much money that they can hire a billion lobbyists and suppress any type of meaningful regulation. I think this is going on across our society in a number of areas beyond vehicles.

Anthony: I think all innovation is good was [00:09:00] the sales pitch for the Dalkon Shield, wasn’t it? See, I can jump into obscurity of tort law too.

Fred: Hey Anthony, one aside here. My sister listened to the podcast last week and she said she thought you were funny. So I got in a big argument with her, I just wanted to pass that on.

How do I delete

Anthony: Fred from this podcast? Alright, that’s good.

Michael: You can do that. There’s a button in Zoom.

Anthony: Yeah, I don’t know how that button works. Last time I did that, it was hands clapping.

Regulatory Challenges and Industry Influence

Anthony: Michael, these rules that we’re talking about here, because I’m going to focus us back, is this related to the crash data?

Because we have an article from FreightWaves. com. Everyone listens to FreightWaves. com, and I’m going to quote from it. Jonathan Morrison Who has been nominated to be the administrator of NHTSA. Is he now the administrator?

Michael: He’s acting, sir. He’s not been, he’s not been confirmed.

Anthony: Okay. He was the chief counsel at NHTSA during the first Trump administration when the agency had allegedly been involved in suppressing key crash [00:10:00] data.

So this proposed rulemaking published in April 2023 during the Biden administration concluded that the cost to the trucking industry of such a requirement, reporting crash data and ADAS systems, estimated to climb as high as 1. 2 billion Outweighed life saving benefits.

Michael: So there was a underride basically, heavy trucks.

There was a proposed rule issued by the administration that wanted to get underride guards onto heavy trucks. You’ve probably seen these. They can really prevent bad outcomes and crashes where vehicles run underneath. Moving semi you can imagine what happens there. So there was a studies conducted by NHTSA in, during the Trump administration, 2019, 2020 time period where a lot of the.

The study just removed all of the information or all of the data pertaining to [00:11:00] pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorcyclists, or vulnerable road users, removed all that from the study. And so the Biden administration comes in and relies on this study, which is clearly flawed in order to put out its proposed rulemaking, which ultimately had a far lower number of life saving benefits included than it could have had the initial study been conducted properly.

So that’s essentially the issue here.

Anthony: Okay. So I misspoke. I thought this was about ADAS related stuff and it is not.

Michael: No, this is about heavy trucks. And, there have been a very dedicated group of side underride guard advocates who had been working on this for many years. A lot of them are victims or family members of victims.

And when NHTSA did this. This wasn’t, there was a, there was, I think there was a pretty good pro publico article that came out on it, but also, IHS and the national transportation safety board, both criticized NHTSA for not including that data in, in the rulemaking. [00:12:00] And criticize, Both the Trump administration for not including the proper data in the study to begin with, but also the Biden administration for crafting a rulemaking around that.

They should, they both bear pretty significant responsibility for moving forward without the facts. So it’s concerning and, I think This article is really a warning to what could be going on, right now over at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and then the DOT generally where, you know, when you want to, when you put a rule making out that’s going to impact industry and, basically increase their costs to some extent, you also have to show.

that you’re going to have a lot of benefits that are going to far outweigh the cost to industry. You’re going to have a lot of public benefits. You’re going to prevent deaths. You’re going to prevent injuries and everything that comes along with that. So when you. If you go into the study, years before you do a rulemaking, if you infiltrate the research side of the DOT [00:13:00] and the studies don’t show great benefits, then the chances of a regulation being promulgated that can succeed are lower.

And the industry knows this. That’s why, the American Trucking Association has been implicated in this debacle along with the NHTSA Research Department. So it’s troubling. And also, I think it’s a warning about what’s happening on the ground right now at NHTSA, and the attack we’ve seen already on some of the research areas of NHTSA by Doge and the Trump administration.

Fred: And

Michael: so what’s the going price for a human life or DOT calculations? I think it’s, I think it’s right around 10 million right now for the federal value of life calculation.

Anthony: Wait, this is a real thing?

Michael: Yes.

Anthony: Why are you both so nonchalant about this? Yes, of course. It’s a human life. 10 million.

Fred: Because that’s just how they do it.

That’s why I brought it up. A lot of people don’t recognize it when they do a cost benefit calculation for regulations. They say human life is worth X and the cost is going to be [00:14:00] Y. If Y is greater than X we don’t need to worry about these people. Oh, that sounds like a C from pipeline.

When you’re using

Michael: it, when you’re using it to, to support a regulation that is ultimately going to save lives, I would suggest it’s one thing when you’re using a calculation of how much a life is worth to determine whether you should conduct a recall on fuel tanks that are exploding in your cars, like GM did in the 80s and 90s, then it’s a whole nother ball of wax.

But either way, it’s, you’re worth more than you thought you were, Anthony.

Anthony: This segment of the show brought to you by the Ford Pinto. That’s right, the Ford Pinto. For only four dollars, we could have saved your life. Next. Mine was green. I’m sorry. Thank you for sharing Okay, so I apologize to listeners I thought there’s another ADAS related thing So I’m gonna bring us back into the world of automated vehicles This is from USA Today and this is fear [00:15:00] mongering that we’ve talked about quite a bit.

