Outdated Auto Safety Rules Threaten the Self-Driving Car Revolution

Self-driving cars should be welcomed for their substantial safety and mobility gains for the traveling public, especially the elderly and disabled. But the federal government's failure to modernize auto regulations is already denying consumers safer and superior products, and this problem will only grow larger as automated driving systems near the deployment stage. Marc Scribner (@marcscribner) is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market public policy organization in Washington, D.C., and author of the recent study, Modernizing Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. Congress has long recognized that federal regulations should be informed by technical standards developed outside the government, as officials generally lack engineering expertise. Bipartisan bills--the Self Drive Act (Safely Ensuring Lives Future Deployment and Research in Vehicle Evolution) passed by the House, and the AV Start (American Vision for Safer Transportation through Advancement of Revolutionary Technologies) Act pending in the Senate--both recognize that the federal government should continually update its automated vehicle definitions to reflect the industry's best available technical knowledge.