Ken Lucci 0:00

Okay, so it's going 25 miles an hour. What gets me, John, is we're looking at the Waymo vehicle going up the embankment of green, of greener rig. Right?

James Blain 0:10

It identified as a race car on a racetrack trying to go up the embankment, like nascar

Ken Lucci 0:14

wait a minute, I think it identified as a lawnmower. I think it wanted to, no, I think.

James Blain 0:22

it as a high speed lawnmower. That is the best thing you've ever

Ken Lucci 0:49

Well, good afternoon, ground Transportation podcast audience. Welcome to another exciting episode of The Ground for Transportation podcast. I'm so blessed today to have my esteemed colleague, James Blaine. You know, lately we've been, we've been like, uh, Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin towards the end of their partnership where they very rarely come out on stage together For you kids out there, go ahead and Google. Steve Martin and Jerry Lewis, and you'll get it. But I'm so, so happy to have you on this episode and we're gonna have a little fun today because I know that you've been on doing a lot of traveling. You've been doing a lot of training, a lot of sessions. You've, you've, you've been on stage a lot, but you've been doing a lot of training of, of not only chauffeurs, but CDL drivers. And today we're gonna have a, a fun episode that's gonna have some decent data and, and we want you to have fun with this as much as we are. Uh, today's episode is called Waymo's Behaving Badly. And, uh, we've invited people from Waymo on the podcast, but they have turned me, turned me, turned me down.

James Blain 1:57

Turn Ken. Turn Ken down.

Ken Lucci 1:59

right now James is the big gun. We'll put him on Waymo, but they turned me down so I don't feel compelled, not. Not to, uh, share the Waymo vehicles behaving badly. On a serious note, we will be talking about autonomous as autonomous continues to grow in the United States. And the key players in this are the biggest tech titans in the universe and Waymo being one of them. So, today we're gonna go through some videos and we're gonna talk about what we see here, and James is going to give us his expert commentary and, uh, we will intersperse a few Waymo facts and figures out there as well. So, John. Ironman, our producer. Welcome and thank you for, uh,, compiling all these Waymo behaving badly videos and giving credence to my idea that Waymo behaving badly would be a good episode. So why don't you curate the Waymo, videos for us and tell us what we're gonna see.

John Tyreman 3:00

Sure thing, Ken. this first video is a first look at in London.

Ken Lucci 3:10

So interesting. I did, uh, have some communication with some guys over in London and Waymo, along with Uber, uh, is testing the Waymo units in London, and the biggest fear is the. Driving on the opposite side of the road as well as the, you know, old world European roads right now. They're testing,

James Blain 3:35

Oh, that's no accident. That's no accident. They're in New York. They're in London. Like, you know, the whole idea is we can make it there, we can make it work anywhere. I mean, that's just, that's just good engineering. The worst possible obstacle you can think of.

Ken Lucci 3:48

what are your, what are your thoughts knowing how crazy London cabs are though? About, About, The success that they're gonna have in in the UK

James Blain 4:00

So I, as, as someone who's spent, uh, and, and I haven't spent any time in London, but I've spent a good amount of time in Europe,'cause I've got family in Madrid and I've driven a lot in Madrid. They drive a lot closer together. The lanes are much smaller. The cities were not built for cars. They were built for por and buggy, literally, right? You see that a little bit in, you know, Boston and some of the older cities of the United States. You see that? I, I think a couple things. I think. It's going to anoint the locals more than it's going to cause problems. When you think about these cities, the speeds are much lower. We're not going fast. It's not, you know, your, your chances of getting in a horrible accident in the middle of a downtown suburban area where the speed limit's 25 are pretty low. Um, that said, Waymo just hit a child. They had an accident recently where they had they had a, a kid behind an SUV. The kid jumps out in front of the Waymo. The Waymo, uh, supposedly is doing 17 miles an hour. It slams of the brakes. The impact with the child happens at six miles an hour, basically knocks the kid over, the kid jumps back up and, and then runs to the curb and they keep the Waymo till till police come. That's an ongoing investigation. Like I said, though.

Ken Lucci 5:17

What city was that in? Do you remember?

James Blain 5:19

I don't remember off the top of my head, but to my point, that is a low speed collision, low speed impact. So what I think we're most likely to see here is, you know, and, and like I said, for everybody's record, the kid jumped back up and ran to the curb. That doesn't mean they were perfectly fine, but again, low speed impact. I think we're going to see a lot of. Fender bender troubles a lot of, you know, little things, but I, I gotta tell you, it's got some distinct advantages. We don't have. When you're trying to squeeze through two cars, you have to, from inside the car, have your spatial awareness and know exactly how much room you have on each side and

Ken Lucci 6:04

You think you know, you think you know,

James Blain 6:06

you think you know. Right. And that's, that's exactly where I was going with this. When we're dealing with drivers, we really push into them reference points, knowing your area goal, taking the time. The Waymo is, it's, its body is the car.

Ken Lucci 6:21

It is. Got the sensor. It's got the sensors. right. It It, is, is it truly 360 degree.

James Blain 6:26

Yes, yes.

Ken Lucci 6:28

you go. You know, and I wanted to point out that. Isn't it something we hear about, you know, the kid got hit by a Waymo and then we hear about, you know, the favorite neighborhood cat got hit by a Waymo. The, the, the safety data on these is unde undisputable. You

James Blain 6:44

better than we are.

Ken Lucci 6:45

you cannot dispute the fact that autonomous, the data coming in from the autonomous vehicle manufacturing industry is, they are light years safer. Than a human dri being, uh, a human driving vehicle. So, yeah, let, let's, uh, see what a, b, C has to say here.

John Tyreman 7:07

Are they really safe, Ken? I think, I think, I think these videos kind of challenge that assumption right now. So let's, uh, let's take a look at what a, B, C has to say.