The fear mongering brought to you by the Alliance for Automotive Innovation. Ah. Quoting from this article, If the federal government fails to act to advance sensible A. V. policies, we will cede our leadership in this economically crucial sector to China! What? Multiple agencies and state regulatory regimes create inconsistent rules, risking safety gaps and eroding public trust.

The the lobbyists at the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, they want the U. S. Transportation Department to not require human drivers to operate self driving commercial motor vehicles, and allow self driving trucks to use cab mounted warning beacons. Instead of devices requiring device drivers to physically deploy them.

Basically what they want to do is say, Hey, this technology doesn’t work. We say, we know this cause they’ve admitted that they can’t get. Automatic emergency braking working above 28 miles, 30 miles per hour. But Hey, [00:16:00] let’s forget all of that. Let’s get rid of those pesky people with their smells and the safety things and their desire to.

live and replace them with technology that we’ve admitted doesn’t work. Let’s get it out there because China! Michael, we’ve talked about this nonsense of China before. Yeah,

Michael: just from the start, that was that’s definitely a gaslight candidate claiming that driverless cars are an economically crucial sector.

We’re still debating whether that’s even a thing. But beyond that, this was This is a letter that we haven’t seen yet because they haven’t made it public from what I can tell that was sent by the Alliance, but also signed on to by the Consumer Technology Association. You might know them from CES.

They are the acolytes of the all innovation is good movement as well as Fred’s favorite, the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association. So this is a large coalition of groups basically. Telling [00:17:00] the telling transportation secretary Duffy, we want you to get a national framework in place so that we don’t have to listen to these pesky states and localities where people are actually going to be impacted by this stuff.

And that’s what they want to do. They want to bulldoze something through the federal government that’s going to preempt. States and localities from being able to do anything about driverless vehicles when they decide to put them on their roads. Um, that’s about as there’s really not much else to it, right?

Fred: It’s also worth noting that the same companies are members of all of these organizations. So when three organizations try to create a groundswell of public opinion, it’s really one cohort of companies that are just coming at it three ways. This is a classic technique. of right wing propaganda to, generate bullshit from many directions and try to overwhelm the regulators with this pile of bullshit.

Anthony: So it’s just Jon Bozell. And [00:18:00] two friends, or is it just,

Michael: you can never put the blame directly on I don’t believe directly on the Alliance or the ABIA. They have people from those industries that are giving them the money to operate and telling them what to do. These are, this is Waymo.

This is Zoox. These are the companies that we talk about all the time that are behind this. As we’ve probably said before, these are just the mouthpieces for those manufacturers.

Gaslight of the Week

Anthony: I’m going to claim this as my Gaslight of the Week then. This nonsense that we must rule the self driving industry world.

And as a bonus, I’m going to throw on, still, forever, until they fix it, the business model of Waymo. The math still doesn’t work. Come on Google, stop letting money on fire. It will never be profitable. Hey, who wants to do a Gaslight next?

Michael: I’ve got one that’s coming from that area, right? My Gaslight came from an article that we haven’t discussed yet, but the Gaslight itself is [00:19:00] from the Zouk CEO which, Who said, we’re still putting the foundation in place and making sure that everything we’ve said we’re going to do, we’re doing.

Zuke CEO, you said in 2023 that you had certified your vehicles to federal motor vehicle safety standards. As reported by NHTSA in their December 2024 analysis of your vehicles last week, you haven’t certified them to the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards because they can’t be certified to the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards.

So that’s my quick, simple gas light of the week. Everything you’ve said you’re going to do, you are not doing. And that’s from a puff piece in the Wall Street Journal this week that we may or may not get to.

Anthony: Yeah we essentially just got to it. So the, my favorite part of this Wall Street Journal article that we’ll link to is there’s, this is the first time I see a front on view of the Zoox.

Every other picture I’ve seen is just the side view and it looks like a retro toaster. But from the front, you [00:20:00] look at it and go, Aw, this is something the kids at Caltech built. Because it does not look like a vehicle that anyone should get in. From the front, it looks incomplete. Incomplete, I think, is the safest way, but also it’s that still that weird design where you sit in and you’re staring at the passenger across from you.

I don’t know who wants to do that. I don’t know. I

Michael: think you could put a bag of microwave popcorn in there and get some good results there.

Anthony: Oh, microwave popcorn with your zooks. I love it. Mr. Perkins, gaslight us.

Fred: I guess like this week is a little bit complicated, but it’ll be quick. It’ll be quick. It traces the A.

V. industry from its origins in sea slugs. In in 1960s, a neuroscientist, Eric Kendall, discovered that the California Brown Sea here, a species of sea slug, with a very simple nervous system can be trained to ignore stimuli that would otherwise cause an untrained animal to recoil when trying to evade a predator.

They [00:21:00] found that they became habituated to the deadly threat and learned to ignore it. Donald Trump is doing much the same thing. He is just spewing out so many dangerous and illogical and irrational Statements all at the same time that we’ve all learned to ignore it. We can’t, we, we can’t take him seriously because we’ve only got so much serotonin to, and epinephrine and whatever those hormones are to wonder on I’m sorry, milkweed, dopamine

Michael: milkweed is for Monarch butterflies.

