Latest / The Bill Handel Show / Robotaxis Violating Traffic Laws| New Study: School Cellphone Ban
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
- 0:04Speaker 1: six forty.
- 0:08Speaker 2: JFI AM six forty Bill Handle here, good morning on
- 0:12Speaker 2: a Taco Tuesday, Cinco de Mayo. I'm looking at the Dow,
- 0:18Speaker 2: which is up what two hundred points right now? And
- 0:23Speaker 2: as I do my commercials for Leer Capital, if you
- 0:28Speaker 2: look at the stock market, here's how you do well
- 0:31Speaker 2: with the stock market. You lose your job to AI,
- 0:35Speaker 2: you pay two dollars a gallon more for gas, your
- 0:39Speaker 2: food prices explode, and when all that comes together, you
- 0:44Speaker 2: have a great economy. Tell me how weird that is.
- 0:47Speaker 2: I just don't understand that at all. And the argument is,
- 0:51Speaker 2: you know companies are making money and this the rest
- 0:54Speaker 2: of us are going to suffer big time.
- 0:56Speaker 1: Okay.
- 0:56Speaker 2: In the meantime, let me tell you what's going on
- 0:59Speaker 2: with State Farm and it's if you listen to Handle
- 1:04Speaker 2: on the law, and I tell you whenever an insurance
- 1:09Speaker 2: company is involved, and let's say a plaintiff is suing
- 1:13Speaker 2: in company a medical malpractice or a personal injury case,
- 1:19Speaker 2: or you have an issue with your home insurance, whatever,
- 1:23Speaker 2: what I say is do I need a warrior bill?
- 1:26Speaker 2: What I say these insurance companies are excellent. They're pros
- 1:31Speaker 2: at not paying you. That's what they do, and boy
- 1:36Speaker 2: do they do it well. And if you think you're
- 1:39Speaker 2: going to negotiate on your own, you are crazy to
- 1:42Speaker 2: do that because you're up against some pretty sophisticated insurance
- 1:46Speaker 2: people who well, they're not really good at paying you
- 1:51Speaker 2: the kind of money that you should get. And that's
- 1:53Speaker 2: exactly the case is what's happening with State Farm. State
- 1:58Speaker 2: Farm is the biggest insurance home insurance company in California
- 2:02Speaker 2: by a long shot, and they have been accused of underpayment, delays,
- 2:10Speaker 2: poor communications, reluctance to cover smoke damage, even testing as
- 2:16Speaker 2: a result of the Palisades and the Altadena fires. State
- 2:20Speaker 2: Farm already handled about a third of the eleven three
- 2:24Speaker 2: hundred claims that were filed after the fires destroyed or
- 2:27Speaker 2: damage more than eighteen thousand structures and killed thirty one people.
- 2:33Speaker 2: And they well, the bottom line is the state has
- 2:36Speaker 2: come in and they investigated two hundred and twenty sample
- 2:40Speaker 2: claims found three hundred and ninety eight violations of state
- 2:45Speaker 2: law and about half of the claims.
- 2:47Speaker 1: I mean, that's those small amount.
- 2:49Speaker 2: You can't say that this you've got a few things
- 2:52Speaker 2: that fell through the cracks, which you can say. And
- 2:55Speaker 2: so the Insurance Commissioner, Ricardo Lara said in a statement,
- 3:00Speaker 2: our investigation found that State Farm delayed, underpaid, buried policyholders
- 3:04Speaker 2: in red tape at the worst moment of their lives,
- 3:08Speaker 2: and we're taking decisive action to hold them accountable. And
- 3:13Speaker 2: so what the Apartment, the Department is doing, they have
- 3:15Speaker 2: to go to court on this. It's seeking assistant desist
- 3:18Speaker 2: order to stomp State Farm from engaging in quote unfair
- 3:22Speaker 2: and deceptive practices, which, by the way, I believe happens. Okay,
- 3:27Speaker 2: usually I say, they say it hasn't been proven. This
- 3:31Speaker 2: has to be litigated. I believe every word of that,
- 3:34Speaker 2: because I'm the one that has gotten phone calls.
- 3:37Speaker 1: Over and over and over.
- 3:39Speaker 2: Again on the Saturday Show regarding the delays of all
- 3:43Speaker 2: the insurance companies, with.