James Blain 7:29

Mm. Yep. All right, so real well,

Ken Lucci 7:44

What's the solution? What's the solution,

James Blain 7:46

So a software update. All right, so, so a couple things. So John, you just hit on where I was gonna go a second ago before we played this video, and that's that. They are best at controlled environments. You know, I, I talked about that poor kid that got hit. What happened? The kid jumped out from behind an SUV, human wouldn't have seen him. It can't see him. Right. Same type of idea. I think what we see, and I, I don't know if this is the trend, uh, hopefully I'm not stealing John's thunder here, but where we tend to see Waymo's and all of these get into trouble is with. Off the wall, wacky situations, right? A great example they always give is the Waymo driving into the construction zone with the guy Wai it in his arm. Oh, what are you doing? What are you doing? And it drives into the concrete, right? It doesn't do well with scenarios that for us, are really easy. We see the guy with the hard hat and the vest on. We're gonna slow down, we're gonna pay attention. He's gonna flag us on. The Waymo doesn't have the same sense of logic, the same sense of things. So most of these things that I, I tend to hear people sensationalize are there that said. The last poll I saw was 60% of people don't trust Waymo's. They don't trust self-driving cars. I don't see that sentiment changing. I will also tell you there's no replacement for a driver that knows what they're doing for taking care of it. If we go all the way back to the woman that was riding her bike and got hit. You start digging into that? Well, no, she wasn't actually riding the bike. She was walking next to the bike, pushing the bike, and I, I don't know, I, I can't remember if it was, I think that was Uber self-driving. It might have been Waymo. I don't remember who it was. But long story short, what they found is that that was actually a human failure. The software thinks it's a person, then it's a bike, then it's a raccoon, then it's a box. It's freaking out. It doesn't know what it is.'cause you've got someone pushing a bike. The human who should have looked at this and in two seconds slammed the brakes, was shown to be on a video. They'd been watching videos on their phone for the past 45 minutes instead of acting as the safety driver. So

Ken Lucci 9:57

Uber was doing their testing. When and did that lady did that that lady get killed, didn't she?

James Blain 10:02

She was the first woman to, or first person, I should say, to pass away as a result of a self-driving accident. If

Ken Lucci 10:09

Yeah, and I and I, and I think if I'm not memory serves that Uber kind of stopped after that.

James Blain 11:08

Yeah, that, well, Uber's, Uber's troubles go further than that. Right. You've got the whole issue of, you know, Uber had hired the engineer from Waymo on, on the way out the door. He just happens to pull a hard drive out and download like

Ken Lucci 11:23

It was an accident. James. James. That. James.

James Blain 11:25

Yeah. He tripped. He fell. The hard drive plugged in it downloaded the data. Oh, you have to get to Uber. I didn't realize it was in my pocket. My bad.

Ken Lucci 11:32

Are you, are you, what are you trying to say? There's C Corporate. I mean, if it some acts, James. Accidents happen.

James Blain 11:38

Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and his, his prison sentence and everything that was associated there

Ken Lucci 11:44

please, please. So take us to the next, uh, Waymo behaving badly.

John Tyreman 11:52

All right, so this next Waymo behaving badly. I don't know

James Blain 11:55

oh, this is one of my favorites. I've

Ken Lucci 11:57

this is one. of my favorites too.

James Blain 11:59

Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't, it doesn't know it's a car.

John Tyreman 12:02

all right. So then, so then James, why don't you tee this video up for our

Ken Lucci 12:05

does it think It's.

James Blain 12:06

Alright. For those, for those of you that don't live in cities with light rails, there's several cities where the center in between your two directional lanes is specifically set aside for the light rail to go on, right? You see this in cities like San Diego you see this in, you know, all kinds of different cities where they've got kinda the center lane. So what's happened here? We've got a Waymo that instead of actually turning onto the lane for vehicles, has turned onto the center area where the track is. I don't know if this video shows the start. I've seen this one before, and basically what's happened is you've got a light where you cross over the light rail part, so you gotta cross the tracks as part of the light, and you're supposed to cross the tracks and turn onto the lane. Well, instead of making all the way to the lane, it's gotten confused and it's turned onto the tracks, and now it's driving down the tracks thinking that it's driving down the lane.

Ken Lucci 13:02

Does it,

James Blain 13:04

this

Ken Lucci 13:04

I ask you a question? Is there, is there some sort of dysphoria going on where the Waymo car might think it wants to be a light rail transit vehicle?

James Blain 13:15

mean, look, with, with the way the AI is going lately, we've heard of people falling in love with chat, GPT, right? We've heard of grok going AWOL and, and becoming antisemitic. I mean, the, the AI is really having to mind of their own. It might identify as a light rail.

Ken Lucci 13:31

It Identif. That's the problem. This is a misunderstood Waymo that identifies as a light. Go ahead, play the video,

John Tyreman 13:38

So.

Ken Lucci 13:47

You guys have gotta see

James Blain 13:48

The, I love, I love the fact the guy just

Ken Lucci 13:50

there was a passenger in there.

James Blain 13:52

Yep, nope, he's out.

Ken Lucci 13:59

It's not gonna get hit, is it John? Oh.

James Blain 14:01

No, it just keeps driving down the light rail. It just keeps driving down the light rail. Like a normal driver would've just hopped that curb and got back onto the street, but it just keeps rolling down the light rail if the hazard's on

John Tyreman 14:15

At this point of the video, it doesn't know what to do. It just malfunctions and just stays there.

James Blain 14:20

It just freaks out now. And, and that's, we saw this same behavior in, I believe it was San Francisco when they had the blackouts, right? When these things freak out, they just either pull over or they'll stop in the middle of traffic. So like during the blackout, the problem was they were stopping and blocking traffic. There's an incident where you have a fire truck, or no, I'm sorry, it was an ambulance. And the ambulance had a Waymo stopped in front of it. And then they're all right. All right. Well backup. We'll go around another Waymo freaks out behind it and boxed in the ambulance. That's actually one of the bigger problems that we've seen is when they freak out, they can do weird and unexpected behavior

Ken Lucci 15:01

Well, like like

John Tyreman 15:02

up on the light rail.

Ken Lucci 15:03

this one is backing. Now for those who are just listening in their

James Blain 15:06

we can't see the train, but the train was coming and it's on a track. It's not like it's gonna turn.

