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The Simple Device That Gives Any Car Autopilot with Will Bright · Auto Collabs

• 0:00
  Welcome to AutoCollapse. You're listening to an exclusive series recorded live at Automobility LA 2025 in partnership with Cars Commerce.
• 0:09
  All right, we're here with our brand-new friend Will Bright, founder and CEO of Safe Ride. And you just showed us a little product demonstration that blew our minds- We almost fell off the stage.
• 0:18
  [laughs] And we're like, "Uh." Okay, so you have a little device in your hand. Yeah, yeah. And it- I've got, I've got this box right here.
• 0:23
  And if you, if you can't see it on the camera, I mean, it's got two, what look to be about the same size as the lenses on my iPhone. Yeah. One, two. It's got a little shape there, and it weighs about, like, three ounces.
• 0:35
  Yeah. It's not even, like, two pounds. Then you have a wiring harness in your hand. Indeed. Indeed. We have a wiring harness.
• 0:40
  And, uh, the wiring harness is USB-C on one side, and then, uh, it's got obviously, like, a little, you know, factory connector that plugs into what? In this case, uh, this is the Toyota cable. Okay.
• 0:52
  This is the Toy- so it goes in the Toyota. And then once you plug it in and you put this little thing on your dashboard- What happens? What happens to the car?
• 0:59
  Well, uh, car's got autopilot now, so it'll stop for red lights, it'll stop for stop signs, it'll keep you in the center of your lane and at a safe distance relative to other vehicles.
• 1:08
  It'll also detect pedestrians from upwards of 100 meters away, meaning that we can stop for somebody in the road all the way up to a car traveling at 65 miles an hour. Or if a deer runs in front of my car. Indeed.
• 1:21
  Unbelievable. It'll see that as well. And that can go on what kind of car? This goes on almost any vehicle built since 2010. We are currently compatible with around 200 million of the 300 million vehicles on US roads.
• 1:35
  And cut scene. [laughs] Okay, so why... W- where did the, where did the desire to create what you've created come from, and how have you gotten to here? Uh, th- thank- thanks for the question.
• 1:49
  Uh, yeah, so I, I just sold my previous company, uh, it was called Mass Drop. Uh, we made a lot of consumer electronics for nerds. If you guys got friends that argue on forums, they probably bought something from me.
• 1:58
  Got it. [laughs] Uh [laughs], and, uh, uh, and then unfortunately, right after we finished that company, uh, a very good friend of mine, my former VP of business development, uh, was hit and killed crossing the road.
• 2:09
  Um, uh, at the time I was driving a 2016 Tesla, and he was hit by a 2020 F-150. And, you know, my car had technology that would at least beep at me if somebody was in the road and I was approaching them.
• 2:21
  And I sort of ignorantly thought like, "Man, this truck that hit him is four years newer." Like, "Why doesn't it have anything like that?" Right. Yeah. "What happened?"
• 2:29
  I started looking into the rate of inclusion of technology that can see pedestrians from any type of effective distance and stop. It's exceptionally low. It's like 10% of vehicles. What vehicles are they?
• 2:39
  Well, they're all very expensive, high-end vehicles. You know, you gotta buy the Escalade, you gotta buy the GX550, you gotta buy all those high-end cars that people broadly can't afford, right? Yeah.
• 2:49
  Started looking into, okay, well what's the deal with road deaths? Is this going up or down? Turns out it's increased by 50% over the last decade. It used to be about 35,000 people a year getting hit.
• 2:58
  Now it's about 45,000 people a year getting hit and killed. Hm. Hospitalizations are about 5 million people a year in the US. Wait, hang on. What percentage of all US hospitalizations is 5 million? It's like 20%- Wow...
• 3:10
  of the entire US medical system is just dealing with people getting hit by cars. That's unbelievable. So how do we stop this, right?
• 3:17
  The concept originally was just get a camera, attach it to the CAN bus system, get a pedestrian detection model, you know, YOLOv11, whatever you wanna use for it, and then connect to the brakes to make the car stop if someone's there.
• 3:28
  Along the way, once we realized we could make the car stop, uh, we also realized that we could make it go, and we could make it turn left or right.
• 3:36
  [laughs] And we could change the, you know, temperature on your heating system, or we could lock or unlock the car.
• 3:41
  There's a lot of exciting things you can do when you've got a universal compute and vision platform for all cars. Wow. But yeah, so that, that's the goal. I mean,
• 3:50
  in five to 10 years, we will have equipped around 200 million vehicles in the US, and we will have eliminated 80 to 90% of road deaths. So what is the sales channel for this? Exclusively through dealerships.
• 4:01
  Right now- Wow... we've got our first 5,000 units spoken for by dealers in Texas and Georgia and other parts of the country. And how it's gonna work is instead of pre-loading a LoJack or...
• 4:10
  Excuse me, uh, shouldn't say other products.
• 4:13
  Uh, instead of pre-loading whatever piece of technology you currently have to argue with your customers about the value of, uh, you'll instead be pre-loading this into all of your cars.
• 4:21
  And someone will come on the lot, they say they want a 2020 Corolla, you say, "No problem, we got that right here. But if you want, we've got a 2020 Safe Ride Corolla." "Oh, what's the difference?"
