Waymo Woes, Police Chases and Gaslighting

[00:00:00] Introduction to the Podcast

[00:00:00] Anthony: You’re listening to There Auto Be a Law, the Center for Auto Safety podcast with Executive Director Michael Brooks, Chief Engineer Fred Perkins, and hosted by me, Anthony Cimino. For over 50 years, the Center for Auto Safety has worked to make cars safer.

All right, good day, people. Good day, people.

[00:00:34] Fred: Good morning, gentlemen. Good

[00:00:35] Anthony: morning,

[00:00:35] Michael: world. G’day, mate.

[00:00:38] Anthony: Aw, yeah, I know, that’s where it was going. Yeah. That was strange.

[00:00:42] High-Speed Police Chases: A Growing Concern

[00:00:42] Anthony: Speaking of Australians, ha, this has nothing to do with Australians, a lot of people are running from the cops. I don’t know if you noticed this, but we’ve got a couple articles we’re linking to about basically people getting in cars, taking their friends cars, and be like, I don’t stop for the police, [00:01:00] and then leading them on these high speed police chases.

Yeah. From articles in the Albany Times Union, maybe it’s just called the Times Union, the number of high speed police chases across New York has surged since 2020 with car crashes and death increasing in tandem. The increase in pursuits is occurring as more drivers are fleeing police, often due to minor offenses that include traffic violations and property crimes.

Out of the two of you, Fred, how many times have you run from the police?

[00:01:28] Fred: I have yet to do that. I’m more a Police avoidance rather than a police evasion guy.

[00:01:33] Anthony: Okay, because I Michael’s definitely not run from the police. Let’s be honest. If anything, you’re the guy like, get them!

[00:01:40] Michael: There was one, one, I had a friend girl in the car with me one time and she had one of those old Mazda 626s that had a little turbo button and I was going too fast along a county road once, saw a sheriff’s car and just kept going fast and didn’t look [00:02:00] back.

So I don’t know, maybe I have. Did you say a friend girl? Back in my wild days. Yeah, she wasn’t a girlfriend. She was a friend girl. Oh, okay. There was no roman There was no romantic relationship there. I didn’t want to imply that, I was some kind of studly dudley at my younger age. It was a friend girl.

[00:02:18] Anthony: From the other Times Union article, a Times Union investigation found that at least 117 people died during 94 police chases in New York since 2012, with roughly 10 deaths per year. Um, this is insane. Why are people doing this?

[00:02:37] Michael: From what I can tell reading the article, there are, there appear to be a lot more people fleeing from police these days.

It looks like the numbers of people who are fleeing police has gone up. But, and then along with that, the policies for high speed pursuits vary significantly from state to [00:03:00] state, county to county, city to county, city to city. They’re all over the map. Some places will only allow their officers to pursue violent felons.

Some of them allow, officers to pursue violent felons, large drug addicts. Drug offenders when there are exigent circumstances, some places just leave it up to the officer to make that decision. That’s probably the worst thing they can do. I think police officers have enough going on without having to make those split second decisions, so it’s a really tough area that needs to be addressed.

I think it needs to be addressed with some laws that dial down on when and how and why police do this. What should police be chasing someone who is speeding or has, a warrant out for a some minor offense, not showing up for a court date for something small. I think most people agree that in those circumstances, it’s not really [00:04:00] worth putting the public at risk by, having a reckless driver followed by a very high speed police car going down the road, maybe through neighborhoods.

That’s another problem. Here’s, If you’re on an open road and a highway and there’s no pedestrians, no houses, no kids on bikes around, maybe there are circumstances where you might be, it might be a better choice to chase a vehicle versus when you’re in a residential area in the middle of New York City.

So there are a lot of factors here that play into why, certain counties, certain cities might have their own policies, but. Overall, it’s something that, that needs to be addressed nationally. I think particularly when it comes to lower level offenses, I don’t think there’s any circumstance in which Americans are going to agree that we should be putting others lives at risk over speeding tickets or, license infractions, small time criminal activity.

It’s probably not acceptable and we have [00:05:00] technology now, that can really help police in this area. We got license plate trackers. We even have, I don’t know if much about the eye in the sky where you essentially can videotape an entire city and then rewind the tape to see where people are coming from or going to that’s a technology.

Yeah, you might. There’s a tune into a Radio Lab episode about it. It’s fascinating. There’s this company that deploys cameras on airplanes, that basically fly around the city, videotape everything that’s going on beneath them. And then if a bank gets robbed, you simply rewind the tape, follow the criminals back to where they came from, and they’re your bank robbers.

[00:05:38] Anthony: This is, I remember what was like the early 2000s. There was those blimps flying above Fort Meade for a couple of years. And apparently they could film like the entire I 95 corridor from like DC up to Boston. You remember that? Those couple of blimps hanging out there.

[00:05:54] Fred: Yeah. Those are radars.

[00:05:55] Anthony: Those weren’t video. That wasn’t video. Do you remember what I’m talking about? They had two giant [00:06:00] blimps up there for,

[00:06:01] Fred: yeah, I remember. And, uh, it was actually, I think it was in a little bit North Fort Meade, but anyway yeah, one broke loose one day and went on a tour of Pennsylvania.

So they stopped that experiment, but that was that was, those are radars.

[00:06:16] Michael: But so we’re not quite to the, minority report of predictive crime solving yet. But, there are a lot of ways and some of those ways are obviously going to piss off privacy advocates, particularly those who care more about protecting criminal activity than other personal privacy issues.

But police have a lot of options available to them that. They have not had in the past that, and some that we’ve even advocated that they should have, like being able to turn cars off when they’re fleeing remotely which makes a lot of sense to us to stop this whole problem. Makes a lot less sense to people who really have a beef with allowing.