Ken Lucci 15:11

right, this. The Waymo is sitting on the light rail tracks. The passenger has disembarked into traffic. By the

James Blain 15:18

believe the correct turn there is escaped. I don't know that I would call

Ken Lucci 15:21

passenger

James Blain 15:22

The passenger has escaped into traffic

Ken Lucci 15:24

Into traffic.

James Blain 15:26

was safer than getting hit by a light rail.

Ken Lucci 15:28

right. They decided to literally get out of the vehicle in traffic and now this, the Waymo is deciding. It's got its hazards on telling the world. It's in a hazardous situation and now it's stopped on the rail and it's gonna what? Back up. It's

James Blain 15:45

Yeah, no, it just throws it in reverse.

Ken Lucci 15:47

Here's the, the issue here. The bigger issue is that if we had three news stations and we didn't have social media, and our phones were not a recording studio,

James Blain 16:02

are are you talking about a specific country? I feel like there's a certain

Ken Lucci 16:05

this period of time that I come from, that I harken back to when life was simpler. We wouldn't know about this stuff, but in my estimation, this stuff is really going to become cannon fodder for people who are going to oppose AVS being introduced like in, in New York. Okay? We all know the big issue in New York is, is, is going to be labor displacement, right? What are you gonna do with all those taxi

James Blain 16:33

all the drivers.

Ken Lucci 16:34

But, you know, this kind of stuff doesn't help, right? This kind of stuff. Where, and Waymo does 450 trips a week at this point. 450,000 trips a week, by the way, 450,000 trips a week. Okay? Now we're gonna have a stat in, uh, in the upcoming AV report that talks about the chauffeur equivalent of that. But it's, you know, Waymo's gonna say, look, 450,000 trips, it's just only one time. The poor thing can the poor thing confused itself with a light rail transit train and get stuck. All right, this one's good. John. I love this one. Oh, this one's killer.

James Blain 17:15

one last thing before we jump to this next one. I think it's an important distinction and I think what we're gonna see, and, and this is not a technical term by any means, but I think what we're going to see the argument become is accidents, injuries, and incidents. Versus shenanigans, right? They're gonna argue that that was a, was that an instant? Absolutely. Was it horrible? Yeah. Is it unexpected? Yeah, but it's a little bit of sh, a little bit of hijinks and shenanigans in that they got lucky and no one got hurt.

Ken Lucci 17:47

Right.

James Blain 17:48

It was not it, it was a, it was likely what happened is it tracked wrong onto the road. And the other thing, and, and this goes right back to where we started with London, New York, Europe, these are all things that we're going to see happen, especially if that's the first time it's ever operated in a city with a light rail. I can tell you right now, the immediate thought I had there was what a tourist. Because you see tourists doing stupid similar things when you have someone operating in an

Ken Lucci 18:18

Very good point. Very good point.

James Blain 18:21

So I'm excited to see this one. Hopefully it's another

Ken Lucci 18:23

is a good one. This is a good one.

John Tyreman 18:25

It's not a cornfield,

James Blain 18:26

we're not, we're not taking the wave out through the cornfield like the, uh, the limo we had through the cornfield.

John Tyreman 18:30

If you don't know what we're talking about, Go back and check that

James Blain 18:33

that episode. Incredible redneck limo.

John Tyreman 18:36

No, this is a Waymo going rogue in Echo Park. I believe it's in California. So let's, uh, take a look at this one.

James Blain 18:45

I love the music. Whoa. Okay. This is an old one though. Look at the, so for those of you that

Ken Lucci 18:52

No, no, no, no. I've got a little intel on this vehicle by the way.

James Blain 18:56

but this, but what I'm saying, then this must be a prototype vehicle.'cause that's not the current vehicle they're operating.

Ken Lucci 19:01

That vehicle is a Zeke. That vehicle is, okay, so for those of you who are listening, how fast do you think that Waymo was going?

James Blain 19:14

Uh,

Ken Lucci 19:14

Could you play. it again? John

James Blain 19:16

Get an instant replayed it to, I'm not a

Ken Lucci 19:20

Waymo goes rogue.

James Blain 19:21

It's probably 25 miles an hour.

Ken Lucci 19:24

Okay, so it's going 25 miles an hour. What gets me, John, is we're looking at the Waymo vehicle going up the embankment of green, of greener rig. Right?

James Blain 19:34

It identified as a race car on a racetrack trying to go up the embankment, like nascar

Ken Lucci 19:39

wait a minute, I think it identified as a lawnmower. I think it wanted to, no, I think.

James Blain 19:46

it as a high speed lawnmower. That is the best thing you've ever

Ken Lucci 19:49

right. I think it wanted to, I think it wanted to mow the, the landscaping on the side of the highway. That's why it went up. The embankment that was full up the embankment. Now that vehicle, so you know,

James Blain 20:01

do you know the story on this one, Ken?

Ken Lucci 20:02

oh yeah, that vehicle is a Zeke. That was a pro, that's a prototype vehicle. Now that Zeke is a Chinese

James Blain 20:10

but is that Waymo's?

Ken Lucci 20:12

Oh yes. Oh yes. So some statistics we're gonna throw in here when they first introduced Waymo, the, with the Jaguar SUV, the cost of each unit to retrofit it and to make

James Blain 20:25

it's like a half a million, isn't

Ken Lucci 20:26

Well, it was 200 280 6,000. You were close. Then they got it down to 1 6 8. I remember that. 1 68. Okay. 1 68 when they started to go into mass production. But that's still a huge amount of money. Well, the Zeke. The Chinese SUV Manufac manufactured in China, that Zeke comes out the door at about$41,000 and then they put all of the, uh, AV a Coutre Mall on

James Blain 20:53

but But is that, is that ordered directly from wish.com or how does that work?

Ken Lucci 20:57

No, I think you can get it on Te What's the team U You can get it on

James Blain 21:00

Team.

Ken Lucci 21:01

Team. U, yeah. So the Zeke is 41 K, the Zeke is 41 k coming out of the factory. And the Zeke, if they didn't pick that stupid purple color that the, the Zeke, the Zeke doors are like an elevator door opening and closing on the side.

James Blain 21:18

That's That's, exact, well, the zoo, so Amazon Zoo has the same thing. Yeah. And it's funny because.