- 3:44Speaker 1: State Farm being the most egregious.
- 3:47Speaker 2: So the Department is seeking assistant desist order and possibly
- 3:51Speaker 2: suspend State Farm's certificate of authority for up to a year,
- 3:55Speaker 2: which means that for a year they can't write policies,
- 3:59Speaker 2: no new business. And what this would do is prevent
- 4:04Speaker 2: State Farm, which covers more than a million homes from
- 4:09Speaker 2: issuing new policies, and State Farm other insurers are facing
- 4:14Speaker 2: an economic crisis because you can imagine the amount of
- 4:17Speaker 2: money that is going out in claims. Now Here is
- 4:21Speaker 2: a fact that very few people know about. Of the
- 4:24Speaker 2: billions of dollars that have the damages have cost. And
- 4:31Speaker 2: there's home insurance, which virtually all of us have. The
- 4:36Speaker 2: insurance companies have enough money to cover it. They actually
- 4:40Speaker 2: have that money and you would think that they would
- 4:42Speaker 2: go broke with all of these claims. No, they've got it.
- 4:46Speaker 2: Their reserves have it. Where the state doesn't have it
- 4:50Speaker 2: is the fair plan. The fair plan is when you
- 4:53Speaker 2: can't get insurance anymore and the state allows you to
- 4:56Speaker 2: do that allows the company to say, you know what,
- 4:58Speaker 2: we're not going to cover that air because it's too
- 5:00Speaker 2: much of a it's too high a risk, or we're
- 5:04Speaker 2: not going to ensure a property for more than let's
- 5:07Speaker 2: say two million dollars or million and a half dollars,
- 5:10Speaker 2: and the insurance commissioner less that happen, and so they're
- 5:14Speaker 2: allowed to do that. But when it comes to screwing
- 5:18Speaker 2: people over, they're not allowed to do that. And so
- 5:22Speaker 2: this is the allegation is that you have done it.
- 5:24Speaker 2: Now is it anecdotal for me? Do I have the proof?
- 5:27Speaker 1: I do not.
- 5:28Speaker 2: But what I am doing is simply reporting the number
- 5:32Speaker 2: of phone calls which I have gotten complaining about what
- 5:35Speaker 2: the insurance companies have done, with State Farm getting the
- 5:38Speaker 2: most complaints because State Farm has the biggest numbers. State
- 5:43Speaker 2: Farm comes State Farm comes back and says, California's homeowners
- 5:48Speaker 2: insurance market is the most dysfunctional in the country and
- 5:53Speaker 2: the Department of Insurance should take responsibility for the regulatory
- 5:57Speaker 2: delays and uncertainties that have contributed to fewer choices and
- 6:01Speaker 2: higher costs. What is the bottom line here, Well, the
- 6:04Speaker 2: accusation is against State Farm.
- 6:07Speaker 1: State Farm comes back.
- 6:08Speaker 2: And points to the state and says, you're the one
- 6:11Speaker 2: that's at fault. You're the one that has made these
- 6:14Speaker 2: regulatory issues and these barriers, and the arguing a huge
- 6:21Speaker 2: argument over smoke damage also because State Farm and other
- 6:24Speaker 2: insurers are not dealing with smoke damage, but they what
- 6:27Speaker 2: they argue is there has to actually be fire damage.
- 6:32Speaker 2: There has to be fire that either destroys or somehow
- 6:39Speaker 2: just really compromises a home. If you've ever been in
- 6:43Speaker 2: a fire, if you ever known anybody been in a
- 6:46Speaker 2: fire where the flames didn't even come into the house,
- 6:50Speaker 2: the smoke damage.
- 6:53Speaker 1: If the house.
- 6:54Speaker 2: Has been a victim of if the smoke has come in,
- 6:58Speaker 2: you have to take it down to this studs. You
- 7:02Speaker 2: can't even leave the dry wall up because this smoke
- 7:07Speaker 2: goes into the dry wall and it becomes part of
- 7:11Speaker 2: your house and it's there forever. And the reality is
- 7:16Speaker 2: is WHOA, I'm buying home insurance and therefore I've been
- 7:20Speaker 2: damaged by fire. No no, no, no, no, you haven't been.