Police to be able to control their vehicle and there are some safety issues that come along with that. And it’s something that needs to be vetted [00:07:00] significantly before, it’s put into play, but, police chases are dangerous. They’re dangerous to bystanders. I believe the data in the article showed that, the driver of the car being fleeing is passes away or results in a fatality.

That’s about. Half of the deaths are involved here. 33 percent of the deaths are bystanders. And or 20 percent of the deaths are bystanders. And about 33 percent of deaths are people in other vehicles who are hit. So it’s, it’s a problem. Obviously, they’re going to be circumstances where you have to chase down.

People, if you’ve got an active terror situation, if you’ve got a spree killer on the loose, if you have, there are a lot of situations you could imagine where it’s absolutely necessary for the police to respond forcefully but they’re also, the vast majority of the time, I would guess police are responding to, lesser criminal activity that, that doesn’t really deserve the rest of the public doesn’t need to be put in danger.

[00:07:58] Anthony: I agree, but I think the greatest [00:08:00] chase ever French Connection, right? Come on, anyone? Anyway, hey, if you’ve never seen this car chase scene, see it. They filmed the car chase in New York City, no permits, nothing. While filming, they actually hit another car with someone backing out of their driveway and just kept going.

It’s unbelievable. The police didn’t chase them. They would have ruined a great movie.

[00:08:23] Michael: Was that during the glorious 70s?

[00:08:25] Anthony: That was! It was it’s a great scene.

[00:08:28] Pedestrian Safety Crisis

[00:08:28] Anthony: One thing you mentioned here is that what people don’t think about with car chases is a lot of people We’re going to get injured are pedestrians, people on the side of the road, people who had nothing to do with this, and that brings up our next article from Vox.

It is an article about pedestrian deaths, and from the article, pedestrian deaths have increased 75 percent in the U. S. since 2010, according to Smart Growth America’s latest report. The numbers started increasing dramatically in 2020 with pedestrian deaths racing to a 40 year high in 2022. And you can fix this stuff by [00:09:00] just changing the roads?

[00:09:02] Fred: Over that same period, the deaths in Europe have gone down by about a factor of 50%. Isn’t that right, Michael?

[00:09:11] Michael: Europe’s doing a lot better. I think that your chance of dying in a car crash in Europe right now is three times less than it would be in the United States. We’re way behind Europe at this point.

And there’s a few things that contribute here to pedestrian deaths. The definitely dangerous road design is one that’s cited frequently. Obviously. When you don’t have protected bike lanes and you don’t have good pedestrian infrastructure and people are crossing eight lane monstrosities of connector roads that really are designed simply to move traffic as fast as possible.

And not to facilitate the movement of people. You’re going to have a lot of problems. That’s a big part of the problem here. There’s also a problem with distracted driving and the drivers themselves not being tuned in to pedestrian movements. I think. Anyone listening [00:10:00] to podcasts has experience turning right on a red and or turning right on even a green when they’re pedestrians on a crosswalk and having to make sure that you’re being more careful in the presence of pedestrians than you might be.

Otherwise, if no pedestrians are around distraction plays into that and can cause some problems. And not only that, the data suggests, the article points out that drivers in the U. S. have more lax attitudes towards road safety than the Europeans. To me, that suggests we simply care less about the lives of the people around us and aren’t paying as much attention as we should.

But then, the article, Points out that we have this problem. We have this pedestrian problem. That’s drawing. We have, the pedestrian problems, not just some of the things I just mentioned, either. It’s the fact that cars are getting much larger cars, way a lot more than they used to. And with electric vehicles coming along and batteries, they’re getting heavier and heavier by the month.

And the more [00:11:00] weight you have in the vehicles is. It’s going to be more kinetic injury, striking a pedestrian, increasing the chance of severe injuries or death.

[00:11:08] Vehicle Design and Pedestrian Safety

[00:11:08] Michael: And the government’s not doing anything about this. We know that the government is slowly moving towards some, adding some pedestrian Tests and ratings into the new car assessment program, the five star safety rating program right now, that program really only rates vehicles based on how well they protect people inside of the vehicle and doesn’t even look at how cars affect people that are outside of the vehicle.

What,

[00:11:39] Fred: Let me jump in here and just say that the Euro end cap, which is the equivalent in the European Condom does include points for safety design of the cars for pedestrians and vulnerable road users who are not in the vehicle. So that’s a noted difference between the American end cap and the [00:12:00] end cap.

And that’s part of what’s been driving. The design of vehicles to have larger and taller front ends, which basically maximize the injury to pedestrians. For the sake of the style of the American pickup trucks and SUVs.

[00:12:21] Michael: And what’s, what, one of the reasons this article was published, by the way, is because representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland about two weeks ago sent a letter to the government accountability office asking them to investigate.

Some of these problems, why hasn’t the government done anything here? Why haven’t we address the relationship between vehicle design and pedestrian safety? And, how can we reduce pedestrian cyclist fatalities because they are clearly with a 75 percent growth in the past 15 years. We need to find solutions and we need to expose the problems that are causing this trend.

So the [00:13:00] general, the government accountability office agreed to do that study. They’re going to investigate the issue and hopefully issue some recommendations or point to some of the things that the department of transportation and the national highway traffic safety administration can do to address this issue.

[00:13:19] Anthony: Yeah. Is that a great quote from Raskin in the article? This deadly trend on our roadways has made the United States an appalling section, exception. The word I’m going for among developed countries. I really make a good impact like that. If you just keep mispronouncing the word repeatedly, especially one so sibilant as that

[00:13:39] Michael: It’s sad, really.

We need a lot of that’s sad too, Anthony, but we made a lot of strides in reducing traffic fatalities. During the, say, the first 50 years of NHTSA’s existence and some real good federal regulation of safety in vehicles. But some of this [00:14:00] is, some of this has fallen by the wayside and, It’s really time to take a good look at what’s going on here, how we can, one of the main thrusts, I think of all of this is that the government has never really regulated the size or the shape of vehicles.

