USDOT wants more self-driving cars without pedals or steering wheels

The US Department of Transportation wants to marque it easier for automakers and tech companies to deploy self-driving cars without accepted controls similar steering wheels and pedals. In a missive sent to stakeholders, the section said it would streamline reviews of requests for exemptions from information rules requiring vehicles to person steering wheels, pedals, and mirrors — parts that purpose-built autonomous vehicles often lack.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has the authorization to exempt 2,500 vehicles per manufacturer, but the bureau has spent years reviewing immoderate exemption requests without taking action. Now, NHTSA says the process volition instrumentality “months alternatively than years.” US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said successful a connection that the exemption process has been “bogging developers down successful unnecessary reddish portion that makes it intolerable to support gait with the latest technologies.”

Companies funny successful manufacturing and selling autonomous vehicles without steering instrumentality and pedals request to petition exemptions from the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, which is the government’s authoritative checklist for everything a car needs earlier it tin beryllium sold to customers. To date, lone 1 company, Nuro, has received an FMVSS exemption for its low-speed transportation robots that aren’t ample capable for quality passengers. General Motors tried for implicit 2 years to get an exemption for its driverless Cruise vehicles earlier yet giving up. (Last year, GM said it would stop backing Cruise.)

This isn’t the archetypal clip the authorities has signaled a willingness to marque it easier to deploy afloat autonomous vehicles. Last year, the Biden medication announced a much streamlined “exemption pathway” for vehicles with automated driving systems. In exchange, NHTSA wanted much information from the companies that run driverless cars, arguing that greater transparency is needed to foster nationalist spot successful the technology.

But the Trump medication does not look arsenic funny successful forcing companies to cough up much data. There was nary notation of information disclosure successful NHTSA’s two-page missive to stakeholders. And the medication is reportedly looking to quash a Biden-era transparency rule that requires companies operating vehicles with operator assist, arsenic good arsenic self-driving cars, to study crashes and injuries to the national government.