Ken Lucci 21:25

Zu versus Zeke.

James Blain 21:26

Well, but if you go back, and I don't, I don't remember what they called it, but back in the day, they, and the reason I, I went, I went, maybe that's an old prototype, is they used to have what I can only describe as a cartoon, snow Globe with wheels. I don't know if we can pull up a, a picture of that when we do editing John, but Waymo. It's the Waymo prototype. It

Ken Lucci 21:47

it is the original

James Blain 21:49

the original prototype. It looks, you know, the zoo. I think the best description I've heard of the zoo is it looks like a toaster carriage. If you, yeah, it looks like a toaster. So I think John's found it. So you back in 2014, it almost looks like a little cartoon. I think the BMW Ista kind of makes me think of it, except it doesn't have the front door, but it's like a little bubble car with like what looks like a little police light on top. That's kind of the ancestor of these, and I think this, this one looks like that. I gotta tell you I, I was listening to a podcast the other day where they were talking about this. I think part of the problem with doing that is whether it was on purpose or not, the fact that they're using Jaguars, the fact that they're using a brand that's got some cachet and known to be a nice brand, and they're using that nicer E-paced vehicle, I think is part of what, at least for Waymo. Makes it feel a little safer. I know when I saw the GM cruise, when we were at IATR, which our, our good friend Matt Doss runs, we were at IATR in Phoenix, Arizona, and they had the cruise vehicle and they had the Waymo. And the Waymo felt more

Ken Lucci 23:02

Sure.

James Blain 23:03

more produced. And GM's a car company, right? Google's not even a car company. But the, the crews just, I think it was based on. One of their smaller, more economy box vehicles and it didn't have the same cachet,

Ken Lucci 23:16

Well let, and let me, let me share with you that the Zeke spelled DEEK, and I will, John, I will remind me, I will get you some good factory shots of that unit. That unit goes out the door fully loaded at 41,000 and then they. All the AV

James Blain 24:39

comes on top of that.

Ken Lucci 24:40

it, puts it on to, but it, it's, it comes out the door and hits the street at about$60,000. So when you consider that every Waymo was, you know, a, uh, 280 and it went down to 180 6, et cetera, this is now, now they're really getting to the point of. Being able to put these out at a unit cost that will bring the pricing down. And that poor Zeke, I mean that, that Zeke that went rogue there, that was one of their prototypes in, in, uh, out in California. That's too bad. Alright, what do we have next? I.

John Tyreman 25:14

All right. So

James Blain 25:15

Oh,

John Tyreman 25:16

still behaving

James Blain 25:16

shooting, right? Oh Yeah. I've seen this one. This one's great.

John Tyreman 25:20

Bring in, uh, bringing passengers right into the crossfire here. So we're gonna check this, uh, this video out.

James Blain 25:59

Yeah. Where are the other cars? Show me one.

Ken Lucci 26:06

Of course we do. Good thing. It? wasn't an wait a minute. Good thing it wasn't an ice raid in Min Minneapolis.

James Blain 26:14

Uh, no. Look, I think they actually I, it wasn't Minneapolis, but I know that during some of the protests, they've literally burned these things to the ground and flipped'em over.

Ken Lucci 26:22

oh, out in Los Angeles, they, there's quite a few. I mean,

James Blain 26:25

You just put a cone on the hood.

Ken Lucci 26:27

right, they spray paint them, they spray paint them, and they do bad things to these poor Waymo units.

James Blain 26:33

I, I would be worried after that prototype, man, it's practicing. Its escapes, man. It's gonna hit that embankment and just get outta there.

Ken Lucci 26:39

Yeah. At the end of the day, I, I would think, James, that the solution both to the school bus thing and the police and the fire and the ambulance might be something where Waymo comes out. Do you know how they have those devices on the fire trucks that turn the, turn the lights yellow, green.

James Blain 27:00

it's got, it sends a signal and it, the little bird looking thing that you see on the light receives it.

Ken Lucci 27:05

Wouldn't you think that, wouldn't you think that Waymo could do something like that? With, with the, with the school buses specifically? That when that stop goes out, any Waymo that's in that general area would react

James Blain 27:19

all right. Well.

Ken Lucci 27:20

police car, if the police car lights are on, because you explained this to me. In your only, you know, in your geek sense that only you can do is if I'm a police car and my, my lights are on, but my siren is not on. Right. What do you typically do as a human driver when the lights are on behind you, you get out of the way? What do you think that, what do you think the Waymo's gonna do in that situation?

James Blain 27:45

Okay. So, so you've, you've got four or five different things and I'm gonna try not to take us down a big rabbit hole, but.

Ken Lucci 27:52

Please don't.

James Blain 27:53

There's, there's a couple big things that have come up with Waymo's in general when it comes to this. One of the hardest ones is that Waymo seems to be struggling like a lot of AI with human intent. We get a lot in terms of what we know based on what we've seen and what we've experienced. One of my favorite things we were at, we were with the bus industry council. We had a professor from ku, which by the way, go Jay Hawks. Had come out to Florida to talk to us, and while we were out there, he puts something up on the screen and he says, Hey, I want you guys to identify what changes from one picture to the next. And he changes his picture. We're in a room full of safety. People we're like. Do it again. The whole room. Nobody gets it right. He tells me, he goes, well, he tells the room, he goes, Hey, we've done this with police officers. We've done this with you know, highway patrolmen. We've done it with all the different people that drive. And he goes, all right, lemme show you. He goes, this building, I completely and totally removed this building in Photoshop. The lesson there was that. As drivers, we are taught where the issues and what's gonna occur. The reason we did not see the building disappear is we knew immediately, psychologically that we were behind the wheel, and so we immediately go into driving mode. A missing building is not going to, in any way, shape, or form, affect how we drive, what we drive, safety, anything like that. So we're not gonna see it. All right. To your point, when we're in that driving mode, when you see those lights behind you, you've gotta figure out, am I getting pulled over? Am I getting outta the way? What am I doing? The, the best example of this is when you have heavy, heavy traffic and you see a firetruck and people are having to coordinate and work together and kind of squeeze the trucks trying to go around it. Like we talked about earlier, the problem with these things is they freeze.