Vehicles have a wide array of visibility that allows you to see a pedestrian. I don’t know if you’ve seen some of the images from inside of the new cyber truck, but there’s some issues with visibility there. If you’ve been in some of the more, The big heavy trucks and SUVs that have manufactured in the last 10 to 15 years, you will notice that it is really hard to see small things that are directly in front of the vehicle like children because of the way these vehicles are designed.

There’s simply no, no way to see something that’s blocked from your site by your hood or by 1 of the pillars in your vehicle. It’s an area that NHTSA has stayed out of. They tend to let the manufacturers control the design of vehicles. You [00:15:00] might’ve even heard a couple of weeks ago in the house hearing on transportation, the leader of triple a saying, we don’t mess with consumers choice and vehicles And essentially that’s part of the problem, is that Americans are choosing larger and larger vehicles and automakers are all too happy to supply that for them.

And I think that is one of the main contributors to a lot of the problems that have resulted in this rise in pedestrian fatalities. Yeah, the

[00:15:29] Anthony: article concludes with a quote from Representative Earl B. Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat, has been pushing Congress for safer streets and vehicles for 28 years.

His quote is, It’s time designed vehicles that don’t maim pedestrians. It should not be this hard. I think we agree. So that’s why we stopped putting knives on the outside of vehicles.

[00:15:50] Michael: Have you ever seen those steering wheels that have the pointed cone in the middle of them pointing right at the driver?

That’s fun.

[00:15:59] Anthony: Oh, [00:16:00] that’s awful. I see less of the, I still see them on trucks, those giant spiky bolts on the side that say, I wasn’t loved as a child. Oh

[00:16:07] Michael: yeah. Yes. That’s exactly what they say.

[00:16:10] Anthony: So there are no regulations around the design of. The exterior design shapes of automobiles is what you’re saying?

[00:16:17] Michael: Yeah, no regulations around the weight or the ability of the driver to be, there’s certain things that help driver visibility. There’s standards around, windshield defogging and defrosting, wiper systems, that blast. There’s some general regulations there, but when it comes to the driver’s ability to see and drivers of different height and different shapes and sizes, the people come in when it comes to the people’s ability to see other people and, other vehicles or obstructions outside the vehicle that can be compromised depending on the shape of the hood.

How, how we. How the hood slopes, the location, and the thickness of the pillars in the vehicle. [00:17:00] So there are a lot of factors that go into the driver’s ability to identify obstacles or, humans in the road ahead.

[00:17:08] Fred: To be clear, the carte blanche applies to U. S. design and built vehicles.

Vehicles only European vehicles do have standards that apply to that.

[00:17:19] Anthony: But I if that’s the case, then I imagine, manufacturers being cost conscious would at least that kind of safety approach would trickle into the U S or am I being.

[00:17:30] Michael: I think it does in some, it does in some ways in vehicles that are made for both markets and they just, you make a vehicle and then right at the end, you put in a few tweaks to make sure that it can be certified in Europe or the United States.

There are a lot of vehicles. That way I’ve even, I think we had a recall a couple of weeks ago where they installed the European version on the American vehicles and they had to recall it because it was non compliant. So yes, that definitely happens. It would be really great if we, only got [00:18:00] vehicles that were to the European standards.

I think we’re so far behind Europe when it comes to some of our safety standards. And we’re seeing some acknowledgement of that and at least in some of its latest rulemakings. on hydrogen fuel cell safety on electric vehicle battery safety is giving a nod and harmonizing the United States regulations with some of those coming out of Europe.

[00:18:24] Anthony: Listeners, we’re about 20 minutes in, and you’ve heard it from both Fred and Michael. They’re clearly socialists. They’re praising European standards multiple times. And with that in mind, maybe you’re a socialist too. Or if not, you just want a tax deduction, go to autosafety. org, click on donate, get your tax deduction.

I don’t know how taxes work, deduct it from your taxes. Give again, deduct more. I don’t know. Sounds good to me. Sound good to you guys? They’re not making an approvement. Oh, whoa. Yeah. Fred’s all for it. Of course he is. He’s a goddamn socialist.

[00:18:58] Fred: I’m a [00:19:00] benighted socialist, but I’m not sure about the celestial condemnation.

[00:19:03] Gaslight Nominees: Highlighting the Worst

[00:19:03] Anthony: Speaking of being gaslit let’s go into this week’s Gaslight nominees. And now I’m going to start off because I’ve got quite a few options here. Okay. Okay. So I was going to go with the governor of New York state, Kathy Hochul for at the last minute, canceling. Congestion pricing, because that was dumb.

That was her basically saying, ha, I don’t want to be re elected. Unless But

[00:19:28] Michael: You’re speaking as a resident of New York City. I am speaking as a resident of New

[00:19:33] Anthony: York City. That’s where unfortunately most voters in New York State live. But she gave in to the residents of New Jersey.

To say, oh, okay, we won’t want to offend New Jersey cause why? I don’t know. So that was an option for me. But for those of you playing the home game, who do you think I’m choosing? Who do you think I’m choosing as my gas lighter of the week? Come on. But

[00:19:54] Michael: you also had the intersection in there as well.

Oh, you were nominating the intersection specifically. I

[00:19:59] Anthony: was gonna [00:20:00] nominate the intersection because apparently that’s where most pedestrian deaths and accidents occur. Ban intersections. All, just only straight roads. All parallel to each other. You gotta get in between, walk. It’s good for ya. But that’s also a good one.

It’s not where I’m going. Did you lock in your votes, players at home? You’re right, it’s GM Cruise. GM Cruise wins again from me. GM is still doubling down on this dumb investment. From an article in the Verge, GM has said it remains committed to the struggling RoboTaxi company in the hopes that it will eventually see a return on its massive investment.