Fred: Oh, that’s right. I got confused. Anyway, Donald Trump has learned from sea slugs and the research on sea slugs how to manage public opinion relative to all of his nonsense. The AV industry does much the same thing. It’s actually presenting a real threat to the public as we discussed. It’s dangerous machinery.

From which the public is not excluded. In fact, the public is encouraged to use this machinery and to ignore it when it’s [00:22:00] in your presence. And they say that over and over again that their 1st priority is safety and they just keep spewing this to basically. Habituate people to the idea that even though the stimulus is there.

It’s not a problem I am giving this week’s gaslight nomination to the industry. Assuming that we all have the mental capacity to see slugs. And can be trained to ignore the very real threats that AV proliferation causes, both to the people who are in the vehicles, as well as vulnerable road users in the vicinity of these vehicles.

Anthony: Fred, was this the California brown sea slug? Is that what you said?

Fred: Let me see here.

Yes, that’s right. And it has a very simple nervous system. Now, that’s not to say that AV supporters Also have a very simple nervous system, but, some people might draw that conclusion.

Anthony: Because I, I believe that California Brown Sea Slug is the name of the makeup that Donald Trump wears on his face.[00:23:00]

Fred: It could well be, and it could be that his hair is in fact one of these Sea slugs that have been habituated to lie down in the face of danger. I’m not sure.

Anthony: It could

Fred: go a lot of different ways with that.

Anthony: Hey, listener, have you subscribed? Have you liked this? Have you given us five stars and an amazing review?

You have? Oh, have you told all your friends? I know you haven’t. Come on, do it now. Go to autosave. org. Click donate. Do it. Yeah. All right. Let’s jump back in to another. In the world of Tesla and Cybertrucks. Yeah, I don’t know if we could hear that but part of Michael just died. It was this death note.

And actually, hey supporters, your donations will help go to, we’re gonna buy acoustic paneling for Behind Michael, so it stops his weird reflections. Hopefully I’ll edit those out. But anyway this is from electric.

Tesla Cybertruck Issues

Anthony: co. I people are trying to get their Cybertrucks and there’s something they’re being told by Tesla delivery [00:24:00] specialists.

Don’t, aren’t job titles stupid? By Tesla delivery specialists, that there’s a containment hold on all Cybertruck deliveries. I have never heard of a containment hold before, but Michael, I’m gonna ask you to explain that a little bit more in a second. But this is, and we’ve talked about this because somebody did this on their YouTube channel.

Where the stainless steel from basically the front of your dashboard that goes above your door frame and wraps around just flies off. They have it glued on. Remember this is the bulletproof exoskeleton. Turns out none of that was true. It’s just glue and stainless steel. Maybe the glue isn’t holding.

But all of these things are just flying away. And, this is I don’t, I think this is related to the 11, 000 Cybertrucks that were recalled because of trim detaching, but this might be a new issue. But, before we jump to that, Michael, what does a containment hold, and have you ever heard of such a [00:25:00] thing?

Michael: That’s basically just them saying, federal law doesn’t allow us. to sell a vehicle while it’s under recall. So recalls have to be prepared before a manufacturer can sell the vehicle. And that’s essentially what it is. You’re basically it’s also called, typically called a stop sale.

Essentially when you’re a manufacturer, you put out a recall, you immediately notify all of your dealers across. the country that they have to stop sale of all of those vehicles because federal law prohibits the sale of a vehicle with a recall. There was a comment in the article that suggested that stop sales have to be publicly reported and it’s, I don’t think that’s correct.

The recall has to be reported and that’s a, and a stop sale is essentially a part of a recall. Anytime you have vehicles. I mean if you’re recalling vehicles in the current model year where you still have them on dealers lots Anytime you issue a recall and then you have to stop selling them immediately.

So that’s essentially what a containment Whatever they’re calling it is, [00:26:00] Tesla likes to come up with new words for old things.

Anthony: I don’t know if any of you’ve seen the 1980 movie starring Kurt Russell called used cars, because they did something that maybe Tesla should do is bumpers were falling off the car.

So they’d use bubble gum and. All the bumpers onto the car and sell it. Hey, Tesla, if you’re listening, just start chewing.

Michael: The kind of the, I guess the sad irony here is that, Tesla, Cybertrucks are falling apart on the outside, but when you really need them to come apart in a fire where you’re trying to get people out of them, it’s harder to get into to rescue folks.

So they don’t come apart at the right time, is what I’m saying. Ah,

Anthony: the right time, right after you’ve dropped 100, 000. That’s the right time.

The Problem with Heavy Electric Vehicles

Anthony: Before we go into the TAO, I want to jump to a topic that we regularly talk about called Big Fat Cars. No big heavy cars. Artist Technica has an article titled The 2025 [00:27:00] Cadillac Escalade IQ First First Drive.

460 miles on a single charge. And they’re talking about, hey, it’s an EV, 460 miles on a single charge because it weighs 9, 000 pounds. All battery, no brains. What? No,

Michael: it’s only a matter of time before we start seeing crash rates go up due to collisions between these gigantic passenger vehicles and smaller cars.

