The Battle Over Automatic Emergency Braking

[00:00:00] Introduction and Host Greetings

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

[00:00:26] Fred: Good morning.

[00:00:28] Anthony: Oh, good morning. Listeners. I hope it’s not too late. It’s super hot where you are. I hope it’s nice, cool, refreshing, cause it’s super hot where I am and it’s getting uncomfortable. Know what also makes me feel uncomfortable? John Bozella. Let’s get right into it.

[00:00:45] Automatic Emergency Braking: Current State and Challenges

[00:00:45] Anthony: Automatic emergency braking.

We’ve talked about this a number of times in the show. We all think it’s a good thing. Even in my current vehicle has it. It doesn’t work perfectly. It’s not great, but it’s great. It’s great in that, hey, you get a little [00:01:00] warning. Maybe, hey, we’re preloading the brakes. Hey, we’re going to stop.

Could be much better without a doubt. But John Bozella, the head of the, what is the Automotive Alliance for Innovation nonsense?

[00:01:12] Michael: Alliance for Automotive Innovation. Okay. Their newest name.

[00:01:16] Industry Resistance and Safety Standards

[00:01:16] Anthony: So these these prostitutes they came out with something yesterday saying basically, hey, we can’t have this new improved automatic emergency braking rule cause it’s impossible.

So I, before we jump into it, so these are the same guys who are like self driving cars are good and technically possible. Small set, subset of the feature required for self driving cars bad and technically impossible. Why? Why do these people have jobs?

[00:01:46] Fred: Somebody’s gotta advocate for better being the enemy of good.

[00:01:53] Michael: Yeah, ultimately they’re the ones putting them in cars. And, this technology in some form [00:02:00] has been available now for 20 years at the lower levels and what the industry has enjoyed over the past decade is Almost is an agreement with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and a few other safety groups, including the Insurance Institute whose work we admire frequently here to install what we would call a kindergarten level of automatic emergency braking.

It’s only working up to speeds and. The 20s. So 25 miles per hour. And it’s, mainly because of the technology they’re using to do that is pretty cheap and they like that situation. They’re about to meet their commitment next year to put it in all vehicles. And so all of us buying new cars next year will have the kindergarten level of automatic emergency braking that protects you up to speeds of about 25 miles per hour.

Maybe it protects you at [00:03:00] night. Maybe it doesn’t depending on what the manufacturer’s got in your vehicle. But I don’t know if, everybody really gets this part of it, but the crashes that are causing the most fatalities and the most injuries aren’t happening at those speeds. So you have to push the.

Speeds that a B works at higher and manufacturers are doing this on an individual basis. Some manufacturers are investing a lot more into the technologies they put in their cars. But it’s coming along far too slowly. And, one of the things that really catches my eye and all of this is that, in the letter that.

The alliance sent to senators. They say that they’ve invested more than the auto industry as a whole has invested more than a billion dollars developing a B. Now that sounds like a lot of money to a lot of us poor folks listen to this podcast, but when you consider that they’ve [00:04:00] invested hundreds of billions of dollars into autonomous vehicles, then aren’t saving A single life or preventing a single fatality at this point while pretending and let’s get this straight.

They are pretending that it’s impossible for them to meet the new NHTSA standards. It should make you angry. They’ve been putting this cart before the horse for a long time. They’re pursuing this, new shiny object of an autonomous vehicle that investors love hearing about. And what ultimately that’s doing is diverting money that should be invested in technology that could work today, like proper automatic emergency braking that detects pedestrians that works at night, and that works at high speeds, thereby saving a lot of those lives and preventing a lot of those injuries that would be happening otherwise.

It’s, we’re really disappointed that the industry has decided to take this tactic. And there’s a lot of reasons why that are probably too boring for our audience [00:05:00] out there. But, you know, it’s not a good situation and we hope that NHTSA stands firm and, holds their feet to the fire and says, you’re going to get this done.

And that, that’s something that we’ll see in the next few months.

[00:05:13] Fred: I want to remind our listeners that right now there is no standard at all. So I think a big part of this objection to the NHTSA standard for higher performance of the automatic emergency braking and the inclusion of collision avoidance for pedestrians which is a new aspect, a big part of that is the fact that there will be a standard that exists.

There is no standard that exists right now, and the automotive industry is free to put out whatever faulty system or poorly designed system that they want to, and they can call it whatever they want to, and a lot of them are choosing to call it automatic emergency braking. Even though it doesn’t work to avoid pedestrians or any other object in the road.[00:06:00]

[00:06:00] Anthony: Yeah. So we have an article we’re linking to from MSN and the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, again, that sounds impressive. That is just a PR trade group, a bunch of shills. These are people who couldn’t get real jobs, and they’re like, Hey, you give me money, I will say whatever you want.

Cause that’s what they do here. Anyway, so the president of this, John Bozilla, says, Here’s what I regrettably conclude will happen. Driving AEB equipped vehicles in the U. S. under NHTSA’s new standard will become unpredictable, erratic, and will frustrate or flummox drivers. At the same time, he is saying autonomous vehicles and autonomous vehicles are great and safer than human drivers.

An autonomous vehicle needs automatic emergency braking. What is happening? Is he talking nonsense?

[00:06:53] Fred: I think this is a good example of that legal dictum, ipso facto stupido.

[00:06:58] Anthony: Oh, [00:07:00] yes I don’t know Latin, and Michael, you know the law better than all of us.

[00:07:06] Michael: That’s a new term to me, but I get what it means.

And I agree it is in many respects, because, how is it that you can promote a autonomous vehicle? Say they’re working, say they’re saving lives, investing hundreds of billions of dollars into them and then turn around and say, Oh, but. We can’t meet a standard by 2029. You’ve got five years here. We can’t meet a standard for, the type of breaking that would be expected out of our AVs or even, it just doesn’t make any sense.

They’re even claiming that. It is impossible to meet the NHTSA standard while in the next sentence in one of their releases saying that vehicle that one vehicle that NHTSA tested already meets the standard. So obviously it’s not [00:08:00] impossible if one vehicle is already meeting it.

That’s probably a company that actually invests in it. And they’re aware of the problems that have existed with AEB. Yes, there are times when AEB can frustrate or flummox drivers, and that’s when it’s not working properly. When you’ve, and what we’ve talked about dozens of times on the podcast, when you see flummox drivers, Phantom braking incidents when there’s nothing in the road and the car stops.