Ha! That’s saying, we set 8 billion on fire, let’s throw more money at it. See if that, puts the fire out. GM Cruise.

Anyway who else has a Gaslight nominee? Fred, I think you asked for extra time for yours today.

[00:20:55] Fred: Oh, I do. This one’s so much fun. This is on Waymo. And [00:21:00] you’ve probably all heard of Waymo, they have robo taxis that are proliferating like lymphoma throughout California.

[00:21:07] Anthony: How many pedestrians has GM driven over, dragged, and then lied to investigators about?

I don’t know, but I’m talking about Waymo. Yeah, Waymo has not GM, Cruise, they’re better.

[00:21:19] Fred: Just saying.

Let’s go into this a little bit, okay? There was a TV report in San Francisco where they interviewed crossing guards, numerous crossing guards, and they found out that about a third of these had witnessed autonomous Waymo’s endangering children who were their charges as they were trying to walk them across the road.

And one of the guards said it’s happened multiple times. And of course, inquiring minds wonder why Waymo is punishing children and threatening their lives. Waymo was given a chance to respond and Waymo [00:22:00] said, while we’re proud of our safety record, we also recognize the importance of ensuring that other road users feel confident and comfortable around our technology.

So there’s a couple of dimensions here I want to explore. Number one, they talk about feeling confident and comfortable, but how about being safe rather than feeling confident and comfortable? But I thought I would dive into their safety background a little bit and see why they’re confident about their, or why they’re proud of their safety record.

If I go to their latest safety report from July 6, 2023. They talk about there are 7 million miles, right? Comparable human benchmarks over 7 million miles. And then they also say they have over 40 million miles. That’s a little confusing whether they’re talking about 7 or 40. And then they go on to say within the first 1, 000, 000 public road miles, we drove without a human being behind the wheel.

We had no reported injuries, no collisions, and [00:23:00] every vehicle to vehicle collision involved poor driving by a human. If that’s true, then that suggests that the next 6, 000, 000 miles have been really bad. Because they’ve had lots of lots of accidents, lots of collisions. And typically in a development program of this nature, you would want to get safer as you accumulate experience rather than less safe.

So that’s interesting. They say they have over a decade of experience, but their current version of software has only been in use for the last 4 years. So it questions whether or not. They’ve actually got a database that they can apply to this analysis. But again, they’ve published information that says they’re actually much safer than human beings.

So that was a little bit puzzling. And then they say, for example, only 21 percent of crashes that Waymo has reported to NHTSA to date have resulted in a filed police report, regardless of the party at fault. But my [00:24:00] understanding is they’ve only been reporting since the standard general order. And that was about a year ago Michael?

So that’s no, they’ve

[00:24:05] Michael: been, I guess they’re counting they’re counting crashes. They report to the local police. I believe they say has

[00:24:13] Fred: reported to NHTSA. That’s their base. That would be it. That would be the standard general order, right? Which has only been for a year. So there’s a big gap between the database that they’re talking about using as their safety analysis and what they’ve actually reported to NHTSA.

But to go on, they then go on to say, to make sure the human crash data is valid and comparable, 1 million mile study. Either included under reporting adjustments for police reported crashes or derived from, et cetera, et cetera. Basically, what that means is they inflated the numbers of collisions that were actually reported to then say this is the actual number of [00:25:00] collisions that is associated with the human drivers.

And we’re less than that, so we’re much safer than the human drivers. I don’t know if this sounds like pure bullshit to you. There may be a scientific basis for this, but they’ve really jiggled the numbers here to make sure that they come out looking better than the human drivers associated with that, not to mention the restricted operating regime versus the humans who are driving all over.

Not to mention the fact that the humans also have many old cars that may be in questionable repair. There’s a lot here that, that makes you question it. And they, ultimately they’ve reached a point where now in May 2024, NHTSA launched an investigation into potential flaws in Waymo vehicles, focusing on 31 incidents that included Waymo vehicles ramming into a closing gate, driving on the wrong side of the road, and at least 17 crashes or fires.

So [00:26:00] Waymo is wondering why people don’t trust them, and they’re saying that they’ve got a great safety record. So I have helpfully put together what is essentially a balance sheet for their public safety perception. Oops, and it just went away. So give me that back again. And here it comes. So anybody who’s done any financial analysis or looked at businesses knows what a balance sheet is.

Basically, your assets have to balance your liabilities, or you’ve got a problem with bankruptcy, right? If your liabilities greatly exceed your assets, you’re bankrupt. My contention is that Waymo is bankrupt, and that’s why the public perception is a problem for them. Because if you look at their liabilities the liabilities include public confidence, right?

That’s analogous to shareholder equity. If you were looking at a financial balance sheet, and then all the liabilities, they’re only a DOT [00:27:00] level, TRL level 5, technology readiness level 5. There are many videos of Waymo encroaching on occupied crosswalks. A wrong way driving drunk driving, etc. There’s a safety investigation.

They’re immune from law enforcement because there’s no mechanism for them to get a ticket. They’re actually only at Waymo driver 5 immaturity, which they deployed in December of 2021. It’s only been around for 4 years. Sorry?

[00:27:34] Michael: Yeah, I was wondering Waymo driver five is the software or the platform they’re operating on here.

And they’ve presumably gone from one through five.

[00:27:44] Fred: Yeah. And when they went to five, they did a complete rewrite according to their information. So really, whatever they did pre prior to December of 2021. Has no bearing on the safety of their current operating system. [00:28:00] They probably had numerous versions that have come out since then of the Waymo Driver 5.

I don’t have access to that information, but there’s a questionable statistical base. I’m going to go back to their assets though. There’s a couple more liabilities here, but I need to go through the assets first before that makes sense. They do have some statistical confidence. They have been looking at that.