Ken Lucci 29:50

Yep.

James Blain 29:51

So I think the other side of this is, this again, is what I was talking about, about shenanigans. They, man, they get lucky a lot, but it's actually, it's, it sees the police, it's slowing down, it's reacting appropriately. So I think a, a lot of this is going to be. Coming up with standard procedures for how it's supposed to handle it and how they wanna handle it. To the school bus point though, we've also seen technology misapplied on school buses. So there are places now where if you drive past a school bus with their lights on. You automatically get a ticket. But what we're seeing is we're seeing a lot of people where the school bus driver is sitting on the side of the road. He's got his eight ways, which, uh, are running. He doesn't have a stop sign out, but he is got his flashing hazards running and someone drives by it and gets a ticket. A lot of this stuff, even with human drivers, is an absolute just mess. I think that's what we're dealing with is it's a mess for us. How is it ever gonna get it

Ken Lucci 30:51

I don't believe for one second that this is gonna slow down the adoption of av. I think it's going to be great cannon fodder for. The people in legislative committees to play these videos, but at the end of the day, what's gonna win out is the lobbyist money and it's going, what's gonna win out is there's a huge push to get AV done in this administration. So while, I mean, we're we. We are really having fun with this, but I don't think for one minute this is going to slow down adoption because the statistics and the safety is on their side and you know everybody in the world on that side of the tech as well as the heads of the TNCs, Uber is pushing

James Blain 31:45

Oh, big time.

Ken Lucci 31:46

Alright, what else you got John? What the hell is this?

John Tyreman 31:49

Logically. That all makes sense, Ken. And, uh, but I think that what we're gonna find is there's going to be an emotional response from the public as well. And so that brings us to our next video here of vigilantes who, like, I think you alluded to this earlier, Ken go out and they, they, uh, vandalize these Waymo. So let's tune in.

Ken Lucci 32:10

Oh, the poor Waymo.

James Blain 32:16

We've explained that to the.

Ken Lucci 33:25

He is talking to a Waymo. The eco terrorists. That, that, to me, when I think, when I saw that, I saw eco terrorists, okay, you're trying to fight change now.

James Blain 33:37

But they're electric, Ken. They're saving the planet.

Ken Lucci 33:40

But what's happening in this specific neighborhood is it's noise pollution. It's all of the activity. Because where this is, is, it's a huge, I think it's one of the bigger Waymo Depots in California. So. It's kind of outta control to have something like that in your neighborhood. The other thing it tells me is the laws have not caught up with the Waymo's because they're giving the poor Waymo a parking ticket, and sure Google's gonna pay it. And that's not even a rounding error on their balance sheet. I mean, they'd have to get a hundred million of those parking tickets for it to really make a dent,

James Blain 34:18

They could pay off everybody in LA's parking tickets and not be worried about

Ken Lucci 34:22

but it's, it's interesting to me that every technology that comes down the pike, now you have this visceral reaction. You have a visceral reaction where people are not just, oh, I would never get in one. They are literally working against them. They're trying to disable these things. So it's, it's, it's an interesting development. Why do they all have British accents is my question. But the guy standing out in front of the Waymo saying, dude, you can just go around me. You can just go around me. It makes me wonder whether or not in, in the Waymo headquarters, whether or not they actually can have a, have a sense or have reporting that shows the vehicles that are. Not that are in peril. May, you know, uh, maybe there's a camera and the operator is looking at it and seeing, wait a minute, that there's a human being that is trying to challenge that Waymo, or, I'd love to see what the tele telemetry looks like. And I'd love to see what the reporting capability

James Blain 35:31

would not ever bank on that. I don't think we'll ever get to see that until somebody defects from way phone because someone would've to defect from Waymo to, to be

Ken Lucci 35:40

No,

John Tyreman 35:41

Well, well, Google's got Gemini and, uh, Tesla's integrated their growth into their well, like FSD, so I, why wouldn't Google be able to implement Gemini and be able to like, talk with the passengers internally and externally?

James Blain 35:56

Uh, John, have you, have you called any kind of like phone support lately and talked to the ai? I can, I can tell you right now, I am a very, very stable, relaxed person 99% of the time. But I. I call the bank lately and it's like, I'm your AI assistant. How can I help you? And I'm like, I need a new card. And it's like, you called me a what? And I'm like, great. This is gonna be fun. Now imagine, imagine that guy having a conversation with a car.

Ken Lucci 36:23

Yeah. Agent AI is not there yet. There's no

James Blain 36:26

where No, no.

Ken Lucci 36:28

No. NA's not there yet,

James Blain 36:29

We, as we've seen in these videos, we can barely get these cars to identify as cars. Right? Next thing you know, you pulled up a cat video. I can just totally see the Waymo being like, I'm a cat now,

Ken Lucci 36:39

right. Yeah, I wanna see this one. There's a cat on the screen. Go

James Blain 36:42

is this, please, please tell me this cat's not gonna get hit by Waymo,

John Tyreman 36:45

Also in the category of sparking human emotion. So yes, we do have a cat on the screen. So what's the connection to Waymo? Let's find out.

James Blain 36:53

God, I hope it's not a tire. Oh.

Ken Lucci 37:30

Uh,

James Blain 37:37

so I'm gonna, I'm gonna cut this off real quick because one of the things that immediately jumped out at me is they said that the cat was sleeping under the Waymo. And so the Waymo goes in a dr. Now, a couple things, right? Let, let's get real. Even, even as a human, if you hit something with your tire, like unfortunately this this poor cat, you're gonna know, you hit the cat. But you're not gonna be able to do anything for the cat. There was an incident and I believe it was Cruz. I'm not sure if you can pull this up, John. I wouldn't wanna show anything graphic. It's, it's hard to watch if you actually see the real video, but there's a woman that gets hit by a, she gets struck by a vehicle and she gets thrown by that vehicle and it throws her underneath. A self-driving vehicle and the self-driving vehicle does not register that it has Dr. Like it, it doesn't register that she's under there. And if I remember, I, it drags her quite a ways before it gets

John Tyreman 38:31

feet,

James Blain 38:32

Yeah. Now

Ken Lucci 38:33

let's not look at.