Those are going to do, those incidents are going to do more than frustrate or flummox drivers. If you have phantom braking incidents occurring, then you’re going to have following vehicles crashing into the vehicle that’s inadvertently braking, so there’s no question that, that. You know that those incidents will be a problem if they occur, but the fact is right now there’s nothing preventing phantom breaking from occurring other than very long, unsuccessful investigations from our perspective into the phantom [00:09:00] breaking that’s already occurring in automatic emergency breaking.

NHTSA has multiple investigations open right now into that, And one of the reasons they’re having to enforce it that way is because Fred says, there is no automatic emergency breaking rule in place with tests and with guide and not guidelines, but rules to prevent phantom breaking from taking place in the first place.

So ultimately, once again, this is. A very old tack of the industry saying, Oh, this is technology is going to be too expensive. Oh, we can’t do that. And meanwhile, if you look at what’s coming out of the side of their mouth on autonomous vehicles, they pretty clearly have and then can Get this technology into vehicles given a five year lead time.

And the fact is that when that technology is in vehicles, it will start saving, hundreds of lives per year, preventing tens of thousands of injuries. And they’re simply [00:10:00] slowing down that timeline because they’d rather throw their money away at AVs, apparently. I can’t figure why they’re not willing to invest in safety while they’re going after their shiny object.

[00:10:11] Anthony: As Lee Iacocca said, safety doesn’t sell. Whatever happened to that guy? So the new NHTSA rule is saying that A, B’s got to work with vehicles ahead of them at, to 62 miles per hour. They must be able to apply the brakes automatically up to 90 miles per hour when a collision with a lead vehicle is imminent, and up to 45 miles per hour when a pedestrian is detected.

They have to be able to protect pedestrians both in daylight and nighttime conditions. All of this is great. I think from a safety point of view, from pedestrians, from drivers, I think this is a Wonderful. I, there’s no indication that this will detect deer, but I think it should too, but that’s not part of this rule.

What Michael just talked about here and this is Bozella saying, he’s the only problem is that practically no car on the road today can meet those standards. He notes that that his own [00:11:00] testing data revealed that only one vehicle can meet the stopping distance. Is he Groucho Marx?

What happened? Practically no vehicle can do this. At least one of them can.

[00:11:09] Michael: This article, actually is a better version of that statement than they put out on a fact sheet, which in which they say in one sentence, it is impossible to meet those standards. And in the next sentence says, but there is a vehicle that’s already done it, which.

It’s just obviously completely illogical, but it doesn’t make sense. And it gives you an idea of the tight rope. These guys are trying to walk to explain why they shouldn’t be putting this technology into vehicles tomorrow. We have worked for a long time. We’ve sued the NHTSA to try to force this rule.

That was eight. Nine years ago at this point consumers have been waiting for working automatic emergency braking to get into their vehicles for a long time right now. And right now, still in 2024, the [00:12:00] industry simply wants to give us the kindergarten version. And if you want the better versions, they want you to pay extra for them.

They don’t want to put them automatically into every vehicle on the road. They don’t want to save your life unless you’re willing to pay for it.

[00:12:16] Fred: There is a simple explanation for the fact sheet. It’s very hard for people to understand something when their paycheck relies and they’re not understanding it.

I think that principle goes along with the ipso facto stupido, I think, or maybe ipso facto desperado. I’m not sure. There’s a lot of new expressions here.

[00:12:35] Anthony: Yeah, ipso facto bozella. Ha. All right. Enough of pointing out the absurdity of these terms.

[00:12:43] Visibility Issues with Large Vehicles

[00:12:43] Anthony: Here’s an article from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety titled, Designers must make vehicles safe for everyone, not just drivers and passengers.

And it talks about how poor visibility is another factor in the danger of large vehicles posed to pedestrians. We found that SUVs, [00:13:00] pickups, and light vans are more likely than sedans to hit pedestrians at intersections while turning. It’s possible that structures like the A pillar or side mirror, especially large ones, Make it harder for drivers to see a crossing pedestrian.

Uh, yeah I think we’ve all experienced that, where you’re going through a crosswalk and someone with a giant truck’s oh didn’t see you there. I think IHS is, they’re making some more research into this, and I think it goes with what we’ve talked about before, we gotta ban left turns.

[00:13:30] Michael: I don’t know about, I’m still a little unsure on the van left turn thing. There’s a lot to that, but there’s a lot of focus placed on road design for good reason. We’ve discussed it on a number of occasions, how poor road designs contribute to traffic fatalities, contribute to speeding, contribute to a lot of things, but what’s not what is not being addressed and something that, that.

The government and automakers have really wanted to leave and a suspended state of [00:14:00] animation where that industry and consumer demand predict what’s going to happen is vehicle sizes and shapes. We’ve talked endlessly about. The growth in size of heavy trucks and SUVs and how batteries being added to those platforms is going to create a nightmare of kinetic energy for people riding in other vehicles and for pedestrians.

But beyond the fact that this is not only to address the weight problem and the size problem of these vehicles, the size and the weight, the size And the angles at which the driver sits and, big hoods and heights are create significant visibility problems that contribute to crashes involving pedestrians vehicles when they’re turning seem to have a hard time.

Noticing pedestrians and the rates are higher in, in those vehicles. So we think it’s time that there are some visibility [00:15:00] standards issued by the federal government that essentially force feed for force manufacturers to consider how well the driver can see other objects outside of the vehicle rather than designing vehicles that.

We’re primarily focused on looking cool and we’d like them to see them have to take into account just how well you can see out of those vehicles and detect, pedestrians and lots of, there are a lot of other things on the road that you need to see while you’re driving. And, try looking over the hood of a giant brand new GM pickup truck and then get into.

A Honda civic and let me know the difference. And there will be one and it will be significant. Your visibility is going to be much improved and vehicles with sloping hoods, vehicles that are not raised so high up off the ground. And there’s another part of this too. It’s not just the visibility.

It’s the simple design of these vehicles with blunt front ends [00:16:00] that are, were between. 30 and 40 inches high are going to be more likely to kill pedestrians than vehicles with the shorter hood heights and a slope front end. And that’s because, the energy is being dissipated into your torso and into areas where your vital organs are versus lower on the body.

So it’s a mess right now, and so far the government has completely ignored this area for, ever since NHTSA was founded and before, so decades have gone by without a serious look at why cars are being designed, and the shapes they are, and the sizes they are, and with the poor visibility that hasn’t been accounted for.

