Quick Shifts

Each week I bring you the top stories in the auto industry along with my commentary or sometimes amusing thoughts about the craziness that goes on in the world of cars.   

Stories you’ll find today:

• Crash Course 101: Even the Ambulance Needed an Ambulance
• Exhausted by an Exhaust That Isn’t There
• Welcome to Taco Bell, Would You Like 17,999 More?
• Lansing’s Favorite Predator: The Bridge That Snacks on Semis

Crash Course 101: Even the Ambulance Needed an Ambulance.  Los Angeles traffic has always been a circus, but a recent chain of events in Reseda took it straight into slapstick territory.  It started when a serious morning crash drew an ambulance to the scene, only for that ambulance to get hit by a Honda Civic. While responders were still untangling that mess, the battalion chief rolled up to investigate and promptly collided with a dark gray sedan.  This turned the whole ordeal into a three-for-one pileup that practically wrote its own punchline. By the time it was over the only person who actually needed medical transport was the original crash victim whose injuries were minor. That meant that the ambulance crew wound up needing rescue from their rescue mission, and the fire chief became the latest entry in LA’s long history of traffic ironies-all in the span of a single morning commute.

Exhausted by an Exhaust That Isn’t There.  A Minnesota state trooper recently pulled over a Dodge Charger Daytona EV and issued the driver a citation for having a loud exhaust, even though the car doesn’t have an exhaust system at all. The only sound it makes comes from Dodge’s “Fratzonic Chambered Exhaust,” a set of external speakers engineered to give the EV a muscle-car growl. You might recall I raved about this exhaust system when I reviewed this car.  The law used to justify the stop is written for traditional mufflers and doesn’t account for synthetic sound, but the officer still wrote it up along with tickets for a missing front plate and disturbing the peace. The system itself is federally approved and designed partly so pedestrians can hear the car coming, but that didn’t stop the confusion. To make things even stranger, the case hasn’t appeared in court records weeks later, leaving the driver stuck with a ticket for noise his car can’t technically make.

Welcome to Taco Bell, Would You Like 17,999 More?  Taco Bell’s experiment with artificial intelligence at the drive-thru is turning into a comedy show, with customers posting videos that show the system glitching in ways that no human cashier ever could. One of the most widely shared clips shows a car pulling up and asking for a water, only for the AI to register the order as 18,000 waters, a request so excessive it might have drained the city supply if anyone tried to fill it. In another case, a customer ordered a simple Mountain Dew, but the system couldn’t stop asking, “And what will you drink with that?” on an endless loop, as if stuck in some kind of fast-food Groundhog Day. Taco Bell rolled out the AI ordering system at more than 500 locations, touting over two million successful transactions, but the viral fails are overshadowing the wins and drawing plenty of ridicule. Executives have admitted the rollout hasn’t been smooth, saying the technology may not be ready for every location, particularly high-volume drive-thrus where speed and accuracy are critical. For now, it seems some customers will continue to face surreal conversations with a robot that doesn’t know when to stop, while others might quietly wish for a return to the days when the only mistake was forgetting your hot sauce packets.

Lansing’s Favorite Predator: The Bridge That Snacks on Semis.  We’ve showed you this in our Car Pro Show newsletter videos of the week, and now Lansing, Michigan decided that if you can’t beat a problem, you might as well laugh at it, so the city threw a celebration marking the 100th time a truck has slammed into its infamous low railroad overpass known locally as the “Big Penny” bridge. Since 2004 the bridge has been striking fear into unsuspecting drivers of box trucks and semis while earning folk-hero status among locals who have watched one crash after another despite plenty of warning signs. To honor the milestone the community organized a party complete with trivia, a live band performing an original song, themed food and drink, and even an artist’s painting of the bridge auctioned for charity. Residents turned out not to mock the unlucky truckers but to embrace the bridge’s unlikely role as a cultural landmark, complete with its painted-on cartoon fangs and googly eyes that have become Instagram staples. Officials admit they could consider modifications, but most locals seem to prefer keeping the bridge’s streak alive, treating each crash as another chapter in a bizarre but enduring tradition.