They do have,

[00:28:22] Michael: My understanding was that they don’t have enough data to have real statistical confidence.

[00:28:28] Fred: They don’t have adequate statistical confidence, but they do have some, they recognize the need for that. So I’m counting that as an asset, small asset, but still an asset.

They do have a safety case framework. So that’s an asset, right? And they’ve shared some of that with the public. They have a safety principles list, too. And so that’s interesting. They list the things that they’re concerned about. But, so here’s an associated liability.

[00:28:55] Safety Principles and Public Transparency

[00:28:55] Fred: There’s no mapping of the safety principles to the safety case.

So there’s no way for the [00:29:00] public to know whether these safety principles are actually included in their analysis.

[00:29:04] Michael: Without mapping it to a safety case, safety principles are just PR.

[00:29:10] Fred: Yeah who knows it may be there, but it’s not evident from what they’ve released to the public.

[00:29:15] Class 8 Truck Software and Redundancy Issues

[00:29:15] Fred: There’s also another issue, which is that they have said on their website as of December of 2021, that they’re also releasing class 8 truck software, which is the big, heavy tractor trailers that are on the road. And they say that the Class A truck redundancy is important because, you want to have safe trucks.

What’s interesting is they don’t extend that redundancy to the robotaxis. So it’s clear from the, it’s clear from what they’ve written that redundancy was something they had to build into the trucks in order to make them acceptable to the truck manufacturers. The liability is that, why don’t they treat people in the robotaxis with the [00:30:00] same safety concern that they have for the trucks that they want to operate without a driver?

[00:30:06] Anthony: But they are because, they want to sell to Amazon. Amazon is a corporation. Corporations are people. Amazon is a better people than you and me.

[00:30:15] Fred: That’s hard for me to understand, but I appreciate that. A lot of this is hard

[00:30:19] Anthony: for

[00:30:19] Fred: me to understand.

[00:30:20] Financial Liabilities and Investment Needs

[00:30:20] Fred: And in my mind, they’re bankrupt right now because their liabilities far outweigh their assets.

So in order to make them balance properly, what they need to have is a significant investment so that they can demonstrate that their vehicle safety, the vehicle’s actually technology, has progressed from the current DOT technology readiness level 5 to 5. To the technology readiness levels of eight or nine, which are required in order for them to make a convincing case that they’re actually operating safely.

And we’ve talked about these before they’re [00:31:00] readily available to the public. You can Google them or you can go to our website and pick up one of our links that are on there.

[00:31:07] Red Team Review and Safety Case Analysis

[00:31:07] Fred: The other thing that they really need is a red team review or the safety case analysis. There’s no outside interest that has said that their safety case analysis is actually working to do what it’s supposed to do and that there, there is evidence based on that red team review that their safety case analysis is good enough.

Be happy to share this with our friends at way mo so that they can better understand why the public feels that they are bankrupt in terms of their safety analysis. But again, going back to their original statement, which is on here somewhere.

The gas light is that way mo. Says that yeah, we’re encroaching on pedestrians. We’re encroaching on. Safety guards are encroaching on crossing guards and [00:32:00] children crossing the street, but, we need to improve the public perception of our safety.

[00:32:05] Gaslight of the Week Nominees

[00:32:05] Fred: That’s a very long nomination for Waymo as my candidate for Gaslight of the Week.

[00:32:12] Anthony: That’s pretty good. Michael, you got a, look, I chose GM cruise again, Fred chose Waymo. So I think your only choice left is Zooks. Maybe who are you going to go with?

[00:32:23] Fuel Economy Standards and Industry Response

[00:32:23] Michael: We, I’m actually going with the Alliance for Automotive Innovation for one of their quotes that was in an article that we also have linked this week on.

The fuel economy, final rule that came out from NHTSA earlier this week maybe late last week. I think it was yesterday, two days ago. The basically what happened was they had a notice of proposed rulemaking, which is like the pre final rule. They’re putting it out there for comment before they do the final rule.

For those of you who didn’t take administrative law in law school. [00:33:00] And what happened is they had, I believe the they had a fuel economy proposal that would have raised the average fuel economy and vehicles to 58 miles per gallon by 2032. And what they did this week in the final rule is they’ve reduced it to 50.

4 miles per gallon by 2031. Now that’s certainly an increase from where we are now. Right now, we’re at 39. 1 miles per gallon. Manufacturers were, you Probably going to struggle to get to 58 miles per gallon by 2032, especially given the fact that, electric vehicles, while they are doing okay, they’re not quite matching all the hype and predictions that automakers that wish they had.

That electric vehicle fleet would have helped manufacturers meet that 50 to 8 miles per gallon by 2032 there are a lot of people in [00:34:00] the on the environmental side Right now who are angry that that’s basically backed off of what was a a really impressive Increase in fuel economy over the next seven years And what the alliance said, though, is insightful and shows you where the industry is coming from on this.

They say, those fines wouldn’t have produced any environmental benefits or additional fuel economy and would have foolishly diverted automaker capital away from the massive investments required by the electric vehicle transition. And to me that’s, that misses the point and the fines aren’t there.

They’re there for a reason. They’re there to incentivize automakers to continue producing better vehicles with environmental or less environmental problems and automakers who don’t keep up. Inevitably have their capital diverted as a punishment. That’s the whole point of the system. And we know, [00:35:00] and anyone who listens to this show knows that decades of automaker behavior show that the one thing they care about most is money and monetary penalties are.

The only pressure they really respond to in the industry. So it would just be, it would have been a lot more palatable if they had just said, the EV transition isn’t going as smoothly as we’d advertised it. And, but, we’re going to continue to make our internal combustion engines better.