[00:16:43] Fred: I want to remind people that the Tesla Cybertruck combines both poor visibility with a wedge in the front end that is at the height of people’s palaces. So it seems to be designed specifically to [00:17:00] maximize injury to pedestrians. So please don’t buy one.

[00:17:05] Anthony: I, speaking of Cybertruck, I saw my first one the other day.

It was, it had a black vinyl wrap on it that, the thing couldn’t be more than a month old, and the black vinyl was already coming off. It looked like I applied it. And if you’ve ever gotten a gift from me, I can’t wrap gifts at all, and I should not be applying vinyl wrap to cars. But my wife’s question was, oh my god, what is that?

And how do you see out the back window? And I pointed out to her, baby, with that, you’re only looking to the future.

[00:17:34] Fred: I’ve never gotten a gift from you, Michael. Have you? Or are we on the wrong side of this gift train?

[00:17:40] Anthony: I’m giving the two of you a gift right now. There you go. Breathe it in.

[00:17:44] Michael: Anthony gives us the gift of knowledge every day.

[00:17:48] Anthony: Hey, listeners, you can if you’re listening right now, you can give us a gift. You can pull over to the side of the road, put your car in park, put those hazard lights on, click five stars, and Share it with your friends and be like, yes, I’m listening [00:18:00] to the Center for Auto Safety’s podcast. Thankfully, I only have the audio version, not the video version, because you just seen Michael scratching himself.

It was very disturbing. But click donate. Now Fred’s picking his nose. Oh my god, this is just falling apart. But yes, please go to autosafety. org, click on donate. Do it once, do it twice, do it three times. So we’re talking a lot about dangerous things and how the roads aren’t safe for people.

[00:18:28] Traffic Fatalities and Safety Improvements

[00:18:28] Anthony: But NHTSA has a new traffic fatalities estimate, and it looks like traffic fatalities are declining which is good.

NHTSA released, this is on the 24th, that 8, 650 people died in traffic crashes in the first three months of the year. Oh my god, that is a lot, and that’s a decline. This represents a decrease of about 3. 2 percent as compared to the same period last year. The first quarter preliminary data marks the eighth consecutive quarterly decline in traffic fatalities, a trend that became, that started in the second quarter of 2022.[00:19:00]

So what’s, this is good. Those numbers are insane, but this is still a good thing. So what’s behind this decline?

[00:19:10] Michael: The numbers are still, obviously a lot higher than we’d like to see, they are coming down from where they were during the pandemic, which is when we saw, a severe spike of almost 4, 000 crashes in a year.

But, if you look back a few years look back 10 years to 2014. We were talking about 32, 000. Deaths on our roads every year. And now even with these decreases, we are up near 41, 000 deaths on our roads each year. So we’ve still made a serious regression from some of the better days in the past.

And supposedly that’s, this also coincides with the period during which manufacturers were supposed to be getting a B into all their cars and in which autonomous vehicles were supposed to be. Taking [00:20:00] over and saving humanity from our poor driving. And, none of that has happened. All those AEB has worked even in some of the versions that some of the versions that are installed right now, aren’t up to the standard we’d like them to be, there’s no doubt that automatic emergency braking is saving lives and preventing injuries.

So who knows maybe we are at the point, I think we’ve talked about the pandemic and the Lack of enforcement that occurred, with police officers, not enforcing speeding nearly as much with aggressive driving on empty roads with alcohol, a lot of those problems that came out of the pandemic, maybe leaving us, maybe not as fast as we’d like, because we’re still nowhere near the fatality rates that, We’ve seen, even a decade ago.

So there’s a long way to go here. One of the most promising things I’ve seen in the past couple of days that’s [00:21:00] related to this, I believe, came from the Governor’s Highway Safety Association, and they reported that pedestrian deaths in 2023. They just got the data from last year. are down about 5%. So that’s the first drop in pedestrian fatality data that we’ve seen in quite some time.

[00:21:20] Anthony: Hey, so we’re going in the right direction and maybe maybe, but hey, but, I think something like automatic emergency braking, that could really make a big dent. But I feel like the automotive alliance industry nonsense is gaslighting us.

[00:21:37] Gaslighting in the Automotive Industry

[00:21:37] Anthony: And with that, let’s go into this week’s gaslighting section.

Ooh now I had a number of choices to choose from, and I was going one direction until late yesterday. I’m gotta go with, gotta go with Cruise. Cruise again. I was not gonna do Cruise this week, but Cruise is still gaslighting us. Cruise has a new CEO. Their previous CEO ran an [00:22:00] online video game streaming service.

It wasn’t even a video game service, it was just like, hey, watch other people play video games. I don’t know, hey good for you, buddy. He’s not there anymore. Cause Not really qualified to run an autonomous vehicle company. GM Cruise, they run over a pedestrian, they lie to regulators they put a lawyer in charge, cause they’re like, yeah, we gotta fix some stuff.

And who do they choose to be their new CEO? That’s right. This guy, Mark Whitten, who used to work on the Xbox. That’s right. He worked on the Xbox, and then he worked at Sonos, and then he worked at Amazon. In the last few years he spent working at Unity. Video games, bad speakers, video games.

None of these are mission critical software. None of these are mission critical products. If they crash, no one dies. They’re not manufacturing things really. And so from his own LinkedIn profile, I had to quote from this. It says, Common to all of these businesses has been creating the tools for creators to [00:23:00] connect with hundreds of millions of users.

How do you get a job running an autonomous vehicle company when that’s your career? And it’s not, I’m not criticizing his career path. I’m criticizing GM for again, going way out of their way to choose the most unqualified person to run a company that requires mission critical software. Is there no one available from Boeing?

[00:23:27] Michael: I mean, doesn’t it look like to you they’re just hiring people who are good at faking it till they make it?

[00:23:34] Anthony: I, hey, I was not going to say that, but he does look like a one of these guys who as soon as they get hired, their first job is to find their next job. I didn’t say that.

[00:23:42] Michael: They go out and push and say, they go out and push and say, Oh, AVs are here. We’re going to have them around the corner. We’re going to start deploying them in every city next week. And then, start talking about how they’re going to save so many lives. And then they’re gone. And General Motors has wasted another billion dollars that they could have invested in [00:24:00] AAB on AV.

[00:24:01] Anthony: Yeah. They’re failing upwards. Those types of clowns. Yes, Fred. Are we officially at the Gaslight Illumination now? We are, and it’s your turn. That’s my nominee. I’m going to save Michael’s for last because I, honestly, I want Michael’s. Michael’s is so good. Fred, who’s your nominee?