They’re not enough EVs out on the road quite yet for us to start seeing that, but. The weight disparity and the compatibility, the weight incompatibilities between these vehicles is going to end up killing a lot of Americans and nobody in the industry seems to want to talk about it. Let’s just pop a new Cadillac on top of the Hummer chassis and, make it weigh 9, 000 pounds and then mass market it to America because we’re going to make money off of it.

Few people die here and there. Nobody really cares. We can set the system up and we’re not going to get in trouble for it. [00:28:00] It’s just the latest example of the industry putting on blinders to a clear safety problem. If you want to put out electric vehicles, put them out in sedans, put them out in small SUVs, put them out in ways that are compatible with the current vehicle fleet, stop creating these monsters that really only appeal to assholes and stop putting them out on the road.

And because we know what the result is, physics is undefeated and people are going to die because of the problematic weights of these vehicles.

Fred: As bad as that sounds, it’s actually worse. Because this really reflects the cynicism of the automotive industry. People buy these things because they’re electric and they’re going to save the world, right?

They’re ecologically beneficial because they’re electric. But the size of these things ignores the fact that all of the materials that are going into it are actually difficult to get, expensive, and [00:29:00] environmentally destructive, and the benefits That might accrue from electric propulsion really are not there because these vehicles are so damn big.

Their size and the absolute mass of these overwhelms whatever ecological benefit you might otherwise accrue by driving an electric vehicle.

Anthony: But it comes with the Dolby Atmos system.

Fred: That’s important. I actually, I rented, I have to rent a car this week and they gave me a Jeep. Extreme Wagoneer or ultra Wagoneer or some damn thing.

Oh, God bless. God bless you. Oh, it’s such an embarrassment. I can’t stand it. It actually has a what do they call it? A running board. So climate. So it comes with a built in ladder, and you’re sitting 20 feet above the driveway, and Holy crap. I’m so embarrassed by this thing, but I didn’t know what the, I didn’t know what the Homer owners do.

They’re have to climb up to a similar [00:30:00] height, but it’s an interesting ethos that finds these things attractive.

Anthony: My wife just completed this week long safety training. And so she regularly up and down ladders. And now she’s Oh my God, I have to wear a helmet all the time. Like I need a hard hat.

This is. Dangerous stuff. So Fred, when you climb in and out of this vehicle, make sure you have a heart add on.

Fred: My skull is unusually thick, so I’m not sure that I need it for that.

Anthony: All right. Fair enough then.

Exploring the Concept of AI and Bullshit

Anthony: Hey, with speaking of thick skulls let’s go into the Tao. I like this one. It’s titled, is it AI or is it bullshit?

Fred: I do like that. It’s very, it’s and when we’re talking about bullshit, we have to go back to the. Princeton philosopher named Harry Frankfurt, who sadly died in 2023, who wrote the book called On Bullshit, which I’ve recommended before. We’ll put this link up again because everybody should really buy and read this book.

And when they talk about bullshit in this particular article, which is [00:31:00] by Springer Nature Link, and we’ll have the link to that as well. I’m going to quote just a couple of sentences from that quoting, We argue that these falsehoods and the overall activity of a large language models is better understood as bullshit in a sense explored by Frankfurt.

The models are, in an important way, different, indifferent to the truth of their outputs. And so when we’re talking about bullshit here, we’re talking about computer output that is completely indifferent to the output. Now this is completely indifferent to the truth of the output.

AI’s Indifference to Truth and Ethics

Fred: And if you think of it for a moment, Every computer output is indifferent to the truth because truth is a human concept, and people tend to anthropomorphize about computers and say they’re just like people, right?

So they lie, they cheat, they steal, they do all these things. None of that’s true. Computers just provide data, and people interpret that data in ways that fit their own ethos and the way that fits their own perception [00:32:00] of the world. They go on to say that we argue that Neither of these ways of thinking are accurate, insofar as both lying and hallucinating, which is part of what people talk about when AI comes up with crazy results.

They say that it’s hallucinating, they say that it’s lying. But anyway, insofar as both lying and hallucinating require some concern with the truth of their statements, whereas large language models are simply not designed to accurately represent the way the world is, but rather to give the impression that it is.

that this is what they’re doing. So that’s for large language models like chat GPT. But the same is true for AV controls that are using AI. The AI doesn’t care about what’s happening and it’s not interpreting things in the way a human would interpret them.

Human vs. AI Interpretation: A Critical Example

Fred: So let me give you an extreme example of that.

Okay. So a human seeing a baby crawling in the street or by the side of [00:33:00] the street in an unattended car seat, which actually happened to one of our listeners that was that was Jeanette’s problem. Anybody seeing that, any normal person seeing that, will take care of the infant first. They’ll stop and care for the infant.

They would call the police. They would make sure that the infant was taken care of, right? So what the person driving the vehicle does. In relation to that visual input is based upon their entire ethos and their entire ethical basis and their care and concern for another human being, however small, but an AV who is looking at that same input, who’s looking at that same child crawling across the street.

