A bill to boost driverless cars faces a new roadblock: safety advocates.
While supporters of the legislation, known as the the American Vision for Safer Transportation Through Advancement of Revolutionary Technologies, or AV START Act, argue it would reduce the number of accidents caused by human error and would promote innovation, safety groups are worried it would make roads more dangerous.
“We have very serious concerns that absent some improvements made to this legislation, it could be very dangerous on our roads,” said Cathy Chase, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety.
Spearheaded by Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., and Sen. Gary Peters, D-M.I., the bill would require the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to regulate design, construction, and performance of self-driving cars — preempting state laws already in place.
State and local governments will oversee registration, licensing, insurance, and safety and emissions inspections, according to the legislation which passed the Transportation Committee last fall and could be in line for a vote in the next Congress.
A similar measure, known as the called the Safely Ensuring Lives Future Deployment and Research in Vehicle Evolution, or SELF DRIVE Act, was unanimously passed by the House last year.
But Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety is opposed to several provisions in the measure, including one that would increase the number of exemptions from federal safety standards designed for human drivers.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration can exempt a driverless car from certain rules so manufacturers can sell them, if manufacturers demonstrate that the vehicle is just as safe or safer than non-exempt vehicles.
Current law allows 2,500 exemptions each year, but the legislation would expand that to 15,000 exemptions in the first year, with increases in following years.
Cathy Chase said she’d “like to see the scope and the number of [exemptions] reduced.”
As a result, Advocates for Highway and Auto safety has called for the Senate to “tap the brakes” on the AV START Act while allowing companies to continue testing driverless cars, as companies such as Mercedes Benz, Waymo, and Tesla are currently doing.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has criticized the crux of the bill — letting the feds set a single standard that supersedes local rules. But Jennifer Skees of the Mercatus Center said a universal federal standard would eliminate the confusion and complexity of complying to the “patchwork” of state and local regulations.
“If an autonomous vehicle is legal in Arizona, but not legal in California, what’s going to happen when someone is going on a road trip from the Grand Canyon to Disneyland?” Skees said.
Thune also argued in an op-ed for the Argus Leader (a paper based in Sioux Falls, S.D.) that “just as the technology has to evolve, dedicated rules for self-driving vehicles will need to evolve alongside it. And we need to start now. It simply doesn’t make sense to delay new rules and stop innovation when this new technology is already on our roads.”
Thune and other supporters of the legislation believe it would be a boon to road safety, pointing to data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that determined more than 90 percent of the 35,000 motor-vehicle crash fatalities in 2015 were a result of human error. He wants the bill to get a full floor vote, but it’s unclear he’ll get it in this Congress.
“I understand there are important things that need to be passed this year — this isn’t a traditional must-pass bill,” said Marc Scribner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “Unfortunately, I don’t think the Senate leadership understands the importance of getting this done in 2018 rather than restarting in the next Congress.”
Meanwhile, Chase said that Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety would continue fighting the bill in its current form.
But Scribner said Congress should act quickly in order to bypass partisan bickering, and so that regulators can keep up with technological advances.
“It would be better for them to pass this kind of bipartisan legislation before you start having really ugly fights over special-interest giveaways, which is what will happen if Leader McConnell fails to get this passed this year,” Scribner said.
“Because we already have a pacing problem with this type of technology developing far faster than regulators are able to move, if Congress doesn’t step on the gas a little bit, that problem is just going to get worse,” Scribner said.