[00:24:16] Fred: My nominee is the Department of Transportation.

You’ve probably heard of them. I like their signs. So this one is actually fun. They published a document several years ago called Automated Driving Systems 2. 0, a vision for safety. And Elaine Chao signed the introduction. Elaine Chao was the secretary of transportation. And I’m just going to read from that.

She said quote, the major factor in 94 percent of all fatal crashes is human error. So ADSs have the potential to significantly reduce highway fatalities by addressing the root cause of these tragic crashes. So this is a [00:25:00] really subtle switch here, because actually the study said critical reason, not major factor.

Okay, so what she’s done is she switched this around to say that the critical factor has worked, the critical reason has become a major factor, and all you need to do is get rid of these pesky people. And everything is going to be great. What she said might be true, but only if you assume that the ADSs will perform perfectly every time, so they have the, at least the equivalent of human sensing and judgment in all cases, and they address all the critical factors.

Or the critical reasons identified in a critical reasons report with human equivalent capabilities, and they do not introduce any additional consequential failure modes or mechanisms. So that’s a lot of big assumptions. I’m going to go into the underlying document though, which is a critical reasons for crashes.

And what they say in there is that the critical reason was assigned to [00:26:00] drivers that compromised that comprised 94 percent of the study crashes at the national level. However, In none of these cases, it was the assignment intended to blame the driver for causing the crash again. I’m quoting from that report.

And then they go on to say, list the various driver related critical reasons. Remember, if you go into those statistics, 1 of these may have occurred somewhere in the 100, 000, 000 miles of driving that’s associated with each individual crash. For each individual fatal crash, right? So that’s the perimeter we’re looking at.

Now, we’re looking at, if you compare that to AVs, they’re now touting 70 million miles of autonomous driving, which I think is suspect, but never mind. Let’s just say that it is 70 million miles. We know that they’ve already shown recognition errors, which is one of the critical reasons cited. [00:27:00] Are subject to internal and external distractions because you can put a cone on the hood of a car and it’ll stop stop operating. We know that they do inadequate surveillance because they keep running into police cars and fire trucks and various other objects that any human being would identify quickly. They make decision errors, such as driving too fast for conditions. They will drive too fast for the curve and, particularly Tesla, they go off the road.

They make false assumptions of other drivers actions, which is you’re right, they run into other cars, they run into trucks. They perform illegal maneuvers. They misjudge gaps and they misjudge other speeds. So all of these reasons I just cited were individual reasons, critical reasons for once per 100, 000, 000 miles of cars being driven.

We’ve seen them all occur in the 70, 000, [00:28:00] 000 miles touted by the industry. It seems that there are at least 10 times more subject to critical reasons for factors than the statistics that we know are true for human driven cars. Actually, it really stinks. But the critical gaslight here, the critical gaslight reason is that the director of the Department of Transportation somehow equated the technical proficiency of a vehicle with regard to the SAE automation levels, right?

Somehow equated that with safety. There is no relationship between those two, in fact. And, the sleight of hand or the rhetorical flourish that she put into that, which basically gave the industry carte blanche to do whatever they want in a pursuit of an elusive safety goal, which has now been demonstrated to be far away.

From where the [00:29:00] need to be the rough equivalent of human drivers, even with all the bad human drivers included in the base is my nominee for guest light of the week.

[00:29:09] Anthony: Bravo department of transportation. Take that. All right. Now, Michael, it’s your turn. And oh my God, I love this one so much. Cause I read through the report and

[00:29:20] Michael: oh, yeah, good.

You can help me.

[00:29:22] Anthony: I will help you. I’m like super jealous. You got this one.

[00:29:27] Michael: I’ve mentioned this group once before. They’re called ARK Investment Management. You’ll see them pop up a lot in the, in business headlines and they’ve been really bullish on Tesla for a long time now. And. They published a, a, basically a synopsis of what they expect Tesla’s share value to be in, in five years from now in 2029.

And as part of that we’ll put the link on our site, on, on our podcast page for the episode. And I would tell everyone to take a look at it if you want a good [00:30:00] giggle, because they are. They’re predicting things that are virtually impossible. And they are mixing up data, one of the big things here is they’re claiming that Tesla has done about one, what is that?

One and a half billion Miles in autonomy when in fact tesla has done zero miles in autonomy because tesla’s full self driving, which is the highest level of Automation that those vehicles have is completely human supervised. There’s nothing autonomous about it it requires the driver to constantly deal with nags and with other and if Functionally, the driver has to monitor the vehicle to make sure it doesn’t run itself off the road.

So Tesla is not in the, even though they want to pretend Tesla’s in the business of autonomy and Tesla seems to want to pretend it is, they really aren’t. But even more staggering that if you look [00:31:00] through the report or some of the numbers, they’re saying. At worst in 2029, Tesla is going to triple the number of vehicles that sells and at best, they’re going to be selling almost 15 million vehicles per year, which is basically the entire new American car market.

Although I believe this analysis applies internationally. These growth rates are impossible. And. The fact that investors are out there eating up information like this and using it to advise them where to put their money is shocking to me. It’s shocking that it could be so far gone in terms of being correct.

It’s an, you have to see it to believe it in some ways. Anthony, what did you want to add? Help me out here. Oh my God.

[00:31:47] Anthony: So ARK Investments run by this woman, Kathy Wood, who made a big splash a couple of years ago as having the biggest return of anybody because She invested a bunch of money in Tesla and Tesla went through the roof.

With a lot of these Wall Street analysts, the [00:32:00] ones who like have this huge pop for one year. They don’t have it the next year. They got lucky. They never realized they got lucky. They all think they’re Peter Lynch or Warren Buffett. But she got lucky. And, good for her. So what Michael was just talking about, basically their whole analysis saying, Hey, we’re going to get, Tesla’s going to have this ridiculous amount of revenue from robo taxis.

So what they’re saying is they predict that Tesla in 2029 will have on the low end 603 billion to 951 billion in revenue just from robo taxi service. Now, let’s put this in context. In 2023, Uber had a global revenue. Of 37 billion. And analysts only estimate by 2029, Uber will have between 70 to 80 billion in global revenue.

Somehow, Tesla is gonna do 10x that, starting from zero, with no [00:33:00] experience. in five years. And so they also have these charts in there that say things like, furthermore, our research suggests that a Tesla in full self driving mode is five times safer than a human driver and 16 times safer than the average car on the road as shown below.