We’ll just say this is just an obstruction. This is, I’m not, unless it’s specifically programmed to look at obstructions and determine whether or not they are human beings, it’s just going to say is this something [00:34:00] small enough to roll over or do I have to avert this? They’re not going to think in terms of this child growing up and being grateful for the fact that a stranger preserved his life.

The Problem with AI in Autonomous Vehicles

Fred: So this is the problem with AVs and AIs. They don’t interpret things the same way we interpret them. It’s not fair to say that their interpretation is lying. Or their interpretation is wrong because they simply don’t care about the facts. They simply don’t care about the truth. They are programmed to look at the next few milliseconds of operation and see that it’s consistent with what they’ve been programmed to do.

And that’s based upon the statistics associated with their perception. Now, no AV that I’m aware of, or no AV control that I’m aware of, has a specific module. That looks at obstructions to determine whether or not they’re small human beings. They look at it in terms of risk, and the algorithms look at it [00:35:00] in terms of risk.

And risk, unfortunately, has two components. One is the consequence. The other is the probability of occurrence. Any risk based AI control would write this off as being so unlikely that we don’t need to care about it. Any human being confronting that situation would say, This is actually something that is critically important.

I’m going to respond to this immediately. That’s what this article is all about. That’s why it’s important. Because the misinterpretation of data is a human responsibility. And the fact that AI based control systems are indifferent to the truth. And indifferent to the consequences of anything except the very short term commands that it’s going to issue to the car control system is a big problem and will cause a lot of death and injuries to people down the road.

So [00:36:00] I hope that makes sense is that I lose your Anthony or we’re still there.

Anthony: No. I’m totally still here. It actually makes me think of one AI research. First started in the 50s, early 60s, the people behind it were like, ah, why did we call it artificial intelligence? That’s a mistake. We’re trying to create real intelligence, trying to map the human brain.

But then you fast forward to today with ChatGPT, these large language models, and it is artificial intelligence. It’s very advanced math, but it’s a parlor trick. Because there’s no reasoning behind it. There’s no intelligence there at all. Oh,

Fred: Because it doesn’t No computer has got the ability of internalizing the information it’s putting out and qualifying it as truth or lies.

It’s just data. It’s only the humans who are looking at the data that’s coming out who are, who have the capacity To internalize this and say, does this [00:37:00] make sense or does this not make sense? The computer simply doesn’t care. Can’t care.

Anthony: No, it doesn’t care. What cares? We care. Autosafety. org click on donate.

Hey, thanks for doing that. Somebody just did. I don’t know if anybody just did. Hey, so we got this sent to us from 300 listeners.

Mark Rober’s Tesla Experiment

Anthony: And it’s a cool piece is a YouTube video from this guy, Mark Rober, who I’ve seen some of his videos before and I’m like, eh, but this one I love. So what he did is he he took his Tesla and said, Hey, my Tesla, it’s self driving full self autopilot nonsense.

It only uses cameras because dear Elon said, Hey, we only need cameras. I only drive my car using my eyes. Idiot. That will work in the real world. So this guy did is he’s like, all right, let me compare how a lidar, a car with a lidar will deal with braking things. And so he puts like a model of a child in the road and [00:38:00] hey, the camera of the Tesla and the lidar says dump some other car.

They see it and they stop. What happens if it rains and they put rain there and the lidar system works. Doesn’t hit the kid. Tesla, bam, dead. Fog! LiDAR system works, doesn’t kill the kid Tesla, dead, kid dead and, but then he does what every little boy has always wanted to do, he recreates Looney Tunes, and he paints a giant billboard that looks like the road continuing.

So from your perspective, you’re like, that’s a road continuing, except for you’re a human. Cause you’d see like little things that are like, that’s not quite right. You’d see little ripples and a soundstage around it. The LIDAR obviously stops and doesn’t go through this barrier, this fake road, fake wall, but not the Tesla.

The Tesla goes full speed, doesn’t even bother to stop and just goes, bam, right through it. Moral of the story is this video is so much fun. And camera bitch. Yeah, you

Michael: left out the best part of the video, really, which is he Space Mountain? Space Mountain with LiDAR, [00:39:00] right? Which has never been, Space Mountain’s never been seen before.

But yeah, this is basically a confirmation, yet again, of what we’ve been saying for a long time now, which is cameras alone are not going to be enough to drive autonomous driving. And Tesla is essentially doubling down on a lie by continuing to claim that cameras on their own are going to be able to do this.

In fact I, if I can’t imagine that Tesla’s going to be stupid enough to try to introduce a robo taxi without a driver onto the roads that’s solely using cameras as a source of its, uh, information.

Anthony: So Fred, I’m going to ask you a question. Imagine you see this giant Thing, and it looks like the road ahead, but you notice the wind hits it and gets tiny little ripples in it.

Now you as a person, you’re gonna be like, That’s probably still the road. Let’s keep going. Or you’re gonna be like, I’m gonna slow down and figure out what’s going on here.

Fred: Am I a roadrunner or a coyote [00:40:00] in this question? No

Anthony: you’re Fred Perkins, the eight foot tall man.

