Safety advocates and consumer groups have vowed to work with lawmakers in the new Congress to modify a piece of legislation that could get more autonomous vehicles on the road, after the measure failed to pass in the last Congress.
Although proponents of the bill — called the American Vision for Safer Transportation Through Advancement of Revolutionary Technologies, or AV START, Act — argued it would enhance safety by eliminating accidents attributed to human error, safety and consumer groups took issue with several provisions that they argued could have the opposite effect.
“We recognize the lifesaving potential for driverless vehicles to make our roads safer, but it must be safer for everyone,” Cathy Chase, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, said in a statement in December. “Basic safeguards and protections are needed to ensure that they are developed and deployed without imperiling others including bicyclists, pedestrians, emergency responders, and motorists sharing the road.”
The legislation would have required the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, to regulate design, construction, and performance of self-driving cars, pre-empting any previously established state laws. Meanwhile, state and local governments would have been made responsible for overseeing registration, licensing, insurance, and safety and emissions inspections. A similar piece of legislation passed in the House in 2017.
Safety and consumer groups particularly opposed a provision that would have expanded the number of annual exemptions from federal safety standards. NHTSA can exempt a driverless car from certain rules, allowing manufacturers to sell them, if the company demonstrates that the vehicle is just as safe as or safer than nonexempt human-driven vehicles. Although current law allows 2,500 exemptions each year, the legislation would have increased that to 15,000 exemptions in the first year, with additional hikes in subsequent years.
The groups also objected that the legislation did not order the Department of Transportation to complete a single minimum federal safety standard for new experimental self-driving systems and failed to require the agency to establish minimum performance standards on cybersecurity, electronics, and driver engagement.
“On the path to driverless vehicles, proven and available safety technologies such as automatic emergency braking and blind spot detection systems should be put in vehicles now as standard equipment,” Chase said.
Although the legislation didn’t pass the Senate in 2018, a spokesperson for Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said that the senator would work to advance the measure in the new Congress.
“Sen. Thune remains committed to working with Sen. [Gary] Peters [D-Mich.] and other colleagues to move self-driving car legislation forward in the new year,” Thune spokesperson Frederick Hill told the Washington Examiner.
Safety and consumer groups are pledging that they will be involved in the process and will push to include their priorities in future autonomous vehicle legislation. They have also urged lawmakers, automakers, and tech companies to meet with consumer and public-health groups to develop policies to advance safety in autonomous vehicles.
“Next year we will start over to make sure a new bill addresses the concerns of consumers and includes minimum performance standards, adequate funding, and effective authority for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,” Joan Claybrook, former administrator of NHTSA and president emeritus of Public Citizen, said in a statement in December. “These are all critical ingredients to ensuring the technology is safe and the public is supportive. This agency must serve as an effective ‘cop on the beat.’”
Jennifer Skees, a research fellow at the Mercatus Center, said that the issue must be addressed in some way in the future, noting that the “patchwork” of state laws surrounding autonomous vehicles will pose challenges in the future.
“As time goes on, this issue is going to have to be addressed either through the legislative process or through the regulatory process,” Skees said.
“With over 29 states having enacted legislation related to autonomous vehicles, it is possible that the patchwork of state laws could become a problem in allowing vehicles to travel between states and for the same vehicle to be considered ‘legal’ in all 50 states,” Skees said.
Despite lack of legislative action from Congress, Marc Scribner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said that adjustments to autonomous vehicle regulations could be made.
“The now-dead bills would have required NHTSA to move more quickly, but NHTSA could still do this on its own without Congress doing anything,” Scribner said.
As a result, he anticipates auto manufacturers and companies will petition NHTSA to make amendments to its federal motor vehicles safety standards that would take into account autonomous vehicles — not just those operated by humans.
“I expect they’ll redouble their efforts on the administrative side of things,” Scribner said of auto manufacturers. “Ultimately, the major long-term policy changes they want can all be implemented by regulatory agencies acting under existing authorities from Congress.”
Furthermore, Scribner predicted that manufacturers may choose to take their autonomous vehicle operations outside the U.S. to find a more favorable climate.
“It would be entirely understandable,” Scribner said. “Unfortunately, Congress’s failure to act will likely result in more dead Americans on our highways than would otherwise have been the case if elected officials had simply done their jobs.”
Hillary Cain, director of Technology and Innovation Policy at Toyota, tweeted that failure to pass the legislation in 2018 was a “missed opportunity” and that there would be remorse that “Congress failed to get out ahead of this and establish a federal framework for this emerging technology.”
Toyota did not provide additional comment, but referred the Washington Examiner to a statement from Auto Alliance — a group that represents auto manufacturers including Toyota, Ford Motor Company, and General Motors Company — saying that “automakers remain committed to working with bipartisan leaders in the 116th Congress.”