And so they have some charts and you’re like, Oh, I see a chart. It looks good, but you got to read this. It says source arc investment management. This arc analysis is based on a range of data sources, which are available upon request. So Michael, please request this data. Please request the sources for this data.

Because further down, one of their data sources is saying that, Oh, at least one company has already started negotiating with Tesla on licensing full self driving. And so you look at the footnote, you click on that, And it’s an article in Electric where they quote Elon Musk in April saying that he hasn’t talked with one major auto manufacturer about licensing for full self driving.

So your source is a guy who all said, taking [00:34:00] the company private at 420 a share. That’s not a source. It’s this is, this is why,

[00:34:06] Michael: Anthony, clearly you don’t read the disclosure at the bottom that said forecasts are hypothetical and highly speculative and present many risks and limitations.

They even put that in bold for you. So that’s a good way of saying everything we just wrote is bullshit, but, we’re going to tell you,

[00:34:27] Anthony: Yeah. This is beyond absurd. Listeners, do you have some insight into ARK investments, nonsense, or is this really just a pump and dump scheme? Because it feels like a pump and dump gaslight scheme to me, but hey, if you want to pump and dump, send your money to the center for auto safety.

We won’t dump you. Or this is a bad, I’m going to stop talking. You’re dumped.

[00:34:51] Michael: You’re dumped. Yeah.

[00:34:54] Anthony: Okay. Yeah. Yes. Please subscribe. Please save me.

[00:34:58] Fred: Can you do your best? Arnold Schwarzenegger? [00:35:00] We will pump you up. No,

[00:35:01] Anthony: No. That was my

[00:35:03] Fred: best.

[00:35:03] Anthony: That was pretty good. Fred, you’re gonna save this.

[00:35:05] Flame Retardant Issues in Consumer Products

[00:35:05] Anthony: Let’s get into the Tao of Fred. Let’s talk flame retardant issues. And you’ve now entered the

[00:35:11] Fred: Dow

[00:35:11] Michael: of Fred.

[00:35:12] Fred: This is actually a little bit serious. So there are flame retardants that are put into a lot of plastic foams. And the idea behind those is that they will slow the rate of burn associated with these plastic foams, particularly in cars to allow you to get out of the car more easily.

It gives you a little bit more time. These chemicals, however, are used in a wide array of consumer products, in particular bedding and mattresses, sofas essentially anything that is made out of polyurethane foam. Includes a lot of chemicals that are included in the foam to act as flame retardants. Note that they don’t stop it from burning.

They just reduce the rate of burn. These are nasty chemicals. They’re, in general, they’re [00:36:00] called the forever chemicals. And so there’s a lot of them out there. If, let me see. Naturally, I’ve got the wrong window up here. I won’t go into the details of those, but a lot of them have brominated chemicals and they’re organic chemicals, meaning they have carbon in them.

So people are considering alternatives to that to say yes, it’s good to have a flame retardant, but we don’t care to poison ourselves in the process, which seems reasonable. So the question is, are there ways to do that are less harmful, that are still consistent with, in particular, the FMVSS 213, which is the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard that applies to child car seats?

And the answer is yes, there are many ways of doing that, and in particular, you can use barriers. That simply are physical barriers between ignition sources and the foam, or you can eliminate the foam completely. So typical materials that are used for that [00:37:00] purpose are wool, melamine, silica, Kevlar, et cetera.

Anything that is a durable insulator that is not in itself easily flammable. So that’s a long way of saying, that yes, there are alternatives to using these caustic chemicals that many of which are endocrine disruptors, many of which cause or are suspected to cause cancers in human beings and that are ubiquitous in the environment and basically don’t ever degrade.

Using materials that are well known economical, and are easily available. That’s what we’re looking at today. And I guess the reason this came up is because there was a, uh, Michael, there was an initiative somewhere to

[00:37:48] Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards and Flame Retardants

[00:37:48] Michael: There’s a, there’s an initiative going on at the moment, and one that we support to improve Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 302, that applies to the interior [00:38:00] flammability of vehicles.

It’s a standard that was set back in the early 1970s and it has essentially, it doesn’t require the use of flame retardants at all. It sets a burn rate at which materials used in vehicle interiors should burn. It’s intended when there’s a crash and a fire in your vehicle to allow the occupants time to escape the vehicle before the whole vehicle goes up in flames.

If you have interior materials that are Highly flammable, you’re not going to have much time to escape a vehicle. What NHTSA did was they specified a burn test to essentially slow the rate of fire propagation throughout the vehicle and allow times for passengers to escape. Instead of meeting that test with, better fabrics, the wools, the types of things that Fred mentioned, what auto manufacturers do are simply using chemicals [00:39:00] in the production of those interior materials that are, harmful to our health, harmful to child health and should be eliminated from vehicle interiors.

I think we all agree on that part. The problem that we come across here is that NHTSA can’t specify how manufacturers are going to meet a standard. NHTSA can set a burn rate, but they can’t tell manufacturers exactly how they’re going to achieve that rate. And in this case, we think the ball here is firmly in the EPA’s corner because they have the ability to mark these.

Flame retardants as harmful to human health and prevent companies from using them in consumer products. They haven’t done that and so nitza is sitting there with a standard that doesn’t require flame retardants And they’re being criticized for that standard, which is you know, it’s somewhat a misplaced criticism But that said, we do support [00:40:00] NHTSA if they, if NHTSA chooses to revise the standard, we think they should do so in a way that makes it difficult for manufacturers to meet if they’re using flame retardants.

And that’s something that needs to be looked at. We’ve You know, joined, up a letter from consumer reports recently on this issue and from, dozens, if not hundreds of other organizations are also on the petition that we joined to, ask NHTSA to look at the standard, figure out ways to correct this problem if, even if you cannot get into the business, you’re statutorily prohibited from getting into the business of regulating chemicals which is the EPA’s Thing that you should at least look at ways to modify the standard so that it continues to protect people in the event of vehicle fires, but also does so in a way that doesn’t threaten.

Outcomes that are created by the forever chemicals and the, that are using these flame [00:41:00] retardants.

[00:41:00] Fred: We have a couple of links that Anthony will put up on the website that will give you additional background on the flame retardant chemistry and also the alternatives to using these forever chemicals.

[00:41:13] Anthony: So Fred, you mentioned that these are polyurethane foams and polyurethane is derived from oil, right? Yes.

[00:41:20] Fred: Is what?

[00:41:20] Anthony: Is derived from oil? It’s made out of oil?