- 7:24Speaker 2: Even though you claim there's smoke damage. There's tons of
- 7:28Speaker 2: smoke damage. The smoke gets into everything, not only all
- 7:34Speaker 2: the furniture and of course any carpeting that you have,
- 7:37Speaker 2: but the very walls themselves.
- 7:41Speaker 1: So State Farm, big, big problems.
- 7:44Speaker 2: Will see what happens if they can't sell they can't
- 7:50Speaker 2: sell insurance for a year now. State Farm didn't release
- 7:54Speaker 2: a statement and outlined that was April twenty two, outlined
- 7:58Speaker 2: five commitments even though they're not at fault. Here's are
- 8:02Speaker 2: commitments providing single points of contact. Prior to this, you'd
- 8:07Speaker 2: have to go through five different agents, which is typical
- 8:10Speaker 2: which you have to go through with State Farm improved communications. Okay,
- 8:16Speaker 2: try getting them on the phone, Fewer handoffs, fewer repeated explanations,
- 8:21Speaker 2: seamless support. Really them promising to do that, but they've
- 8:25Speaker 2: done nothing wrong, have they? Okay, Starting July one, police
- 8:30Speaker 2: are going to be able to cite autonomous vehicles the
- 8:33Speaker 2: manufactures when the cars violate traffic laws. Right now, there's
- 8:38Speaker 2: nobody to ticket. You can only ticket human beings for driving.
- 8:44Speaker 2: And what do you do with an automous autonomous vehicle. Well,
- 8:49Speaker 2: new laws are ticking in starting July first that are
- 8:52Speaker 2: going to be able to have the police ticket the
- 8:55Speaker 2: manufactures of the car or the vehicle for any violation. Now,
- 9:01Speaker 2: I want to point something out, and that is and
- 9:05Speaker 2: this is something that I experienced when I started up practicing.
- 9:08Speaker 1: Sorry to see my law practice. Science is way ahead
- 9:12Speaker 1: of laws.
- 9:13Speaker 2: Laws catch up to science, and that's exactly what happened here.
- 9:18Speaker 2: Robotaxis are not covered by laws, is certainly in this
- 9:22Speaker 2: sense in terms of ticket writing.
- 9:26Speaker 1: And so July first.
- 9:27Speaker 2: There's a whole slew of new regulations that come in,
- 9:31Speaker 2: some of which are okay, I mean they make sort
- 9:35Speaker 2: of kind of sense, although they're redundant because the manufacturers
- 9:39Speaker 2: already do this big.
- 9:40Speaker 1: Time, and it's I mean, do we really need them?
- 9:44Speaker 1: They're not bad? I mean they're not bad. And they
- 9:47Speaker 1: point out why do we need them?
- 9:48Speaker 2: Why can why should the cops ticket robotaxis? And they
- 9:53Speaker 2: point out a whole slew of incidents, all three of
- 9:56Speaker 2: them that have happened. In one case, one of the
- 10:01Speaker 2: cars and this is way mo for the most part, stopped,
- 10:04Speaker 2: didn't stop and went through a red I think it
- 10:09Speaker 2: went around a bus that had its light flashing. No
- 10:12Speaker 2: one was hurt and there was a kid out there
- 10:14Speaker 2: and the car stopped appropriately.
- 10:18Speaker 1: And do you know that those people.
- 10:21Speaker 2: That are saying because they are so dangerous now compare
- 10:26Speaker 2: autonomous vehicles to human drivers. Right across the country, you
- 10:32Speaker 2: have what thirty thousand people to die in car accidents
- 10:36Speaker 2: every year, And if across the country you had nothing
- 10:42Speaker 2: but autonomous vehicles across the board, how many people do
- 10:46Speaker 2: you think would die? The technology is so advanced and
- 10:51Speaker 2: it is so much safer to have these vehicles.
- 10:55Speaker 1: On the road than drivers. I mean, how often do
- 10:58Speaker 1: you get pissed off?
- 10:59Speaker 2: And when cuts you off? Yesterday it happened to be twice.
- 11:03Speaker 2: And watching someone blow through a stop sign usually me
- 11:07Speaker 2: or watching speeding, which happens every minute when I'm on
- 11:11Speaker 2: the freeway. Autonomous vehicles are simply safer by a long shot.