They didn’t, they said, we can’t pay these fines. We’re going to pass those along to consumers, raise car prices, even more than they already are. Which I think the average vehicle is already 47, 000, which is. Absurd to me in some ways, mainly because I can’t afford a 47, 000 vehicle, but what they’re not going, what they’re not saying here is that this reduction, even while electric vehicles are coming out, this reduction is going to allow manufacturers to [00:36:00] relax a little on making their internal combustion and their hybrid vehicles better.

And we just think that’s they’re pulling the wool over the consumer’s eyes by claim, by, by, by playing the victim, claiming that they, these massive fines are only going to result in higher prices when, in fact, they’re going to result in far better performance by internal combustion engines and by hybrids and perhaps better EVs that consumers are willing to accept.

[00:36:28] Anthony: All right. The vote tally has come in and the listeners say it’s Governor Kathy Holchul. She’s the gaslighter of the week.

[00:36:35] Michael: I

[00:36:35] Anthony: know, it’s crazy.

[00:36:36] Michael: Wasn’t even, she wasn’t even your actual nominee. But look,

[00:36:39] Anthony: I can’t argue with our deep state listeners. What can we say? So Michael, what we were just talking about here is the CAFE requirements, the Corporate Average Fuel Economy.

We have an article linked to in Reuters. And what’s interesting is it says the new requirement is barely above the 49 mile per gallon requirement that was required for [00:37:00] 2026. We’re two years away, less than two years away from 2026. Is the cafe standard for 2026, 49 miles per gallon, or have they just shut that off?

[00:37:11] Michael: They don’t start the new ones until 2027. So I believe so.

[00:37:14] Anthony: Okay. So that’ll be 49 miles per gallon. And now it’s going to be a few years later, just 50. 4 miles per gallon. That seems pretty lame.

[00:37:25] Michael: It is pretty lame. That’s the whole point here is that they’re not doing as much as they should be doing.

They’re claiming, it really appears that they’re blaming all of this on a lot of the massive capital investments that the industry has put into trying to get electric vehicles off the ground and yes, the, Government has pushed them in that direction. And essentially here, they are asking that same government from relief from the CAFE standards because the government in other ways has been pushing them towards electric vehicles.

But what’s [00:38:00] going to happen here is that you’re just going to see a, worse fuel economy across the board as a result of all this.

[00:38:07] Anthony: Huh. I’m going to change my vote. It’s going to be NHTSA because this is, this is gaslighting. This is 100%. We’re making vehicles better for the environment.

Just a teensy, weensy, right? Anyone? A bit. Hey, listeners, you heard Michael say he can’t afford a 47, 000 car. It’s because you haven’t donated enough. Who wants to donate a 47, 000 car to Michael Brooks? Now? Okay. Go to autosafety. org, click on Donate. And now let’s get into some Tao Time. But can I make a request?

Because we spent a lot more time than expected on the the gaslighting could do, is this possible to do a quicker towel? Oh, sure. Oh, we can make this succinct. Oh, great.

[00:38:48] Low Rolling Resistance Tires Explained

[00:38:48] Anthony: Low rolling resistance tires. You’ve now entered the Dazzle Threat. That’s

[00:38:53] Fred: your data profile name, right? I like that.

That’s good. That’s clever. No. So to make it succinct low rolling [00:39:00] resistance tires are good and they’re better than high rolling resistance tires. Thank you.

[00:39:07] Anthony: All right. If anyone else wants to find out follow Fred on I don’t know, match. com.

[00:39:13] Fred: All right. So a little bit more on that. So the the low rolling resistance tires basically use a harder rubber.

And they introduce some kind of material to increase the traction so that the overall traction is comparable to what a softer tire would have. In many cases, they introduce silica, which is basically sand or, ground glass, silica gel, you’ve all seen silica. So this makes the Tires that are harder have more traction on the highway, simply because they’ve got grit in them.

So they grow, they, uh, putting sand on an icy road. They just increase the amount of friction between the tire and the road. [00:40:00] So that’s how they achieve greater endurance. Long, less rolling resistance and greater endurance while not sacrificing the amount of grip that the tire has on the road.

So that’s the heart of it. Basically, they tend to cost more than the less rolling resistance tires, but overall they last longer. So it’s a it’s pay me now or pay me later. That’s really the issue with that.

[00:40:30] Anthony: Wait, so what caused more, the low rolling resistance or the high rolling? The high resistance.

The

[00:40:36] Fred: high, the low rolling resistance tires. Cost more than the high rolling resistance tires. So forgive me if I was, it wasn’t clear about that because there’s more engineering involved in it, a little bit more chemistry in the rubber and the additives that go into it. The tread patterns are also optimized for, the chemical compounds that are in the rubber [00:41:00] overall to make the overall design as safe as the tires that they’re replacing.

[00:41:05] Anthony: Yeah. And these are primarily right now on your EVs. Because of our increased range.

[00:41:12] Fred: They are on EVs for increased range. They’re on a lot of cars simply because that helps the cars meet the cafe requirements that we talked about. They’re also elected by people like me to keep their grandchildren as safe as possible.

[00:41:30] Michael: So there’s no, there’s no real. Difference in the safety of a low rolling resistance tire versus, a high rolling resistance tire doesn’t provide you with any, with better turning, better traction in any way?

[00:41:44] Fred: In general, no, it does not. Yeah they’re designed to be comparably safe.

Again, the statistics and trying to figure it out over time. I don’t really know if there’s a big statistical base that can support that, but in terms of the tests that they use for [00:42:00] traction and traction determination, by the way the information that you can find on the side of the tire will talk about the amount of traction and the friction coefficient associated with the tire.

So you can when you go to the store to buy new tires, you can compare the tires and you can see for yourself that the traction rating. For the low rolling resistance tires will be the same as that for the nominal tires. And it just costs more.