[00:41:23] Fred: Oh, yes. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:41:25] Anthony: Okay. So we know As is

[00:41:27] Fred: basically any industrial chemical made from carbon including Kevlar and melamine, which are high temperature potential barriers.

Those are also made from petroleum as a source. So They could conceivably be made from soybeans, but I don’t think that’s happening.

[00:41:45] Anthony: Okay, so is why are they using polyurethane foam? Is it just cost?

[00:41:51] Fred: Yeah, it’s cheap, and it works well, and uh, it’s ubiquitous, so there’s a lot of industrial sources for it.

My mattress, [00:42:00] by the way, is made from polyurethane foam, but it has a silica barrier on it. Silica is sand, very finely grown sand it makes it a little heavier than it would be otherwise. But it doesn’t breathe chemicals into my into my nose every night.

[00:42:14] Anthony: Oh, that’s good, but it’s scratchy, I bet.

[00:42:18] Fred: No self scratching mattress, it’s a great idea.

[00:42:21] Anthony: Oh, the mattress that scratches itself. That’s right, if you act now, we’ll throw on a subscription to Boys Life. Yeah, so we have some good articles linking to from Consumer Reports where they go into more details on this. So I think it’s a pretty good read there. Let’s jump over to real quick before I forget.

[00:42:37] Tesla’s Safety Concerns and Emergency Procedures

[00:42:37] Anthony: San Francisco Waymo has opened up their service to everybody in all of San Francisco. You don’t have to be just on the waiting list. Anyone can get into a deathtrap. A Waymo. Sorry. I don’t know why I said that. It’s not a it’s

[00:42:48] Michael: yeah. Yeah

[00:42:50] Anthony: It’s not a deathtrap. No, it’s not a deathtrap.

That’s their Logan. That’s their logo. They’re their motto There’s something speaking of deathtraps though. Let’s talk [00:43:00] tesla because i’m gonna say that so another toddler got locked inside of a tesla because the 12 volt battery died And I think we talked about this last week, didn’t we? It was a similar case, and there was the hidden release thing on the door.

Did I imagine that? Or am I having a really lame dream? Am I dreaming about this podcast? No, we talked about that.

[00:43:19] Michael: Yeah, I’m not, I can’t remember, honestly.

[00:43:23] Anthony: This is

[00:43:23] Michael: a case

[00:43:25] Anthony: Go ahead. Okay. A 20 month old girl in Arizona was recently locked inside a Tesla Model Y after the car’s battery died, creating a life threatening situation in which firefighters had to break open the door with an axe to rescue her.

That’s horrific. This, Ms. Moon put her grandchild, I believe it was the grandmother, put her, yeah. I load her into the car seat, close the door, and as soon as she goes around to open the front door, the battery’s dead, and she can’t unlock the doors, can’t open them. Thankfully, the toddler was not injured, the fire department got there in time, and, the child is obviously startled as there’s glass breaking [00:44:00] around her.

But then she took her finger off the lock button and no, that didn’t happen.

[00:44:06] Fred: Any 20 month old should know how to get out of her car seat, open up the glove compartment, read the owner’s manual, and get out of the car. Don’t you think? That’s only reasonable.

[00:44:18] Anthony: Brett Bergen has another podcast called I Imitate Elon Musk.

[00:44:22] Fred: Yeah another suggestion I’ve got, and I went to Amazon, which you may have heard of, and rescue decals are available for 4. 62. So these decals could be applied to the car so that people know how to, rescue other people. And the firefighters who attended this said that, oh God, another Tesla, and they went ahead and broke the window.

Now, Tesla’s retort is all you need to do is go around to the front of the car. You need to remove this cover that’s on the front of the car. Once you [00:45:00] remove the cover, it should be obvious to anybody that you can jumpstart the 12 volt battery by attaching the proper electrodes to the proper terminals.

And, off you go. Everything is okie dokie. I, we’ve talked about this before that, there are a lot of dangers in EVs and in particular self driving vehicles that are not apparent to rescuers. Let me suggest that, as we’ve suggested in the past, that people put stickers on their damn cars so that, our emergency responders can keep you alive, can rescue you.

And again, 4. 62 for four rescue stickers on Amazon. Thank you. And you can probably get them cheaper in bulk.

[00:45:46] Anthony: That’s sad that we have to do that. Sorry.

[00:45:50] Michael: Yeah, I think that the reason that we are having to do that is because there’s no standardization here, right? I know, Anthony, you noticed in the article where there’s another [00:46:00] commenter in the article we were looking at that was claiming that The burden, like somehow the burden here was not on the company designing the vehicle or anything else, but it was the firefighter who was the problem here that he should have memorized where the electrical system of the Tesla, how the electrical system that Tesla works.

How he could have gotten the child out of the car using whatever system that Tesla has provided. Apparently there’s a hatch on the outside of the vehicle when you connect some wires, vehicle unlocks, and you can then get the passenger out. We’ve run into this problem on Teslas in another way. People who are trapped on the inside of the vehicle, if you’re in the back seat, you have to look into the pocket to your left side or your right side in the back seat.

Pull up a hatch, unmarked hatch, and then pull a little cord to manually release the door. Now, if you’re, you just hopped into a robo [00:47:00] taxi, you’re riding the Tesla for the first time, or if you own one and you’ve never read the owner’s manual, you’re not going to know about this system. You’re not going to know where these emergency releases are.

And if you’re in a crash that requires you to exit the vehicle quickly, or if your battery dies and you’re trapped in a car that is Quickly heating up or for any number of reasons you want to get out of the car when you when the battery might not be functioning or you have an electrical failure of some sort.

It’s a problem that these systems aren’t standardized. When we get into a car, we know where the safety systems are. We certainly should, we know where the signals and the wipers typically are going to be the emergency brakes, the gas pedal, but these emergency releases. are being hidden. They’re being put in places where they’re unobtrusive, where they, fit into the overall style of the vehicle.

We think that they should be standardized. We think there should be a standard placement in every vehicle that has [00:48:00] electronic door latches that You consumers and anyone getting in the car knows that, Hey, battery dies, or you’re in a crash. The electrics fail and there’s a fire and you need to get out quick.

Here’s what you do to get out of the vehicle. People shouldn’t be having to go back and read user manuals to figure that out in emergency situations. And firefighters certainly should not have to learn the electric schematic for, hundreds of different vehicle models. And deploy that before using an ax to break a window and rescue a child.

That’s silly. It’s something that someone in the article suggested and it is, it’s, the company designing these vehicles should be taking that burden on itself to label properly marked and to standardize escape procedures.