- 11:19Speaker 2: Any pilot will tell you that you don't use your
- 11:23Speaker 2: eyes if you're looking at a horizon and you really
- 11:27Speaker 2: don't understand, you look down and use your instruments. Those
- 11:32Speaker 2: are far far safer. You take that and you analogize
- 11:38Speaker 2: that to cars that are driving people that drive cars,
- 11:43Speaker 2: I would far far more trust the car itself than
- 11:47Speaker 2: anybody driving the car. So there are a whole bunch
- 11:53Speaker 2: of new regulations that come in which I don't want
- 11:57Speaker 2: to go through because there are literally dozens of them,
- 12:00Speaker 2: and the Weaimo and other manufacturers saying, wait a minute,
- 12:04Speaker 2: we're already regulated up the ying yang.
- 12:07Speaker 1: I mean we are.
- 12:08Speaker 2: We've got the National Transportation Safety Administration. We've got the
- 12:15Speaker 2: FEDS looking at us, we have the DMV looking at us.
- 12:19Speaker 2: We're way regulated. And well, okay, July first, still kicking in.
- 12:24Speaker 2: So I can't wait. There's a great video out there.
- 12:27Speaker 2: There's a meme of a cop looking into a Waimo
- 12:33Speaker 2: car Weaimo taxi and it had done something and looking
- 12:37Speaker 2: in there and looking at say, where's the driver?
- 12:40Speaker 1: Where's the driver? You can see that on his face.
- 12:43Speaker 1: Kind of fun.
- 12:44Speaker 2: And then even with a ticket written to the manufacturers
- 12:49Speaker 2: of the EV people, there's this whole system where a
- 12:54Speaker 2: human being looks at it, analyzes it and figures out
- 12:58Speaker 2: what's going on.
- 12:58Speaker 1: So the controls are even going to be stronger. So
- 13:02Speaker 1: I like them.
- 13:04Speaker 2: And once we reach the point, it's not gonna be
- 13:06Speaker 2: in our lifetime, but one we but it will happen.
- 13:09Speaker 2: Once we reach the point where it will be autonomous vehicles,
- 13:12Speaker 2: that's it. People will not be on the roads, particularly
- 13:15Speaker 2: the freeways. You'll see these cars zipping along at seventy
- 13:20Speaker 2: miles an hour, two feet from each other.
- 13:23Speaker 1: And gridlock will disappear. That's what's going to happen.
- 13:28Speaker 2: All right, Moving into another topic I want to share
- 13:32Speaker 2: with you, and that has to do with school cell
- 13:36Speaker 2: phone bands. Now, when my girls were twelve thirteen years old,
- 13:41Speaker 2: all the they said, all the kids have cell phones
- 13:44Speaker 2: in the classroom, and.
- 13:45Speaker 1: I wouldn't let them have I would not let them
- 13:47Speaker 1: have cell phones. Wouldn't do it.
- 13:50Speaker 2: And then one of my daughters said, but all the
- 13:54Speaker 2: kids have cell phones. Dad, I said, okay, So I
- 13:58Speaker 2: asked to go to school to ask the kids, and
- 14:01Speaker 2: he said yes. I went into the classroom of one
- 14:04Speaker 2: of my daughters and I said, how many of.
- 14:06Speaker 1: You have cell phones?
- 14:07Speaker 2: Every single one of them had cell phones except my daughter. Okay,
- 14:13Speaker 2: that conversation change now she has a cell phone. The
- 14:17Speaker 2: argument has always been cell phones in the classroom are distraction.
- 14:21Speaker 2: People still bully each other. Grades go down, harder to
- 14:28Speaker 2: teach kids because they're looking at the cell phones.
- 14:32Speaker 1: Well, a study just came.