Fred: I’m not sure. I think I would probably detect it as a barrier, I, I always think of myself well.

Anthony: From watching this video, you can obviously see there’s little ripples because wind hits it. So your artificial intelligence inside your head is smarter than Tesla’s artificial intelligence, which is best I can tell. I don’t even think it’s a thing. I think it’s just a thousand people drawing lines on maps of roads.

Fred: I’m not an AV supporter, therefore I don’t have a simple nervous system.

Anthony: But your makeup is brown, brown sea snake, sea snail. Slug. Sea slug. C slow driving mall. It look like a big

Fred: booger, by the way.

Anthony: Oh boy. Anyway, the very fun video. Totally check it out. If you like Space Mountain, check that out too.

If you’re a Disney employee, put this guy on your band list. Speaking of something that should be on my, that’s on my [00:41:00] band list, let’s go back to my best friend.

Waymo’s Parking Ticket Dilemma

Anthony: Waymo, an article in the New York Washington Post talks about how titled, these driverless taxis got 589 parking tickets in San Francisco last year.

Quoting from the article, Waymo vehicles driving themselves received 589 tickets for parking violations in 2024, according to records from San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. The robots incurred 65, 000, 65, 000 in fines for violations such as obstructing traffic. Disobeying street cleaning restrictions and parking in prohibited areas.

Waymo vehicles without a driver received an additional 75 tickets in Los Angeles in 2024 with 543 in fines. Still outstanding according to records from the LA Department of Transportation. Now how many drivers does Waymo have? Because I’m gonna make the assumption that they have one driver. It’s one computer system.

Now, it’s a [00:42:00] computer system that’s managed to clone itself and put itself all out there. And now me as one driver, if I got 65, 000 in fines in one year, I’m pretty sure Geico would drop me.

Fred: I could be wrong. You’d probably lose your driver’s license, but happily the AVs don’t need driver’s licenses.

Anthony: How is this, I’ve asked this a hundred times on this show, how can somebody, they try to make the argument at times that we’re just, a single driver, how can a single driver get 65, 000 in fines?

Michael: I don’t know if you’re looking at it, let’s look at it from the other perspective, right? Not from Gavin

Anthony: Newsom’s perspective? You

Michael: can’t issue a parking ticket to a driver. You’re issuing parking tickets to an unoccupied car, typically. And Waymo has, 300 vehicles operating in San Francisco.

From a numbers perspective, it doesn’t really seem like a big deal, right? Waymo’s probably getting about the same number of parking [00:43:00] tickets as your average San Francisco driver. code resident, the ones that I’m concerned about. There are a lot of different types of parking tickets. Some indicate that you can’t read a street cleaning sign, or you can’t interpret, certain rush hour restrictions, that kind of thing.

There are other ones that are issued when you’re blocking a road or holding up traffic, creating what is a clear safety issue. So depending on what type of ticket you’re getting, and this article goes into that somewhat with the data on the ticket. You could be creating a safety issue or you could not.

So in that case, what this really makes me wonder is why, if these vehicles are being programmed to, presumably read signs or to understand the parking regulations in the city, why are they getting these tickets? There’s something wrong. They’re not. They’re not they’re clearly not perfect and they’re clearly not really much better than humans at parking if they’re receiving this many tickets.

So maybe there is a concern there about just how well Waymo is programming its vehicles [00:44:00] to operate lawfully on city streets. Programming them. Are they reading the signs, the parking signs and the parking regulations? Are they programming the San Francisco parking regulations into these systems? It doesn’t look like it, because otherwise you don’t think they would be receiving these tickets.

There are some concerns there, although. Safety concerns really center around vehicles that are blocking or preventing traffic from moving.

Anthony: I’m going to put something else out there as a thought. Maybe what’s happening is these Waymo’s are all high and they’re all smoking the marijuana.

Cannabis and Driving: A Dangerous Mix

Anthony: The next article is a triple A. Has an article on how can cannabis consumers view driving while under the influence. And we’ve already seen Waymo’s drive drunk, so maybe they’re just a little stoned. From this article they did a survey, trying to figure out what a People who are high cannabis consumers [00:45:00] behaviors and perceptions of themselves.

And part of it says, they believe consumption has little effect on driving. 46. 9 percent believe they either drive the same, a little better. or much better. And to that, I have to say, no, you don’t.

Michael: Yeah. This is really concerning. You’re looking at the data here at 84. 8 percent of people are driving on the same day they consume cannabis, presumably after they consume it, they’re not smoking before they go to bed.

And 53 percent saying they, they use cannabis an hour or less. before driving. Come on, people. If you’re gonna smoke weed, don’t drive. It’s pretty simple. It’s not it’s not, there’s certainly, it’s certainly not making you drive better, a little better or much better. And why take the risk? If you, if in a lot of states, and we’ve discussed this before, the fact that you have a detectable amount of marijuana in your body.

It’s [00:46:00] going could be used whether you even smoke marijuana that day, you could have smoked it the day before and it still be in your system because of the imperfection of all the tests that are out there right now. Why would you take that risk of getting on the road? If somebody runs out in front of you and you hit them and it’s not even your fault, technically, if you have to do a blood draw or be tested for the presence of THC metabolites, and it shows a positive.