[00:48:51] Fred: This is part of this idea, too, right? We talked about that last week where this is establishing a website for emergency rescue [00:49:00] information, which is a ridiculous idea.

They should use labels and stickers, but I wonder, if this is just part of Elon Musk’s visionary approach to vehicles, it could be that he’s just trying to accelerate Darwinian evolution. Survival of the fittest, and if you don’t know how to get outta your car, you’re gonna drop out of the gene pool.

You,

[00:49:22] Michael: wow. You know you’re talking about the automobile. Eugenics. . You heard it here first.

[00:49:28] Anthony: Automobile eugenics. The next podcast brought to you by the Center Pro Safety.

[00:49:33] Michael: Yeah, they’re putting the burden on the wrong folks. Once again, they’re saying, Oh, you’re a consumer.

You didn’t read the user’s manual. That’s your fault. Or you’re a firefighter. You weren’t aware of the placement of emergency manual releases on 200 different vehicle models. That’s your fault rather than just turning the mirror inward and saying. Oh, maybe we should just put these in obvious air areas so that people can escape their vehicles quickly [00:50:00] and safely when needed.

[00:50:02] Anthony: So I believe it was the book on safety on safe at any speed where I was referring to tail fins and all these sharp edges and cars as design pornography. I think this is a movement where all this stuff, all the safety things are hidden as more of design in cell. In cell design. That’s what it is. It’s a, yeah, I don’t know.

Look, I try some things, stretch it. I just love the phrase design pornography. Big fan. You’re muted but I know it’s I know it’s good from an

[00:50:33] Fred: engineering perspective. It’s possible to design door handles so that they are hybrid electric manual, right? So if you pull in gently, the electric switch pops the door open.

If the electric switch doesn’t work, you pull it a little harder, the mechanical switch will open the door. This is not a difficult design challenge, and as a minimum, this should be in every single car.

[00:50:57] Anthony: That sounds like it’s gonna cost a couple pennies, kay? [00:51:00] Look.

[00:51:01] Fred: Yeah, it’s either that or buy the stickers for, a dollar a piece.

[00:51:04] Anthony: The stickers won’t look good on my Cybertruck, okay? Look, I gotta look cool.

[00:51:11] Fred: Yeah good luck with that. Good luck with

[00:51:13] Anthony: that. Hey, easy now.

[00:51:15] Recall Roundup: Tesla, Toyota, Mercedes, and Ford

[00:51:15] Anthony: Speaking of cool, let’s go into some recall. Strap

[00:51:18] Fred: in. And I’m gonna jump out of the order,

[00:51:20] Anthony: and we’re gonna start with Tesla. Ha. Oh, Tesla. 11, 688 vehicles.

What could that be? All of the Cybertrucks, that’s right, the 2024 Cybertrucks, that giant front windshield may stop functioning due to electrical overstress. Oh, boy. Who’d have thought to change the electrical system and put a giant windshield wiper?

[00:51:46] Michael: We’re expecting a number of recalls to happen on the Cybertruck.

This is, there were two that were announced this week. That brings it to three in three months, and I would expect more. We know how this works. Thing was [00:52:00] semi rushed to production and how poor some of the design choices that were made in that process are. I think we discussed in detail the stainless steel and construction and a lot of the problems that might cause, but there are no, any number of other things I think at this point that Cybertrucks, there’s certainly the.

Trunks and the doors, which appear to be cutting and pinching people at pretty high rates. Those are, doesn’t sound like a big deal, but we have seen recalls in the past over, vehicle designs that cause minor injuries to a lot of people. There’s a safety risk there, folks. And I expect.

That the Cybertruck has not seen its last recall. In fact, I would predict that they’re going to hit 10 or more recalls on these vehicles at some point which is. A good indication of the quality and the real thought that’s gone into the designs here.

[00:52:56] Anthony: But bro, is this really a recall?

Can’t Elon just send some [00:53:00] software and fix it?

[00:53:03] Michael: Not on these two recalls, I did not see an over the air update because it’s hard to do an over the air update that fixes windows and fixes whatever the other recall was. It was some trim. The

[00:53:13] Anthony: accelerator pedal.

[00:53:15] Michael: They are falling off the vehicle and yet the accelerator pedal which was falling off So so far I think that not only is the Cybertruck got three recalls But they’re all three recalls that you have to take it in and get fixed.

There’s no OTA.

[00:53:29] Anthony: Oh Bro, that’s depressing. Hey, let’s move on next up Toyota A rare entrant to the Recall Roundup. 13, 077 vehicles, the 2023 Toyota Crown. I don’t even think I’ve heard of that vehicle. This is a rear view camera issue. Rear view camera. Oh, that’s a shocker. And due to inefficient laser welding of the camera case there’s a possibility of the camera case may separate when exposed to external stress over time, allowing water to leak in the camera.[00:54:00]

We’ve come across a very similar recalls around this as well. Haven’t we?

[00:54:07] Michael: Yeah. We have come across virtually every type of. Problem. I think that exists with rear view cameras. There’ve been, I think there were 30 plus recalls for rear view cameras in the past, last year. And then a high number of the year before.

And this year is no exception. It looks like we’re headed for more rear view camera recalls. And that suggests to me simply that manufacturers aren’t putting enough work into meeting federal motor vehicle safety standard two 18 that requires the rear view cameras. And they’re. Putting in cheap cameras that aren’t, that are susceptible to simple problems like vibration and water.

Two things you should probably expect in any, in a car generally. So at any rate, this one looks like the owners are going to be getting notified about [00:55:00] two months. So you can expect to wait a couple of months until you get your new cameras.

[00:55:07] Anthony: Another Toyota recall. Toyota issues a recall and stop sale for the Grand Highlander and Lexus TX.

Oh no, what happened with the Oh no, the driver’s side curtain airbag could deploy incorrectly. Oh, that is not something we want. This is a roughly 145, 000 vehicles. Built at Toyota’s plant in Indiana. Yeah, so if you own a Grand Highlander TX, there’s no requirement to stop driving it, but it might be a good idea to keep your driver’s window closed.

The improper airbag deployment could cause the vehicles to fall out of compliance with the ejection head form displacement requirements. Oh. The, basically the airbag will not deploy in a way that will protect you. It’s a rough one.

[00:55:54] Fred: That conflicts with other people’s recommendations, that you always keep the windows open to [00:56:00] keep the mutagenic chemicals that are in the foam.

