From: Niskanen Center
Yesterday, the Niskanen Center submitted comments to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on its recent Federal Automated Vehicle Guidelines. Although we are happy to see NHTSA taking the first steps in helping to pave the way for the deployment of driverless cars, we have some concerns. A number of newly proposed authorities hold the potential to delay, or possibly stall, the advent of autonomous roadways.
The agency’s call for pre-market approval authority is especially troubling, as the likely result will be additional weeks, months, or possibly years of delay, resulting in thousands of fatalities on America’s roadways. Every day of delay results in almost 100 people killed and many thousands injured—most of them children. The agency’s proposed certification process also adds to the costs and timely rollout of autonomous vehicles, while ignoring its own historical commitment to manufacture self-certification. A final area of concern is the insinuation that NHTSA possesses the ability to regulate post-sale software updates to vehicles. We disagree. In fact, we point out that nowhere in these policy guidelines does the agency cite statutory authority for these supposedly existent powers.
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