On September 13, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao announced the release of an updated set autonomous vehicles guidelines, titled “Automated Driving Systems 2.0: A Vision for Safety.” The new guidelines document, which covers fewer than 30 pages, is notably shorter than the 100+ page automated vehicles policy document released in September 2016 under the Obama administration.
The September 13 announcement has been cheered in some quarters and criticized in others. Automakers were pleased. According to a spokesperson from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, “the guidance provides the right balance, allowing emerging innovations to thrive while government still keeps a watchful eye over new developments.”
By contrast, a press release from Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) called the Automated Driving Systems 2.0 “a step backwards” the accused the Department of Transportation of choosing “to cave to industry and pressure states into not acting.” John M. Simpson of Consumer Watchdog characterized the new guidelines as a “road map that allows manufacturers to do whatever they want, wherever and whenever they want, turning our roads into private laboratories for robot cars with no regard for our safety.”
Some of the criticism is unfair. Automated Driving Systems 2.0 contains a section specifically devoted to “Federal and State Regulatory Roles” and notes that the “general areas of [federal and state] responsibility should remain largely unchanged” for automated driving systems. The document goes on to note that the federal role includes “setting Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSSs) for new motor vehicles and motor vehicle equipment” and “enforcing compliance with” those standards. In other words, the document reiterates the key role of the federal government in setting motor vehicle safety standards—a role that will of necessity include oversight of safety for autonomous vehicles.
A more optimistic reading of Automated Driving Systems 2.0 is that the Department of Transportation is recognizing the central role the federal government will play in autonomous vehicle safety, while also implicitly suggesting that it would be premature to presuppose the outcome of a complex dialog aimed at determining the specific mandates that will accompany that role. After all, the dialog will certainly include not only the Department of Transportation, but also Congress, the automakers, consumer safety advocacy groups, and many others.
It is also important to note that federal mandates are not the only tool to ensure that automakers work to make autonomous vehicle technology as safe as possible. As I explained in a 2014 Brookings Institution publication titled “Products Liability and Driverless Cars,” products liability law provides a very strong set of financial incentives for automakers to get safety right. And, in addition to the direct financial costs that would inevitably result from civil litigation arising out of any safety problems, the longer term reputational damage to an automaker found to have cut corners on autonomous vehicle safety could be enormous.
So, while it may make for attention-grabbing headlines to characterize Automated Driving Systems 2.0 as a giveaway to the automakers at the expense of consumers, a better way to view the new guidelines is as a framework that details some of the key issues and challenges that policymakers will need to address in this important and rapidly changing area of technology.