- 14:33Speaker 2: Out and it was published by the National Bureau of
- 14:38Speaker 2: Economic Research. The University of Michigan and Stanford and Duke
- 14:43Speaker 2: and University of Pennsylvania jumped into this, and we're talking
- 14:46Speaker 2: forty thousand students were looked at. And here is the
- 14:51Speaker 2: bottom line. Grade scores didn't change at all. It did
- 14:56Speaker 2: nothing to change the grade scores allowing kids to have
- 14:59Speaker 2: cell phones. So researchers compared schools that use the cell
- 15:05Speaker 2: phone covers by Yonder. Yonder is a company that makes
- 15:10Speaker 2: those pouches that cell phones go into and they can
- 15:13Speaker 2: only be opened up. Now, I don't know how that works,
- 15:17Speaker 2: because I am in favor of kids having cell phones,
- 15:20Speaker 2: not using them, mind you, but having cell phones. Why
- 15:23Speaker 2: Because it's so crazy out there. Active shooter comes in there,
- 15:28Speaker 2: every kid is evacuated. Parents want to know. Man, the
- 15:33Speaker 2: first thing parents want to know is my kid, okay?
- 15:35Speaker 2: And if the kid isn't able to use that cell phone,
- 15:39Speaker 2: everybody is panicked. You've got hundreds of parents that are panicked.
- 15:44Speaker 2: So I want to know.
- 15:46Speaker 3: There's never been a case where that's helped in any way,
- 15:49Speaker 3: shape or form ever, kid know, because kids are never helped,
- 15:54Speaker 3: and God forbid, a parent tries to be a hero
- 15:58Speaker 3: and go in and goes down there without law enforcement
- 16:02Speaker 3: back up.
- 16:03Speaker 1: I'm not even arguing that. I'm not arguing that.
- 16:05Speaker 2: What I'm saying is, let's say there's a problem at
- 16:08Speaker 2: school and the first thing a kid does is call
- 16:11Speaker 2: the parents.
- 16:12Speaker 1: Mom, I'm okay, Mom, I'm not hurt.
- 16:15Speaker 2: I think that's critical for parents to know that, as
- 16:18Speaker 2: opposed to being compared to.
- 16:19Speaker 1: Who's who's financing this study?
- 16:23Speaker 2: Well, I don't even know. I think it's this company
- 16:25Speaker 2: that makes these pouches. And there's a couple of ways
- 16:30Speaker 2: of doing this. First of all, in some instances, cell
- 16:33Speaker 2: phones are simply confiscated or held at the office until
- 16:37Speaker 2: school is out. In other cases, you have these pouches
- 16:42Speaker 2: that are locked and the kids can't get to them,
- 16:46Speaker 2: which I do understand how and then they're unlocked if
- 16:49Speaker 2: there's a problem. I don't understand how that works. I mean,
- 16:52Speaker 2: technologically speaking, some schools allow kids to use cell phones
- 16:56Speaker 2: between classes. Others do not allow cell phones to be
- 17:01Speaker 2: used or even held by a kid. The bottom line,
- 17:05Speaker 2: all of these protections did nothing in terms of grade scores.
- 17:12Speaker 1: Nothing.
- 17:13Speaker 2: Now do they help kids in terms of feeling better? Yeah,
- 17:18Speaker 2: the study seems to do that.
- 17:20Speaker 1: Also.
- 17:21Speaker 2: Cell phones and this one I even think about, tend
- 17:25Speaker 2: to allow kids to self anesthetize, because that's what the
- 17:30Speaker 2: study showed, is that kids need cell phones. The other
- 17:35Speaker 2: situation is that every kid out there has a computer
- 17:38Speaker 2: in school. There isn't a kid out there it doesn't
- 17:40Speaker 2: have a computer in the classroom. And so the bottom
- 17:44Speaker 2: line is, do you let your kid have a cell
- 17:47Speaker 2: phone if you lock it up. I think that a
- 17:53Speaker 2: cell phone should be allowed by every kid at all times,
- 17:56Speaker 2: and if you use it during the course of school,
- 17:59Speaker 2: if you're during class, okay, off you go to uh
- 18:03Speaker 2: the administration, Off you go to the vice principal.
- 18:07Speaker 1: No, we're confiscating it.
- 18:08Speaker 2: So the part that I find absolutely fascinating here is
- 18:13Speaker 2: that with all of the controls, all the removal of
- 18:17Speaker 2: cell phones in various different ways, didn't change a damn thing.
- 18:20Speaker 1: I call BS.
- 18:22Speaker 3: I don't think it's been long enough, because we barely
- 18:25Speaker 3: did this. Every teacher I've ever talked to said they
- 18:28Speaker 3: are a menace. You've got kids being bullied digitally. There
- 18:33Speaker 3: is no way this is a balanced study. Uh, there's
- 18:37Speaker 3: no way you can remove phones and not make it better.
