There Auto Be A Law

The autonomous vehicle industry has their own PR team that is trying to compete with our Consumer Autonomous Vehicle Bill of Rights. It's a bunch of hogwash that they regurgitate every few years. A few Senators that can see through this have written a nice letter to NHTSA telling them to regulate AV's, British Columbia bans AV's and another Tesla driver makes the fatal mistake that his car is an A...

Could your road go on a diet? Maybe it should as it could make it safer. Did you spend too much money on a stainless tank and are now suffering from unintended acceleration? Contact Tesla and ask if you've been Cyber Trucked. Turbo roundabouts, bad Tesla software updates, daylight savings time and car crashes an update on the Consumer Autonomous Vehicle Bill of Rights and lots of recalls. This wee...

Tesla settles an Autopilot case before the trial starts which makes sense since Elon said they never fight true claims. Another Telsa case involving a 2 year that managed to start the car and crash into his mom has begun and Elon says that his robotaxi's will be announced real soon. Our expert opinion is that Tesla won't produce a robo-taxi within the next 5 years. Don't get high and drive because...

This week Dr. Emily Thomas from Consumer Reports joins us to discuss backseat safety. Did you know that there is technology to remind you not to leave your kids in the car? And it's not standardized or required, Dr. Thomas walks us through the tech, the safety of car seats and how Consumer Reports conducts testing for these items. It's a good one. This weeks links: https://www.noheatstroke.org/ ht...

Oh the joys of dash cams... remember just because you're the one filming doesn't mean that you're not int he wrong. Should you get one? Listen and find out. GM stops selling your data, Elon forces everyone to experience FSD, the solar eclipse might lead to more crashes, and New Jersey is trying to exempt all of their drivers from automated traffic enforcement. This weeks links: https://www.msn.com...

Apparently, if one were so inclined you could replace or reprogram your digital odometer fairly easily because security is not something that is built into car software. How was that for a sentence? 3 adverbs at once. Ouch. Know what else hurts? Drowsy driving. It's under-reported and dangerous. Autonomous driving modes also seem to be dangerous as we see in our Blue Cruise discussion. Maybe we sh...

Know the difference between laminated glass and tempered glass? Did you know that a laminated glass breaking tool for sale online will not actually break laminated glass? I answered no to both of these questions so it's a good thing I listened to this episode. Plus some cars are tracking your ever move and then selling the data to your insurance company... without your knowledge or consent. IIHS a...

Touch screen or physical buttons that go click? This is the new Pepsi challenge. Where are you? Odds are if you are here than you like the buttons. So do we. This week we start off with a story about how the Europeans are going to ding manufacturers for hiding features behind a touch screen. Telsa decided to go even further and remove turn signal stalks, the Biden administration talks about cyber...

This week Anthony deals with rental cars, the Washington Post investigates Tesla, Fred explains hybrids, Michael provides more detail about Ford airbag non fixes and more. This weeks links: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2024/02/28/greenest-cars-plug-in-hybrid/ https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/iihs-challenges-automakers-with-tougher-top-safety-pick-award-criteria https://arstechn...

Our guests stuck around for another episode. In this one Phil explains why "driving modes" make much more sense than SAE Levels and I have to agree. Levels are meaningless since every OEM seems to make them mean whatever they want. William explains more about liability and how the laws are not keeping up because there has not been a pressing issue from the public. Actually, the way he says is much...

This is the first of a two-part episode with Philip Koopman, Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University and William H. Widen, Professor at University of Miami School of Law. The the two have been providing testimony to state legislatures about the safety of autonomous vehicles and authoring a bunch of articles. In this episode they walk us through the liability aspects of self driving cars...

In this episode guests Dr. Jeff Wishart and Phil Koopman explain the history of autonomous vehicles, why safety is really really hard, that human drivers are not bad and that it is pure speculation if a self driving car will ever be safer than a human.

No idea and we don't directly address that question. Instead we discuss how you'll never know what goes on inside the "mind" of the AI. Plus GM Cruise releases a report that says they failed because they think they are better than regulations and regulators, distracted driving is on the rise. elderly drivers consider signing advanced directives for their kids to take away their license and Telsa k...