James Blain 38:34

no, we're not gonna watch that one, but I think. I think it brings up something though that is worth mentioning, and that's kind of a, a sensor that I don't think we'll ever be able to replicate. And that's kind of a gut sensor, right? As a driver, as a human driver, you have a sense of when, you know, I, I've gotten in the car before. I'm like, eh, something doesn't feel right. And what do you do? You get out. God help you, you should be doing this. And we train the hell outta this for backing you. Get out and look, get out, walk around the car, make sure you're good. Then get back in. That's one thing that these are na aren't able to do. I mean, at some point, yeah you could do tracking under the vehicle, you could do things like that. You know, maybe it could have honked and scared away Kit Kat. But I think, I think part of the concern at this point. And I will bring this up because our buddy Elon, who we've invited several times, come

Ken Lucci 39:26

we've invited my John. Have you heard back from Elon at all?

John Tyreman 39:29

I, despite my best efforts to tag him on X every few days I haven't heard back, but I will continue to reach out to Elon. let's get you on the podcast.

Ken Lucci 39:38

we want you, we want you on our podcast.

James Blain 39:40

so, so our buddy Elon. Did cause quite a stir when he decided to get rid of lidar. And we touched on that when it happened. He got rid of those light emitting sensors that they use. I think this is one of the cases, and this is one of the arguments that comes up a lot, is what is enough sensors? What is enough data? What's enough knowledge? Now, that said, I think kind of the elephant in the room is that at the end of the day. Human drivers have done everything we've seen and worse. And I think what will ultimately be the metrics that we're holding these guys against and are gonna be the keys are how many fatalities or as a result are involving self-driving, how many serious accidents or as a

Ken Lucci 40:25

statistics. The statistics are gonna win it. Uh, they're gonna win. There's no question about it.

James Blain 40:30

Yep. And that's, that's kind of the thing is I think at this point, like with all new technology, there's an element of fear, there's an element of discomfort. Look, uh, there was no shortage of people that were vandalizing. You know, you'd see big trucks parked in the electric charging. People hate change. We can't help it. We're very much creatures of habit.

Ken Lucci 40:51

True, true, but, but let's, let's also look at the lessons we've learned when. Many people in the chauffer space. I was an operator at the time. Said, oh no, Uber's gonna go out of business. You know, we were in a highly regulated city with its own transportation regulatory authority. They used to carry guns. And I said, I said to the operators, look, I'll go along with you guys. I'll, I'll put in money to fight this. But it's not, they are going to get, they're going to get their way. In this case, if you look at avs, the, uh, autonomous Vehicle Industry Association. Not-for-profit. The one focus that a big focus they have is safety statistics. So I, I honestly think the, the insurance lobby's gonna come out for this. I believe the insurance lobby, if the statistics hold up, the insurance lobby's gonna come out and say, yeah, it is much safer than Right.

James Blain 41:55

Well, but think about this though, can, I can't think and, and I'm sure people will toss examples in the comments. Please do. But I, I cannot think of a single. Yeah. Yeah. I, I cannot think of a single industry where the answer was, we dug in our heels, we fought change, and the new technology never came. And even in industries that made some progress or held off change. Eventually the change came. One of the things that I have found in looking at all kinds of different businesses, right, being an entrepreneur myself, I, I listen to a, a great set of podcasts. I read tons of books, and the one thing that I've seen over and over and over is the ones that are change averse. The ones that are, Hey, we've done it the same way. We're always gonna do it.

Ken Lucci 42:40

Still at behind.

James Blain 42:41

They get left behind, they get run over, or they just peter out and die.

Ken Lucci 42:45

I'm gonna give you an example of what you just said, and I'm gonna forget about the region, forget about the operator. We have an operator who basically said, you know, avs are never gonna come to my town. You know, I'm in a fourth, fifth tier market, and I couldn't tell him. I mean, we're, we're working on an RFP for the university system in that, in that area, the university system, in that area. Wants to go avs and I'm like,

James Blain 43:13

That's not their current contract, is

Ken Lucci 43:15

You are. No, no. God no. But you are dead wrong. I said, you have to look for the use cases. There will be use cases pretty much everywhere. Okay. And you have to look for, but his whole mindset was, yeah, I don't have to worry about that. And I'm like, I'm not saying worry. I'm saying search for the opportunities. You're the same guy that will complain about the fact that you can't hire drivers. You know, I mean, it, it, it, you have to, to, but to your point, you have to investigate. You have to be in the middle of the change. As far as I'm con I can tell, you know, the, I'm reading a book. You talk about books. There's a book I'm reading about written by the president of Intel, and it's called Only the Paranoid Survive, and I don't like the title, but it talks about strategic inflection points in industry. And we are in the middle of a strategic inflection point. That's the entire reason we're doing this podcast. Now, I love, God forbid, the, the, the thing with the cat kind of his a little bit too home, but the reason why we're doing these videos is, yeah, it's fun, it's entertaining, but we, we need to get the industry ready for the future, and we are at a strategic inflection point in the industry. We thought all of the disruption we ever would see has already taken place with Uber or Lyft. I would tell you this is 10 x disruption,

James Blain 44:38

yeah.

Ken Lucci 44:39

but I also believe it'll be end up being 10 x the opportunity

James Blain 44:43

well, I think there's something really important here. So I get into the industry about 10 years ago, all right? That it still amazes me to say that it doesn't feel like it's been 10 years, but 10 years ago when I got in. Everybody was still, it was kind of the tale. Uber had come in. There'd been lots of disruption. Uber was the big thing, and for me coming in as someone from the outside and it was obvious, I'm like, stop competing with Uber. Why are you competing with Uber? Right? Their model is not your model. You need to evolve your model. You need to lean

Ken Lucci 45:16

bar.

