The deployment of autonomous vehicles (AVs) without human controls on public roads faces legislative hurdles that automakers and IT firms must overcome, according to industry insiders and lawmakers.
Ford Motor Co. and Volkswagen AG said on Wednesday that they will shut down the self-driving company Argo AI because the technology was still in its infancy. The same holds true for the legislation governing technology.
Congress has been debating how to change legislation to include self-driving vehicles for more than five years, including the extent of consumer and legal safeguards.
Additionally, US officials have not indicated when they could take action on applications to first let a small number of self-driving cars without steering wheels or brake pedals on US roads. On Thursday, representatives from the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) chose not to specify when they could take action.
This month, US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg claimed he had “We have extremely high aspirations for the theoretical prospect that self-driving vehicles and high-tech automobiles may save thousands and thousands of lives since historically, human humans have been pretty much homicidal car drivers. But we haven’t arrived yet “.
Others in the sector and in Washington consider the growth of self-driving vehicle technology to be a problem of competition.
To avoid losing the AV race to China, several legislators and the business community have asked Buttigieg to create a thorough government framework for autonomous vehicles.
