Officials said they expect the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to handle the regulation of motor vehicles and equipment, and states to keep regulating “human drivers, vehicle registration, traffic laws, regulations and enforcement, insurance, and liability”.
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The proposals gave automakers and technology companies investing in automated driving many things they wanted, including a call for a single, national set of rules for self-driving cars.
The guidelines, which the government says are flexible and will evolve along with technological advances and in response to public comment, were released as autonomous vehicles are being tested in different states and are subject to varying rules. Throughout the document, titled, “Accelerating the Next Revolution In Roadway Safety”, NHTSA cites the importance of fostering innovation.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said on Tuesday at a press conference the agency would seek to make it mandatory through the regulatory process. The NHTSA had authority to ask Tesla for details of the system’s design only after the crash.
“The absence of something like this policy creates a bit of a vacuum and makes it hard for safety to be addressed properly”, Foxx said.
The much-anticipated policy uses a 15-point safety assessment to set expectations for autonomous vehicle researchers and manufacturers.
Big players in the market include Tesla Motors Inc. and Google while Uber Technologies Inc. started testing its self-driving cars in Pittsburgh last week. Other automakers are testing their systems on public roads in other states. “If NHTSA wishes to mandate automated vehicle performance safety assessments, it should go through the normal rulemaking process as required under the Administrative Procedure Act”, Scribner said.
The NHTSA proposals do not have the force of law, and some of them would require action by Congress to take effect.
The new federal rules also come amid safety questions about the nascent technology – including a fatality in a Tesla that was said to be in Autopilot mode. “This new policy comes with a lot of bark, but not enough bite”, Marta Tellado, President and CEO of Consumer Reports, said in a statement.
The policy is created to ensure self-driving cars are safe while allowing innovation to continue.
In drawing up 112 pages of guidelines, the government tried to be vague enough to allow innovation while at the same time making sure that vehicle makers, tech companies and ride-hailing firms put safety first as the cars are developed. Google has proposed fully autonomous vehicles without driver controls.
In that instance, NHTSA said self-driving cars should obey all traffic laws, including speed limits. The federal authorities are only able to provide guidance here – the government is letting individual states have the responsibility for enforcing legislation and regulation. Yet if a manufacturer doesn’t follow the guidelines “it will be open and apparent”, he said. “[It] provides for the standardization of self-driving policies across all 50 states, incentivizes innovation, supports rapid testing and deployment in the real world”, the coalition stated.
IHS Markit analyst Jeremy Carlson said data sharing could be a sensitive issue.
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Automakers have been wary of sharing data for competitive and legal reasons, although recently major automakers have established an organization to pool information about cyber security threats.