Fire retardants from overwhelming your personal ability to resist them. So I’m, I, it’s an interesting conundrum that, you have to open a window to allow the airbag to work, but you have to close the window in order to keep yourself from being poisoned. Not sure which is the right way to go on that.

[00:56:25] Anthony: I don’t know. Listen, this one,

[00:56:27] Michael: This is a they haven’t determined what the corrective repair or the remedy is going to be here. So I expect that owners, you may get your first notification in a couple of months in August telling you about this recall, but you will not get a fix at that time.

You’re going to have to wait a little while longer while they figure out how. They’re going to meet Federal Motor Vehicle Safety standard 2 26 here. That’s the real problem here, is they’re not meeting that standard in these vehicles, so it’s gonna be a [00:57:00] while. And these are really, these are the, this is not just the Toyota Lander, this is the Grand Highlanders and Lexus vehicles.

So these are their, some of their highest end vehicles. So I know they’re going to have owners wondering what the heck is going on here and should they keep their windows rolled up. That’s a problem.

[00:57:18] Anthony: All right. Moving on to another expensive car. Mercedes Benz 16, 967 vehicles. This is the 2019 to 2021. I’m not even going to come close to trying to name names.

No, don’t do it. Yeah they’re all get silly names. Yeah, I mean if we spent time going through all those, if

[00:57:36] Michael: we spent time going through all of those, we would, you would just be hearing a string of letters and numbers during the podcast and nothing else.

[00:57:44] Anthony: If you have a 4matic plus transmission, that’s the thing to look out for.

Water might enter the connector over time, resulting in a short circuit. Am I right?

[00:57:55] Michael: You’re right. But what happened in this case was They had a previous recall on this [00:58:00] issue and they they didn’t quite get it right. I don’t know if it was a problem with the inspection procedures specified by Mercedes or if they found out through warranty claims that there was a problem with the way their technicians were performing the recalls, but nonetheless, all the folks who have everyone who is qualifying for this recall has been in for the previous recall on this problem and their vehicles are still subject to potential fires.

So it’s pretty important that everyone follow. It looks like they’re notifying. Dealers and owners pretty quickly on this one. Mercedes usually does a decent job of that. So you can probably expect to hear from them in the next couple of months. And it looks like they’ve already got the recall repair plan.

So it shouldn’t be a too long of a wait for owners on this repair.

[00:58:55] Anthony: All right. Last recall the reigning champion of recalls. Ford [00:59:00] motor company, 552, 000 plus vehicles. The 2014 F one 50. Wow. They made more, they sold more than a half million of this, just one model year. That’s amazing. They

[00:59:13] Michael: sell a lot of them.

Wow. Okay. So pick up trucks are number one sellers. That’s going to be the model with the number one vehicle sales in America.

[00:59:22] Anthony: Yeah. So this, what happens from what I understand is while you’re driving along at any speed, the transmission might just shift into first gear.

[00:59:31] Michael: Yeah there’s something wrong with the powertrain control module.

So if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to shift from fifth gear to first gear at 65 miles per hour boards, Ford gave you that opportunity in 2014 F one fifties. It’s a little shocking that it took them this long to. Get to this point. A recall this large on vehicles that old indicates that I, I’d have to guess that NHTSA was involved putting some pressure on them here because [01:00:00] that’s a, it’s a lot to spend on vehicles that when you made them, when you made your money on them 10 years ago, and you’re going back and doing a recall now based on I think it was 30, Incidents or something like this.

Luckily I don’t believe they’ve identified any crashes that have, at least they haven’t identified any crashes here that were caused by this. So maybe they’re getting this problem before it causes crashes. Although we know also from our experience that. There may happen in crashes here that were just settled out of court with non disclosure agreements and gag orders applied, and we’ll never hear about them.

So at any rate, it looks like owners are going to be notified very quickly and in the next week. And it’s going to be an updated calibration of your power control module. And so it should be a quick recall in and out, and you don’t have to worry about unexpected downshifting.

[01:00:54] Anthony: So please definitely get this one fixed.

Anytime you get a recall, get it fixed. [01:01:00] Okay. Doesn’t cost you anything. Makes your car safer. You get to go visit the dealer. You have to have the coffee, I don’t know my dealer plays the home renovation shows. It’s a Navy got easy white vinyl seats. It’s lovely. Anyway, I want to mention

[01:01:16] Volkswagen’s Investment in Rivian and AEB Rule Controversy

[01:01:16] Fred: one other thing here before we go which is Michael talked earlier about the auto industry pushing back on the idea of the AEB.

Ruled because it’s going to cost a billion dollars for all our Rivian listeners who are sitting in the piggly wiggly parking lot listening to this podcast. You should know that Volkswagen is in the process of taking over Rivian. They took a billion dollars that apparently is better used for investing in.

Losing businesses and bought a significant share of Rivian rather than using it to promote the safety of their automatic emergency braking. So hats off to Volkswagen for keeping your [01:02:00] priorities in exactly the wrong place.

[01:02:03] Michael: Yeah, Volkswagen does deserve a special mention because in addition to the Alliance, I believe they are the only.

Auto company that filed against our petition for reconsideration, asking that’s it to change the AB rule to something that’s more preferred by the industry. So they get three gears all around.

[01:02:22] Anthony: Perfect, Nugent.

[01:02:23] Conclusion and Sign-Off

[01:02:23] Anthony: And with that, listeners, that’s the end of our show. We’re taking next week off. I’ll probably post a repeat episode of one of your favorites or just whatever which one I choose at random.

I already know which I’m going to choose. Hey, I hope everyone has a lovely time off for our U. S. based listeners on the 4th of July. Go grill some hot dogs or vegan dogs of your choosing. And Carrots!

[01:02:45] Fred: Carrots! Grilled carrots! Grilled carrots. My wife sent

[01:02:49] Anthony: me a picture of grilled beets, and I was like, look, if we want to get a divorce, we can just do it.

[01:02:55] Michael: I like, I love beets.

[01:02:57] Anthony: Ah, minus one for Michael. And I know Fred, you [01:03:00] probably love beets too, don’t you?

[01:03:02] Fred: I don’t want to give up all my secrets.

[01:03:05] Anthony: Hey, with that, thank you so much listeners. Thank you for donating. If you haven’t donated, donate. Tell your friends to donate. We survive on Your good, positive vibes, but mainly your donations.

Always your donations. Positive vibes are adorable, but it’s a small non profit. Thank you so much.

[01:03:21] Fred: Thank you for listening. Bye

[01:03:22] Michael: everybody. For more information, visit www. autosafety. org.