• 4:29
  "Well, it, it doesn't crash, and it's got autopilot." Wow. That's a quite... It, it's, it's like a radical
• 4:37
  change in, in our ability to m- to prevent deaths or give people the access to this because so many of the vehicles on the road are used vehicles, right? Correct.
• 4:46
  You can only develop new technology in these new vehicles. And, and what you're looking at is, no, we have to fix this problem backward- in a backwards combat- compatible way, and this, this does it.
• 4:57
  How deep does it go right now fr- in an autopilot perspective? Like you said, stop, go, change lane, make sure you maintain speed. But what other things are you thinking about or does it have the capability to do?
• 5:07
  Is it driving? Is it navigating? Is it doing all those things at this point? Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, right now in terms of the SAE levels of autonomy, uh, we exist firmly at level two plus. Uh- Got it...
• 5:19
  the trick with autonomy and the way it's regulated in the US is that it's not regulated through legislation. It's not even regulated by any particular administrative group.
• 5:26
  Instead, it's lay regulated exclusively through legal precedent. So Tesla- Wow... and Cadillac got sued over the course of the last decade a couple thousand times.
• 5:33
  Those established a very strong legal precedent that means that for driver assistance products, you the driver are driving. They are driver assisting. They are not autonomous vehicles. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
• 5:43
  And so in order to bring the product to market, we need to maintain-... within that level two-plus world.
• 5:49
  So there's a camera that when you're using the hands-free cruise, watches your eyes to make sure that you're looking at the road.
• 5:55
  So while you can take your hands off the wheel and your feet off the pedals, you can't be sitting there sleeping or looking on your phone or anything. Right. I have an F-150 Lightning that has the same feature.
• 6:02
  Like, Blue Cruise does that. You start looking down at your phone, not that I ever did- [laughs]... but if someone were to start looking at their phone- I understand...
• 6:09
  or look at the scenery, it's like, "Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. Hands on the wheel. Hands on the wheel." My question is, what's the interface? Yeah. So, uh, we plug directly into the CAN bus system.
• 6:19
  Uh, this cable, like I said, is the Toyota cable. Uh, we've got a different cable for Fords. We've got a different ca- How do I see it and control it? Uh, well, so the CAN bus- How do I activate it? Uh, so, uh... Oh.
• 6:29
  Oh, that's what you mean. Yeah. How do I say, like, "I want this thing to drive itself"? Indeed. Yeah. So think about it this way.
• 6:34
  There's sort of a passive mode of use, where as long as it's attached to your vehicle, it's looking forward, detecting pedestrians, and it will apply the brakes in the scenarios where it needs to. All the time.
• 6:42
  Can't turn it off. It's- All the time. Yes. That's just happening, right? A safety feature of the vehicle. You don't, you don't want to hit that kid, right? Mm-hmm.
• 6:47
  Um, in order to activate the hands-free cruise, you press the button on your steering wheel that previously activated cruise control, and instead of doing cruise control, now it does this.
• 6:56
  So there's no new pattern of behavior or interface that you have to learn- Ah... in order to use the product, and it works just the same way as cruise control, where you hit the brake, it'll deactivate.
• 7:05
  Now you're in full control of the vehicle, right? It's all the same usage patterns as normal cruise, except now, you know, it's a little better.
• 7:14
  So these are out, uh, being sold by dealers now, or the first 5,000 are spoken for? The first 5,000 are spoken for. Uh- When are those hitting? Those are gonna be hitting in February and March of this coming year.
• 7:24
  So by, you know, this time next year, you'll be able to walk into a lot of dealerships around the country and ask for a vehicle with Safe Ride.
• 7:31
  Uh, in the starting point, for the first few months, it'll be limited to the existing partners who have already committed for the inventory we've got. Mm-hmm. Amazing.
• 7:40
  Well, Will, you are obviously changing the game, and you've got a big passion for it, and I, I, I, I'm, I'm so sorry for your pain, but I'm so glad that out of pain becomes a solution that so many m- more people can live and understand by, and, and hopefully save more roads and more lives, uh, in the future.
• 7:58
  Oh, exactly. So kudos. I mean, like you said, it's about solving the problem today, right?
• 8:01
  The, the final thing that I realized that really sent me down the path of building this was that, okay, like, how many new cars are made every year? It's, like, 12 to 15 million in a really good year, right?
• 8:10
  How many cars are on the road? Like, 300, 350 million, depending on how you count. Well, wait a minute. That's gonna be 25 to 30 years. Yeah, take a minute. Before we... Yeah. Right?
• 8:20
  And that's assuming 100% inclusion rate. So add another decade to reach maybe 100% of cars have some type of camera in them connected to the brakes.
• 8:27
  Then add 35 years to that, it's like, man, uh, my kids, my grandkids, are gonna be dodging Nissan Sentras. Like- [laughs]... it's gonna be 2070 before this is meaningfully solved. Let's hope not.
• 8:36
  Unless we do something with the cars that are already on the road. Man, Will. Yeah. That, what an amazing story. Looking forward to watch this thing take off. And, uh- Thank you... thanks for joining us today.
• 8:45
  Oh, my pleasure, guys. Thank you so much for having me. [upbeat music] Thank you for listening to this LA Auto Show session, brought to you by Cars Commerce.
• 8:52
  At More Than Cars, we're obsessed with uniting people around one big idea: to make retail auto an industry that people fight to join.
• 8:59
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