[00:42:30] Michael: And so the other thing is they seem to be better.

We’ve talked about how heavier vehicles produce more tire particulates that are washed out into the environment. Would low rolling resistance tires be better for the environment because there’s less Particulate matter that’s going into streams and disrupting the reproductive cycle of fish and other animals.

It

[00:42:53] Fred: could be, but it’s hard to say simply yes or no to that because the chemistry that’s in [00:43:00] the low resistance tires is a little different than the other tires. Just from the standpoint of the number of particles. Per mile being emitted by the tires, you would say yes, but if you look at the other dimensions of that and you look at the actual chemistry of the tires you’d have to establish that separately.

And I don’t know if that’s been done. Yeah. So it’s

[00:43:19] Michael: what’s

[00:43:20] Fred: in those

[00:43:20] Michael: particles might matter more

[00:43:22] Fred: than the amount of the particles. Silica is pretty benign. Silica is everywhere. Yeah. That’s not an issue, but. There’s other chemicals that they put in tires to essentially make sure the silica doesn’t migrate out

[00:43:35] Anthony: to these low rolling resistance tires.

Do they last as long as your standard tire? Oh, they not be as long, typically last

[00:43:46] Fred: longer. Oh,

[00:43:47] Anthony: the last

[00:43:47] Fred: longer. Yes. Because they’re harder. The rubber is harder.

[00:43:52] Anthony: Oh, so this is a harder tire. Okay. Okay. Got it. I may make sense. Okay. So this is for fans of F1, this would be like the Pirelli [00:44:00] C5 line and the C3, the softer compound, which gets up to speed faster, but doesn’t last as long.

All right.

[00:44:06] Fred: Yeah. I think we’re talking about Comparisons like that. Yeah.

[00:44:09] Anthony: Got it. Okay, that makes sense. And if you’re also an f1 fan There was an amazing crash two weeks ago or so and in Monaco high speed crash Boom, the car totally destroyed driver gets out walks away fine. No injuries at all he wasn’t strutting.

He was just like, Oh, maybe I shouldn’t have done that. But it just makes me think, Hey, we can make cars safer that go 200 miles per hour. Why can’t we do that for my little compact car? Anyway I’m gonna do one more article before we jump into recalls. Cause this is a fun little interesting bun. I don’t know.

[00:44:42] Volvo’s CO2 Passport Initiative

[00:44:42] Anthony: It’s from the wall street journal. It’s about Volvo releasing something called a passport, a CO2 passport, or basically it’s a, an app that when you get to buy a car, it will tell you the whole supply chain of where the battery materials came from. And now the [00:45:00] EU is requiring this. The purpose of the battery passport is to source more responsibly and prove you are trying to improve the sustainability of batteries.

The main driver is to effectively shine a light into the deeper parts of a supply chain that were previously pretty opaque. The passport will also include the CO2 footprint of the entire battery pack, the percentage of recycled material used in the battery, as well as life cycle data to eventually show battery health.

Doing so should improve recyclability of batteries as well. And so now the EU, is mandating this for everybody in a couple of years, but I thought this was a great little idea, so you as a consumer can be like, hey, I want more child labor in my battery. Cause I think the child, they got smaller hands and they can get in those for those delicate parts, whereas other people be like, I want clunky adult fingers, right?

That’s what,

[00:45:54] Michael: yeah, I think most of us want the clunky adult fingers in there, but this is. And it’s a great [00:46:00] idea from Volvo, even though it’s going to be required in a couple of years, it looks like they’re just getting ahead of the curve. And, it made me wonder, why don’t we have this type of label covering all parts in our vehicle versus just, these batteries that the EU is focused on.

It would be nice to know where, by percentage basis, where my car comes from it would even be nice. If I pulled into a gas station and they told me, what country was the source of the oil that’s going into my tank, that might be something a lot of consumers are interested in to allow them to, choose their gas.

So that’s, it’s a good idea. And, it makes a lot of sense, particularly given that there have been a lot of criticisms around the rare materials that go into the manufacturer of electric vehicle batteries.

[00:46:45] Fred: By the way if you go to Citgo, that oil comes directly from Venezuela. I was gonna say that one too.

Yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve bought Citgo gas.

[00:46:54] Anthony: But hey, let’s go into recalls.

[00:46:56] Weekly Recalls and Investigations

[00:46:56] Anthony: Let’s start off this week with who’s the winner? Oh, Chrysler! [00:47:00] 201, 000 plus vehicles. This is the 2022 Ram 3, 500 cab chassis with gross vehicle weighting less than 10, 000 pounds. And then there’s a Ram 2, 500 Dodge Durangos.

And this is the issues with their electronic stability control systems. Failure of the ESC system when intervention is expected or replied upon can cause a vehicle crash without prior warning. Wait, what, what can happen? My, my stability control will fail.

[00:47:32] Michael: Yeah, it looks like they have some type of control model software that isn’t compliant, first of all, with FMVSS 126 that applies to the analog brake systems, and the software somehow leads to the electronic stability control becoming disabled on these vehicles.

They’re putting out the recall in about, what is it, a month and a half? [00:48:00] So owners should have a fairly easy repair since it looks like it’s just going to be a software update.

[00:48:07] Anthony: All right, next one is Kia, born in 62, 000 plus vehicles. This is the 2020 to 2024 Kia Telluride. If there’s an external impact with excessive force to the front power seat, side cover and slider knob, that’s going to get a fire.

Basically the the seat motor will overheat and cause a fire.

[00:48:30] Michael: Yeah, that one’s a, that’s a weird one. It looks like they just didn’t, properly design the seat motor control switch that it wouldn’t, it looks like they’re People are bumping it or because they describe it as, an external impact with excessive force to the front power seat side cover or sleep seat slide knob.