Over a quarter or all motor vehicle deaths are due to excessive speed. Why are we in such a rush and where are we going? No idea. This week we dig into Intelligent Speed Assist and ponder the question if it's the consumer preventing solutions or the auto makers? If regulators got involved then we could save over 10,000 lives per year. Plus San Francisco sues the CPUC over self driving cars, taller...

You try to come up with clever titles each week. Sometime they work and sometime they are a, "smorgasbord of safety". We discuss some extra CES goodies, thermal cameras, AEB, driving simulators for teens and rats. Fred discusses a recent Microsoft paper(pr?) on using AI to find better battery chemistry. This weeks links: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/01/bmw-adds-a-human-touch-to-driverless-p h...

The Consumer Electronics Show delights us with the absurd, the dangerous and the potentially good. IIHS shows damage from crash tests at higher speeds and school buses might go the EV route. Plus Fred explains simulations. This weeks links: https://www.autoblog.com/2024/01/09/mercedes-amgs-mbux-sound-drive-and-will-i-am-let-you-compose-a-song-by-driving/ https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/9/24031529/...

Hey Listeners, This week we join the fray and pile on Tesla. The Washington Post, Consumer Reports and even Tech Crunch point out how Tesla's autopilot and full self driving is pricey garbage. Plus Fred does a deep dive into his New Years Resolution for the automotive industry. This weeks links: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/12/31/tesla-autopilot-recall-test/?itid=ap_geoffreya.fow...

It's the end of the year. Drive safe and is Waymo safer than a human? Probably not but thanks for sharing the data. Tesla has another recall and continues to blame it's customers when their car breaks. The Blazer EV might be a lemon, Fred dives further into the ARC airbag problem and we discuss some recalls. This weeks links: https://waymo-blog.blogspot.com/2023/12/waymo-significantly-outperforms....

Tesla dominates the auto safety world this week and on this podcast that is a bad thing. First Tesla recalls almost every car they've ever produced. Then their lawyers cause the Tesla flock to cry by admitting that AutoPilot and Full Self Driving are nothing more than corporate puffery (at $12,000 that's gotta hurt) and finally an insurance study shows that Tesla drivers are more likely to get int...

This week we are joined by Dr. Jeffrey Wishart. He's got over 20 years experience in the advanced transportation space and is author of the book, " Fundamentals of Connected and Automated Vehicles ". If you want to learn more about things like V2X, level 2, 3 and 4 autonomous driving systems this is the episode for you. Plus in listener mail Michael dispels the myth that we are funded by big auto...

Takata is back in the news for another round of defects. Anthony learns that seatbelts are regulated and tend not to fail but airbags are not regulated and hence why we keep hearing about defects. Senator Markey asks car companies to explain why they are collecting so much data and what they are doing with it. California is making diagnostic ports on EVs standardized which is good but they are sti...

Cars keep getting heavier and heavier and the laws of physics stay the same. This week the CyberTruck is finally, maybe, let loose on the world. This is another ginormous vehicle that weighs too much and it doesn't care. Anthony learns, again, that most cars are never crash tested, used car dealers can sell cars with known recalls, GM Cruise gets one more nail in it's coffin and Fred reads us stor...

Fred is off this week but Michael and I push on. Did you know that driving on Thanksgiving is more dangerous than driving on the mad shopping day of Black Friday? The NTSB suggests that NHTSA make ISA a thing. Gotta love those acronyms. Basically one safety regulator is asking a different safety regulator to put in a system to alert drivers that they are going to fast. Speaking of NHTSA for 50 yea...

This week Michael and Anthony claim to be visited by the deep state (or just happen to be around helicopters) and Fred has his voice replaced by an AI (head cold). Could it be GM? Nah, they are too busy putting a lawyer in charge of their GM Cruise division. Anyone got the over/under on whether their CEO Kyle will make it to the end of year? Lucky for him American corporations tend let people fail...

GM Cruise is on a death watch. They no longer have non-driverless cars, they've recalled all of their cars so that they don't drag humans caught underneath them and they stopped production of their contender for worlds ugliest car, the Cruise Origin. To date this has only cost GM a few billion dollars. How much more will they burn? Another Cybertruck is spotted in the wild, more reports of Tesla's...