- 18:43Speaker 1: For that doesn't make any sense. No, there are issues
- 18:46Speaker 1: where it does make it better.
- 18:47Speaker 2: No, no account later the study says said and it
- 18:52Speaker 2: said it is, there are distractions, there are some advantages.
- 18:55Speaker 2: But the bottom line, and how do you test the
- 18:58Speaker 2: way a kid learns is how do you know? You
- 19:02Speaker 2: have to do testing? And the testing shows this forty
- 19:05Speaker 2: thousand kids over a couple of three years. The testing
- 19:09Speaker 2: shows that the increase or that the that theoretically the
- 19:16Speaker 2: increase in testing scores should.
- 19:17Speaker 1: Go up, and it doesn't.
- 19:19Speaker 2: Okay, so much for that, don't ever call BS on
- 19:21Speaker 2: a position that I take. Okay, excellent, they'll rouseberry. Okay,
- 19:27Speaker 2: there is a story I want to share with you,
- 19:29Speaker 2: and I'm gonna do a little bit of it, but
- 19:31Speaker 2: I'm probably gonna do more of this later on because
- 19:35Speaker 2: at the top of the hour with Rich I'm going
- 19:37Speaker 2: to talk about this somewhat. And there is a company
- 19:41Speaker 2: called Serve Robotics, and it has expanded its delivery robot
- 19:47Speaker 2: fleet to forty LA neighborhoods from just two in twenty
- 19:50Speaker 2: twenty three, and they have over five hundred of these
- 19:54Speaker 2: puppies across six metropolitan areas, expanding nationwide. And I first
- 20:00Speaker 2: I saw one of these. It was a few months ago.
- 20:02Speaker 2: I was downtown LA and I saw one of these
- 20:06Speaker 2: things beeping down the sidewalk. They have a flag and
- 20:11Speaker 2: they're about as big as a small refrigerator, like a
- 20:14Speaker 2: Costco size refrigerator. And I'm looking at this thing and
- 20:20Speaker 2: there's there. It's wild. I mean, it's going going around people,
- 20:24Speaker 2: and it is stopping at the street corners, and it
- 20:28Speaker 2: goes down the little ramp and it goes up the
- 20:30Speaker 2: other ramp, and I'm thinking, that is the wave, that's
- 20:34Speaker 2: the future.
- 20:35Speaker 1: They're all over my damhood.
- 20:38Speaker 3: And there's a video of a guy because they walk
- 20:41Speaker 3: up to the corner and if you're standing there, they'll
- 20:43Speaker 3: ask you to press the button to change the light
- 20:46Speaker 3: so they can cross. And this guy's going, no, you
- 20:49Speaker 3: took a human's job.
- 20:51Speaker 2: You press the button that is, And I'm going to
- 20:54Speaker 2: talk more about this. I'll probably do it tomorrow. And
- 20:58Speaker 2: one of the aspects of these robots is exactly what
- 21:02Speaker 2: you said, is they took a human job. Okay, I'm
- 21:10Speaker 2: assuming you still work with a typewriter because look what
- 21:15Speaker 2: computers have done, wiped out the typewriter industry. So I'm
- 21:20Speaker 2: going to jump into that tomorrow because there's a lot
- 21:23Speaker 2: more to talk about now talking about robotics, I want
- 21:27Speaker 2: to jump into that. That's one of the topics I
- 21:30Speaker 2: want to discuss with rich de Muall coming right up.
- 21:32Speaker 2: And then at the bottom of the hour eight thirty,
- 21:36Speaker 2: I'm going to talk to an attorney who is involved
- 21:39Speaker 2: in that Uber initiative and you're going to hear an
- 21:43Speaker 2: awful lot about that before November. Oh, trust me on that.
- 21:47Speaker 2: And he is involved in the case the anti uber
- 21:51Speaker 2: side and will jump into that fascinating stuff and it's
- 21:55Speaker 2: going to affect all of us.
- 21:57Speaker 1: Trust me.
- 21:58Speaker 2: This is KF I am.
- 22:01Speaker 1: You've been listening to the Bill Handle show.
- 22:03Speaker 2: Catch my show Monday through Friday six am to nine am,
- 22:06Speaker 2: and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.