There’s a good chance you’re going to jail for a long time. So I don’t know. I don’t know what to think about this survey. Other than there are a lot of stupid cannabis consumers out there. Can I make any other conclusion here?

Anthony: No, I, I know a cannabis consumer who was convinced that they were a better driver.

I like, no, I drive slower. And then I showed them all the bills they had to pay at the body shop. And no one was, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Yeah, this is a fascinating and also again, leads [00:47:00] to the issue we’ve talked about is, with alcohol, it’s clear cut and we know how it.

metabolized through the system. Marijuana, it’s, they don’t know yet. And it will vary from individual to individual.

Yeah.

Anthony: Sure, some people probably can smoke a joint, an hour later, drive a car and be fine. A lot of people, no way in hell. If only the federal government. Or somebody would study this.

Michael: Yeah and, it might help if they broke it out, too, into, people who smoke versus people who are eating edibles, which seem to have a more profound impact on some people’s ability to function.

Anthony: Yeah, so it lasts much longer. Speaking of people who are probably a little high at work, I’m gonna say car makers.

That’s right.

Confusing Gear Shifters in Modern Cars

Anthony: An article in the wall street journal titled carmakers are reinventing the gear shifter and drivers are lost. So with things going to drive by wire and there’s no more mechanical link linkages between what you’re doing, like moving into gear and shifting, and it’s all just done by software [00:48:00] and relays designers are just like, all right, let’s move things around and confuse people.

The the person who’s a tester, I think, for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said he couldn’t find the gear shifter Ioniq 5 sport utility vehicle. Now, Fred, you’ve driven a number of vehicles in your day. If you’re going to look for a gear shifter, you sit into a modern car, where are you going to look to put your car in drive?

Where are you thinking it is?

Fred: I actually experienced that one with this Jeep behemoth that I had to rent. And I looked around for a while and they’ve got a dial on the console. Dial on

Anthony: the console,

Fred: really? Dial on the console where the gearshift lever ought to be.

Michael: Yeah, I think it looks a lot like the Pacifica minivan.

They have a picture of in the article. That’s what Chrysler went to. In fact Chrysler Jeep was one of the first companies to really start doing this and they had some issues at first, I know we’ve talked about the Anton [00:49:00] Yelchin, the actor who was killed when his vehicle rolled over and there was a, that was when Chrysler was using a monostable gear shifter that didn’t really give the driver feet, good feedback on when the vehicle is actually in park.

I believe they’ve moved away from that. But we’re continuing to see gear shifts put all over the vehicle in very different spots. We know Tesla allows shifting on their touchscreens, but I think they have another system as well. That controls gear shifting the. The more interesting one that I saw in this article was the the crystal sphere from Genesis is using that looks more like, a, I don’t know what to call it.

It looks like a little ball.

Anthony: It looks like that orb that Trump and the Saudi dictators put their hands on in 2016. That’s what it looks like. It’s creepy.

Michael: It’s weird. They’re saying, Genesis had a statement on its crystal sphere, which they say is to enhance safety, which is bullshit and to [00:50:00] create an emotional connection with the driver, which is probably a lot closer to the truth.

Although I don’t ever recall, being emotionally connected to my transmission shift lever. But that’s just me.

Anthony: You’re not sitting correctly in the car. Yeah. It

Michael: sounds like typical Genesis over the top marketing to me.

Anthony: Yeah. This Hyundai Ioniq 5, they hid their shifter right where the talk behind the steering wheel, like where your windshield wipers are.

So that’s gotta be fun driving down the street. Oh, it’s raining. Oh, I’m in reverse. This is just, it’s three on the tree and you’re dead.

Michael: And there are no rules requiring a gear shifter to be in any one specific place. It doesn’t have to be, now that it’s not really required to be mechanically connected to the transmission, as it would have been in the past, the sky’s the limit for where they could put these things.

Anthony: There’s got to be a human factors team inside these auto companies. I know there are times they’ve run into problems with a

Michael: company [00:51:00] called Tesla.

Anthony: Okay. Yeah. They’re I’m talking real companies. And

Michael: you wonder yes, there are human factors teams inside most. Automakers, but, did those human factors teams get the last say over the marketing department when they want to put a crystal ball in to control your transmission?

I don’t know.

Anthony: See, this is going to be, this is going to be my version of a Fred rent. See, when I worked at Apple, they had this massive book called the human factors guy or the human interface guidelines. And the entire company was like, you’re writing software, you’re following this. So everything’s going to hear, and this is the fonts we’re using.

This is the location of things. The third party software developers, they had to conform to this. Then at some point, Steve Jobs was just like, I’m drinking juice all day, man. And Hey let’s try and make your calendar look like it’s a leather thing. And they threw that shit out the window and software became harder.

And so I’m trying to think the ghost of Steve Jobs is working at Hyundai now. Whoa, mind blown. Whoa.

Recent Vehicle Recalls

Anthony: And with that, it’s time for recalls. [00:52:00] Let’s kick off with General Motors, 90,

Fred: 000. Didn’t you just recall Steve Jobs?

