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Self-drive waves scgrb HERO

Special interest groups and politicians in Washington spent this week telling each other they've got the best oversight plan for safely testing and bringing autonomous vehicles to market. Not surprisingly, it'south difficult to find common basis.

Autonomous legislators want the feds to make self-driving cars super-condom. Republicans want to exempt 100,000 self-drive test cars a year from regulations. Automakers and Republicans want federal regulations to trump state rules. Safety activists want testing and deployment to movement alee cautiously.

Firm Energy and Commerce hearings

The occasion for the back-and-forth was a hearing of the US House Energy and Commerce subcommittee Tuesday. Automakers and other special-involvement groups as well delivered comments and feedback in advance.

The draft of a Republican legislative parcel allows the National Highway Traffic Safe Administration to exempt 100,000 cars a twelvemonth from federal motor vehicle prophylactic standards and regulations. Without the exemption, it wouldn't be possible to build and sell autonomous vehicles lacking driver controls, meaning cars with no steering wheels or gas and brake pedals. This falls against the properties of some automakers and researchers proverb it'southward possible nosotros'll get directly from where cars like Tesla are today (semi-autonomous) to level 4 and 5 cars that would never demand the driver's involvement, and thus (level 5) no demand for driver controls.

The GOP typhoon would as well keep the fifty states from setting a patchwork quilt of self-driving rules. Congressman Robert Latta (R-Ohio) said, "We simply cannot have cars that cease at state lines."

Automakers want a unmarried set of rules

Automakers concur with the Republicans: They prefer a single set of rules promulgated by NHTSA. That includes General Motors and Tesla, plus Google'south Waymo affiliate. For now, concern is over how the testing is run. Longer-term, it will be over what features and capabilities a car must have to be chosen autonomous, and at what level.

Some ramble scholars (read: law school professors who like existence quoted) say this may be something of a states' rights consequence. The outcome might hinge on whether states have already started to upshot rules, as some have. Or it could be that regulating autonomous vehicles falls nether federal oversight of interstate commerce.

Keeping America the leader in self-driving

Nearly everyone agrees the rules should push safety, but shouldn't exist so onerous that automakers go elsewhere to examination. (California and Arizona are pop considering of good weather yr-round and proximity to all the R&D piece of work done in California.) Mitch Bainwol, President and CEO of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said in written testimony, "America is the true innovation leader in this field — at least for now. It is in the national interest to protect that reward."

Currently NHTSA offers test-vehicle exemptions from federal safe rules under limited circumstances. Some other exemption allows for vehicles to be minus some safety features as long as the vehicle exceeds the overall safe of manufactured vehicles. But each exemption is capped at 2,500; that's the target of legislation expanding the exemption to 100,000 vehicles a year.