James Blain 45:17

exactly. You need to lean into that. Now

Ken Lucci 45:20

fast food. You're not,

James Blain 45:21

Correct. Now it's funny because over time we saw some things happen. One of the things that happened was we saw a disruption on the motor coach industry where you had a lot of these black car companies, a lot of these chauffeur services companies providing a higher level of service, trying to raise the bar, trying to be something different in Motor Coach. And it was funny'cause you'd, you'd hear kind of the same grumblings on the motorcross industry. And my thing is, okay, well. If that's, you got two options. You compete with them on that level. You change your service, you compete with them on that level, or you figure out where you live and whether or not they're actually competition. Right. Did the game change and you didn't change with it?

Ken Lucci 46:01

Mm-hmm.

James Blain 46:02

I see that same thing happening, and I think at least the, the ones that are gonna feel it first, if, if I was talking to Uber drivers right now and, and I will talk to you if you're an Uber driver right now, if you're a Lyft driver right now, you are, you're on the clock. Literally, your job will

Ken Lucci 46:21

definitely on the clock. You, you're definitely on the clock. And I, and I, I, I'm not, and we'll, we'll tackle this in a completely different episode. We have an episode upcoming on the upcoming Robo Taxii Wars. So I'll just tease that for a second, but it's gonna be fun to watch. But the Uber business model is changing, as George Bush would say, dramatically in front of their eyes. They are tech company

James Blain 46:48

with incredible.

Ken Lucci 46:50

Unbelievable strategically as well, and their tech company that prides themselves on being asset light. Even though they amortize, they amortize their tech like you cannot believe if you read their financial statements, but they are going to be moving into a hard asset model if

James Blain 47:11

Oh, they already have. You, you go to certain, you go to certain places and you get on and, and I don't, I don't know what this looks like'cause I, I don't live in one of those markets, but there are markets where you get on a rideshare app and you order what you think is a driver. And for shorter point to point, they're teaming up with Waymo and they're teaming up with others. And it will automatically send you that now

Ken Lucci 47:34

Yep. Now, they haven't developed their strategy yet because if you, they, they are literally schizophrenic when it comes to av.

James Blain 47:42

Well, it's, it's capital intensive.

Ken Lucci 47:44

are partnering, they're partnering with everybody around the globe. They are saddling up to everybody because what they don't want, because their numbers won't bear it out because they don't, they'll have to, even though they have a fantastic balance sheet, they don't have the money to expend the capital. They don't, they don't have the money to buy all this equipment, so they, they're partnering. But to, to your point, if I'm an Uber driver right now. How long do you think I have? De obviously let, let's, let's just put it, if I'm a New York Uber driver, how much longer do you think before I'm affected?

James Blain 48:24

I think there's a difference between affected and replaced. I I

Ken Lucci 48:28

Gimme both. Gimme both.

James Blain 48:31

uh, the way Waymo is going. The capital backing behind it by Google at this point. The, the, the one, I think the best way I've heard this explained recently is you have a lot of tortoise in the hare going on. Waymo is the tortoise in this game. They have been playing this out, what, 10 years now? Uh, probably longer than 10 years. And they've been very incremental. They've been very slow. Larry Page at Google has been pushing it. You've got a lot of financial backing and they're playing the long game. Uber went and they pulled one of the guys from Waymo, so it was one of the guys that was developing at Waymo. He was in charge of all the Lidar sensors and they kind of, he wanted to go to Uber because it was go fast, break things, you know, let's move, let's, you know, let's ask for forgiveness later type of mentality. I think a,

Ken Lucci 49:25

I call it something different.

James Blain 49:26

yeah. Well, I think a couple

Ken Lucci 49:28

I call it. I don't give a fuck about anything but making a profit. That's what I call it, and you can

James Blain 49:32

I, I don't even think he, I don't even think he cared about profit. I think he wanted the future now, and he wanted to push the boundaries. And I, I wanna make this thing happen and I'm gonna do whatever it takes

Ken Lucci 49:43

Well, a few guys have left, a few guys have left Waymo and they've started their own AV startup, so I get it. I get it.

James Blain 49:50

But, but back to the point, I think that the only wild cards we have right now. Are Amazon and Elon Elon's going to Mars, right? You can say whatever you want about Elon. He's getting to Mars. He's gonna figure it out.

Ken Lucci 50:07

But answer my question

James Blain 50:09

so, hold on. So hold on. Affected or replace So, so Elon has announced that he is going to focus on AI and he is focusing on self-driving, and that's the new focus for Tesla. I don't think, because you said New York, Elon's gonna focus as heavily as New York. I think in New York you're gonna probably start to get affected in the next two to five years.

Ken Lucci 50:34

I, I think that's as close as you can get to an estimate.

James Blain 50:37

I think 10 years. You are probably done or you are really struggling, or you're one of the last holdouts. Now that we're talking about ride share drivers, that's my prediction for ride share drivers. I think chauffeurs. You have a different projection. I think your projection is if you can actually be a chauffeur and provide customer service and be the high touch, even when we get to fully autonomous, you probably still have a role.

Ken Lucci 51:09

A a a hundred percent. I agree.

James Blain 51:11

years. I don't see Elon's robot hopping outta the trunk. Right. Grabbing your stuff and throw it in the trunk. Right? For those of you that don't know, that's a direct reference to the trunk monkey. Go Google it, right? It's funny, but, but literally there's not gonna be some little monkey that jumps outta the back and it's like, oh, here you go. And then puts everything in the trunk and then folds back up and gets the trunk.

Ken Lucci 51:31

No, and I think we should have an episode. We should have an episode just about that.

James Blain 51:36

about the trunk monkey.

Ken Lucci 51:37

No. Well, I love the trunk monkey, but no. About, about the chauffeur. About the role of the chauffeur changing, evolving. It's, going to, it's going to evolve, but let's,

James Blain 51:47

it has to.

Ken Lucci 51:48

but let's, let's close this

James Blain 51:50

Well, hold on. So, so there, so you're forgetting something really important that we have to touch on here though. And that's What about our bus guys? What about our shuttle guys?

Ken Lucci 51:58

Not in my lifetime on the motor coaches. Not in my lifetime.

James Blain 52:01

disagree. I think. I think on the campus show. What are you gonna live six months? Good God. Well, you got

Ken Lucci 52:07

no, no. Lemme lemme back up. Lemme back up. Let's tee, let's tee this up the right

James Blain 52:11

How? How old are you, Ken,

Ken Lucci 52:13

I'm fucking old anyway.