Anthony: Ah, you too soon? No, it’s not. No. Ah, General Motors, 90, 081 vehicles, the 2020 to 2021 Cadillac CT5, CT4, CT6, really? Ah, the Chevrolet Camaro. General Motors decided that a defect which relates to motor vehicle safety may exist in certain of these vehicles.

Transmission control valve in some of these vehicles may be susceptible to excessive wear over time. Resulting in a gradual loss of pressure within the valve. That can cause heart shifting. Hearts! Ha! Heart shifting as well. Heart shifting. The wheels may temporarily lock up. Oh, that’s not good.

Michael: No, it’s not good. And it looks like GM has been looking into this since around September when one of their one of the, a brand quality manager inside of their [00:53:00] company spoke up under their speak up for safety program, which resulted in this investigation and they found that they are having problems with transmissions locking up possibly.

It sounds like what you’re more likely to experience. When this happens is that you’re going to be limited to fifth gear, um, in the, in their new software that they’re going to put into the vehicle, they’re going to limit you to the fifth gear when they find out this is happening.

And owners should hear about this. Sometime in late April, it looks like. And I don’t see that they’re going to, I don’t see where they’re going to be fixing the actual. valve wear and the problem, right? They’re putting transmission control module software in that monitors the valve performance and detects where.

So rather than getting a fully functioning part in the vehicle you purchased, you’re going to be getting a free [00:54:00] call software. Fix that’s going to essentially warn you and try to prevent you from experience the lockup, but they’re not going to actually fix the problem.

Anthony: And so my car’s going to be stuck to fifth gear.

Hey bought a piece of shit. We’ve warned you. What I’m.

Michael: I assume at that point, if, see, here’s the thing, if you’re still under warranty, you’ll be able to bring it in and have it repaired for free. If not, then you may be responsible for repairs. So this is another reason we call it a free call for General Motors.

Instead of repairing the actual problem part, they’re going to put in a software patch that might get you to that date where you no longer have a manufacturer’s warranty and you’ll have to pay for it yourself. How nice of them, right?

Anthony: So my, would you suggest if I have one of these vehicles still under warranty, just go in right now and be like, replace the valve.

Michael: Demand, demand replacement. Yes. And

Anthony: they should pay for that. You shouldn’t have to pay for that.

Michael: Under your warranty. Yes. Now, good luck because they’ve [00:55:00] created this, this is a big recall. They’ve got 90, 000 vehicles out there with this problem and they’re not going to be willing to do that repair on every one of them.

Good luck.

Anthony: They probably could afford to do it if they didn’t blow all that money on GM cruise. All right. Next recall. Final recall, Jaguar, recalling all of them, just all of them. Now 7, 276 vehicles, the 2025 Land Rover Range Rover the sport version of that. A concern has been identified where you bought a Range Rover.

The second row center seat buckle may have been manufactured away from specification. Aw. One of the jigs uses the buckle supplier did not secure the buckles internal cable in the correct location during a riveting process. Oh so the tongue may appear secure when correct latching has not occurred.

Hopefully they’re going to physically fix this and not be like use some software to let you know that little Billy’s not going to live.

Michael: They’re actually going to replace the it looks like the center [00:56:00] seat belt buckle. I think this is on the second row center seat belt buckle and the retaining bolt for free.

And owners should hear about that. It looks like starting at the beginning of May. Also on recalls, I will note that just an early check in on manufacturers and recalls this year. Ford, it seems like 2025 just started, but Ford is already at 24 recalls and the closest manufacturer to them has seven.

So out to a really early lead in the standings Ford is.

Anthony: Hey, Jim Farley, come on the show. We’ll give you the award. You can be declared the winner right now. And with that’s the end of our show.

Fred: One, one thing I want to throw in here.

A Humorous Solution to Daylight Savings Time

Fred: I’ve everybody hates daylight savings time and I’ve got a solution for that.

Okay. So here’s the solution. In spring, instead of setting the clocks back one hour on a Sunday morning, we set the clocks ahead 25 hours on Sunday night. What that would do is it would immediately skip [00:57:00] to Tuesday. Everybody, nobody, everybody hates Monday, so this would be a great thing, right? And then, in the fall, on a Saturday, you set the clocks back 23 hours, so we would get an extra Saturday.

I think this is a great idea, because the visual impact is the same. You still have the same, adjustment of. The clocks to the sun, but we’d have one fewer Monday, which nobody likes and we have an extra Saturday. I think this is a great idea. I think

Michael: everyone that wants more time off work would support that.

Fred: Oh, yeah. And who doesn’t right? I’m all for double Saturdays. That’s so anyway, this is not patentable. So I share it with the public for free. You’re welcome.

Anthony: Ah, the benevolent Fred Perkins, everybody. Till next week. Oh, and lightning will, we will be covering lightning in the future. I know we teased it last week, but lightning is definitely coming.

[00:58:00] Till next week. Double

Michael: Saturdays.

Fred: Thank you for listening. Bye bye.

Michael: I like that, Fred.

Fred: For more information, visit www. autosafety. org.