Corporate Influencers, Aggressive Driving and Redesigned Crash Test Dummies: What I'm Reading This Week

The sprint to the finish has begun, but I’ve decided to take my foot of the gas pedal. I'm grateful I was able to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with my extended family. I'm also an introvert, and my social gas tank has runneth empty.

I’m trying to find peace and quiet to refuel and recover. I’m also allowing myself to move slower, be less efficient and prioritizing joy. It’s helping and so is the sunshine, which even if it isn’t melting the foot of snow, is reflecting the light and making everything a whole lot brighter.

Whatever you have planned for the next few days, I hope you’re able to steal some quiet moments for yourself and find peace (or at least contentment and acceptance). Until next time, be well, be safe and be kind!

Aggressive Driving

Full disclosure: I haven’t yet had an opportunity to ride in one of Waymo’s autonomous vehicles. And, despite my above car analogies, I’m not much of a car enthusiast. Still, I was intrigued when I saw Katherine Bindley’s article for The Wall Street Journal about Waymo’s cars driving more like humans.

For years, Waymo’s cars were polite, almost to a fault. They’d wait behind double parked vehicles and yield to other drivers. All that’s changing. A Waymo employee told Bindley that the company has been trying to make its cars more “confidently assertive.”

As an example, he says Waymo vehicles would not cross a double yellow line—no matter what. Now, the cars have been programmed to go around a stopped delivery truck. The rationale is that there are the rules of the road on paper and the rules of the road in practice.

It seems like Waymo is inching toward an inflection point of how much you can teach an autonomous vehicle—and expect it to learn.

A few weeks ago, Kit Kat the cat met its untimely and horrifying demise as a result of a Waymo vehicle. The beloved San Francisco cat, dubbed the Mayor of 16th Street, was run over despite several witnesses attempting to stop the autonomous vehicle.

While reactions may be mixed about Waymo’s more aggressive practices to drive more like a human, it’s clear new laws and safeguards will need to be put into place. Bindley spoke with a Bay area police officer who pulled over a Jaguar for making an illegal U-turn. It was a Waymo. Cops in California can’t currently cite a car without a driver.

Read Bindley’s article here. I also encourage you to read Heather Knight’s moving tribute to Kit Kat (with plenty of pictures and artwork) that is also a thoughtful exploration of the future of autonomous vehicles here.

Corporate Influencers

For decades, employees have been told to put their phones in their lockers and not share too much about their work online. I’m pleased to see some companies have, in embraced the technology and their employees, albeit in limited conditions.

Allison Pohle, writing for The Wall Street Journal, describes how some well-known companies (e.g., Starbucks, Delta Air Lines and Portillo’s) are leveraging employees to be social media influencers.

The rationale is that frontline employees, who can authentically represent the brand in real life, can also do that digitally, whether it be on their personal social channels or for the corporate channels.

I manage EHS Today’s social accounts, so I understand the importance of protecting a brand’s image. There are many benefits to these corporate influencer programs:

• It is a new avenue to engage employees.
• It’s a way to help employees grow and develop their skillsets.
• It’s a way to bridge the gap between HQ and on-the-ground operations.

I hope programs like these continue to spread and grow at organizations. However, I hope that employees first get training, tools (e.g., lights, stands, editing software and other equipment) to produce these videos, and compensation for their time and talent. Of the companies mentioned, only Starbucks paid an undisclosed amount of money per post.

Read the full story here.

Redesigned Crash Test Dummies

It’s a known problem: more women have higher crash injury and fatality rates than men in vehicular accidents.

To address this, the U.S. Department of Transportation recently released new technical specifications for a new female crash test dummy design. The redesigned test dummy is said to more accurately resemble a female body.

The THOR-05F has more than 150 sensors, allowing it to collect three times more injury measurements than current dummies. The THOR-05F can also assess injury risks to the brain, internal organs, abdomen, chest, pelvis, arms and legs.

For decades, the standard crash test dummy has been a 50^th percentile male that represents the average U.S. soldier in the 1960s.

It wasn’t until the early aughts that a female crash test dummy was added. Notably, this female test dummy represented a 5^th percentile woman who is under 5 feet tall and 108 pounds. This crash test dummy, essentially a smaller version of a male dummy, didn’t consider women’s different muscle strength, fat distribution, bone density or menstrual cycles.

See the new crash test dummy and read more here.