James Blain 52:14

Now? All right, so hold on before you do that. So real

Ken Lucci 52:16

but tee it up right though.

James Blain 52:18

I think, I think that in the bus world you've got a couple different things. You already mentioned campus shuttles.

Ken Lucci 52:23

Yeah. Shuttles. I agree. Shuttles 100%.

James Blain 52:26

shuttles, campus shuttles. I, the MTAs, I think your, your

Ken Lucci 52:31

Last miles. The last

James Blain 52:33

take longer, right? Your delivery, you know, I don't know if you guys heard somebody in Texas already tried to shoot down a Walmart drone. That's, that's another one worth googling.

Ken Lucci 52:41

Didn't we see that? Didn't we didn't. We did. Couldn't we have predicted that? What about that? little what about that little

James Blain 52:46

shooting down drones.

Ken Lucci 52:48

What? about the little, what about the little delivery box down in Miami that got crushed by a, a

James Blain 52:52

I got hit by the right way. Yeah, I,

Ken Lucci 52:54

unit down

James Blain 52:55

I, I think, I think on the public transit side, I think those. The public transit is probably going to take longer because those drivers are more protected, not because they couldn't replace'em, can't replace them. I think if you're a public transit and a tenured public transit driver, it's gonna be a little better. However, I'll tell you what I was, I was down in California and I was sitting with a driver who used to work. For Greyhound, when Greyhound used to do public transit work in the city of San Francisco and he shared with me the story of how, you know, they built the Golden Great Bridge and they were gonna use toll money for this. And then the story changes and suddenly, you know, the city's taking over public transit and things. Things can change pretty quick. And I think one of the things there is, there's a domino set that has to fall if you're a public transit driver. I think my prediction for you to get impacted is probably gonna be four to eight years. I think the safest bet right now in my mind is going to be charter driver. You know, the over the road

Ken Lucci 54:00

That's what I meant. That's what I meant in my

James Blain 54:03

I think that's the safest bet. At the

Ken Lucci 54:05

We will never see we will never see in my lifetime, a an autonomous. Motor coach on the highway, we won't see it. You're not gonna have 56 lives in the hands of an autonomous vehicle. Now, will you need a CDL driver with that's drug tested, yada yada, the whole thing? I don't know the answer to that. Okay?

James Blain 54:28

Uh, I'll tell you what I think the problem with that, and I've had this argument with a lot of people, the problem with safety drivers, and we've talked about it on the podcast, is when you're just sitting there watching the road,

Ken Lucci 54:38

Yeah. How safe can you be?

James Blain 54:39

Yeah, we we're humans. We get bored like, what's your job? I sit there and watch a robot do its job better than I can, and so my job is just to make

Ken Lucci 54:48

But then, but then answer the que, but answer the question then why on the subways do they have the motorman, the F? Those things are on a track.

James Blain 54:56

yeah,

Ken Lucci 54:57

So I, uh, my, my, I will, I, I will concur with you except for the motor coach. I think the motor coach space is the safest silo to be in. Okay. But let me be clear for all you chauffeur guys out there that just heard me say that, that says you're gonna interpret that as Ken Lucci says, I should get into the motor coach business. The answer is no.

James Blain 55:21

know, I would, I would argue if you're, if you're in the position

Ken Lucci 55:25

Don't even know

James Blain 55:25

your business there.

Ken Lucci 55:27

They don't even know what the position

James Blain 55:28

but, and, and that's the, and that's the

Ken Lucci 55:30

Don't even know what

James Blain 55:30

right. Because I can tell you right now, I get guys all the time, they call us and they're like, Hey, you know, we've got these great vehicles, we've got this and that. Oh, that doesn't require a CDL. There's no it do it. Right?

Ken Lucci 55:43

The motor code space is a different space. And, and we will have, we, we, I wanna have another episode. I wanna have another episode. on, on that, because I've seen so many guys make mistakes on that space. But, well, let's close out, let's close out the, this episode. Uh, this is the first of I, I will say, what will be many Waymo behaving badly episodes because apparently these sons of bitches go viral like you can't believe.

James Blain 56:10

Waymo shenanigans.

Ken Lucci 56:11

Waymo shenanigans because, and we will only stop, we will only stop if someone from Waymo comes on and grants us a, a nice interview Elon, you know, you're up next big guy. So,

James Blain 56:26

the way, Waymo, we're, we're, we're not trying to use that to blackmail you guys

Ken Lucci 56:29

no, we're, not black. But

James Blain 56:30

we'll, we'll probably still cover your

Ken Lucci 56:32

my name is not

James Blain 56:34

Like, like this is not, this is not, we're gonna keep talking smack till you come defend yourself. So I just wanna clarify on behalf of Mike, co-host

Ken Lucci 56:40

lawyer's not Avanti. It's not, we're not blackmailing anybody, but I just

James Blain 56:44

the, the views and representations and opinions of Ken Lucci did not represent those of

Ken Lucci 56:48

I just found it. Rude, rude, rude. When I sent you multiple emails, you know who you are at Waymo,

James Blain 56:59

You gotta slide into their dms. Ken. It's, it's the future.

Ken Lucci 57:02

Of course, that's why, but I found it rude and, but you're up next. Uh. Elon and James, this has been another exciting episode of the Ground Transportation Podcast. Uh, we intersperse some fun episodes along longside the serious ones. We hope we get you thinking there's gonna be great opportunities in autonomous vehicles. Uh, the worst thing that you can do is put your head in the sand and say, it's not coming, and it's not gonna affect me. So, uh, again, great episode, James. It's terrific having you and

James Blain 57:32

best part of

Ken Lucci 57:33

Thank you, bill. Thank you very much for producing and we'll see you again next week on the Ground Transportation Podcast.

Speaker 8 57:41

Thank you for listening to the ground transportation podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe to the show on apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more information about PAX training and to contact James, go to PAX training.com. And for more information about driving transactions and to contact Ken, Go to driving transactions.com. We'll see you next time on the ground transportation podcast.