Say that 10 times the it dislodges. It’s a cover, and then that makes the seat motor control [00:49:00] switch misaligned. And that leads to overheating, possible fires. I think they noted there’d been about seven, six or seven fires related to this issue. And these are all those brand new tell your rides that key has come out with in the last few years.

[00:49:17] Fred: Don’t they also say that if the seat gets too hot or starts to smoke that you should exit the vehicle. I think people would know that. Yeah.

[00:49:26] Anthony: I

[00:49:30] Michael: don’t think they say it, but they, but I think you would unless you confuse it with your seat heater.

[00:49:36] Anthony: If there’s smoke coming from underneath my posterior, I’m probably going to be like, wait a second.

Did I drop my cigarette? That’s not normal. Oh, I’m just smoking. Hey, next up, Kia, 2, 401 vehicles, the 2024 Kia EV9, hybrid electric let’s see, in the event of a crash. Do you know what a

[00:49:57] Michael: headliner is?

[00:49:58] Anthony: That’s the thing that [00:50:00] droops in the, my parents Oldsmobile.

[00:50:03] Michael: Yes,

[00:50:04] Anthony: that’s the only real

[00:50:06] Michael: reason I know what a headliner is.

It’s because of all the vehicles in the seventies and eighties, where they’d be a little older and you’d start to see the headliner drooping down in the vehicle, which is definitely not ideal, but. The headliner in this case, they were testing vehicles that were manufactured in Korea and shipped to America before the, so they started selling the Korean version of these EV nines in the United States, but then they were going to start manufacturing a Kia’s Georgia plant.

And they were doing some testing prior to starting up production in Georgia, and they found through testing that they. The headliners do not absorb an adequate amount of the impact. And so they are not compliant with FMVSS 201, which is occupant protection and interior impact for those of you who [00:51:00] aren’t tracking all the federal motor vehicle safety standards.

[00:51:03] Anthony: All of our listeners are, come on.

[00:51:05] Michael: So it looks like they’re going to take. Take your headliner apart and put some new impact absorbing plates into the headliner of those vehicles. So if you have already bought one of those EV nines, there are a few thousand of them out there prowling our roads right now, that recall should be out sometime around the end of July.

[00:51:28] Anthony: Huh. I always thought the headliner was just a little thin piece of fabric. I thought it was Jimmy Kimmel. I did too. I

[00:51:35] Fred: thought it was Jimmy Kimmel at the Academy Awards. Isn’t he the Heather? I

I like that joke. Yeah, were there was Those were some Yucks. Yeah, . I would’ve appreciated it. A laugh, but that’s okay. You know I was, let that go.

[00:51:53] Anthony: I wanted to verbalize it in case you were confused, but I wanted to let you know.

[00:51:58] Fred: Thank you. I appreciate [00:52:00] that. How

[00:52:00] Anthony: funny.

[00:52:00] Fred: I good to be clear.

[00:52:04] Anthony: Alright, last up, we’re going to do an investigation in a Nissan Rogue.

Oh, the ODI resume. That’s hilarious they call this a resume. Ah, early warning field report review below. Bum, bum. Ah, multiple issues with the side Curtain airbags inadvertently deplore after the door is shut or slammed. Oh my god. That is an amazing prank That is the best. I knew you’d like this

[00:52:30] Michael: one Oh my god,

[00:52:32] Anthony: when you slam it the airbag goes off and a little flower comes out shoots water in your face, too I mean what’s happening here?

Is that literally it?

[00:52:42] Michael: That’s literally it. People are shutting their door, slamming their door and their sidebags are deploying for some strange reason. This is keeping confidential. The number of field reports they’ve gotten on this, although they’ve said they’ve received multiple reports through their early warning reporting [00:53:00] system.

So yeah, this is a thing. Don’t. If you have a Nissan Rogue Select from model year 2015, maybe, this might affect vehicles on either side of that, but they’re looking directly at the 2015 Nissan Rogue Selects be careful shutting your side doors. Maybe don’t slam them. Um, this is, it’s if most people, when they shut their car doors forcefully, they’re not inside of the vehicle.

I would imagine that would be from the exterior and you’re pushing the door shut. But obviously this could happen with you in the vehicle. And, there could be people just getting into vehicles aren’t always in their appropriate riding positions yet and not in the position where these. Bags may have been designed to deploy.

So that could be dangerous. So folks need to be aware of this issue. If you have one of those vehicles.

[00:53:50] Anthony: See, it’d be fun if they put the airbag on the outside. So you slam the door, you get hit in the face. You’re not even in the car. Come on, Fred, you got to yuck. I see you [00:54:00] leaning forward. No,

[00:54:03] Fred: I was just thinking that Subaru is actually investigated use of exterior airbags or pedestrian safety on their, on some of their vehicles.

So that’s not as farfetched as you might have hoped.

[00:54:15] Anthony: No, I think that’d be great. It would help with pedestrian safety. I think I, and we’ve discussed this in the past, whereas I think cars, did you just shoot out a stream of cotton candy? A delicious way to die.

[00:54:27] Fred: Oh, that’s sticky.

[00:54:30] Birthday Announcement and Closing Remarks

[00:54:30] Fred: Hey, we have a birthday announcement, don’t we?

[00:54:33] Michael: Yeah, we wanted to say happy birthday to our dear friend Joan Claybrook today on her 29th birthday.

[00:54:41] Anthony: Happy birthday, Joan Claybrook. Good luck at 29.

[00:54:45] Fred: Keep going, Joan. We love you.

[00:54:47] Anthony: All right, with that, listeners, thanks so much for spending time with us. Hope you gave us five stars, told all your friends, shared, clicked subscribed, downloaded, and your pets.

All right, until next week, bye bye.

[00:54:59] Fred: Alright, thank [00:55:00] you. Alright, buddy.

For more information, visit www. autosafety. org.