Driverless cars hit a regulator gap
The Center for Auto Safety is the nation’s premier independent, member driven, non-profit consumer advocacy organization dedicated to improving vehicle safety, quality, and fuel economy on behalf of all drivers, passengers, and pedestrians.
“The design and construction of an autonomous vehicle, and driver competency is intertwined,” said Michael Brooks, executive director at the Center for Auto Safety. “You can’t really separate it into the traditional areas.” So when companies deploy a federally approved AV for a cross-country road trip, they don’t necessarily know whether they’re violating a patchwork of state laws.
By Aaron Mak
August 13, 2025
For Silicon Valley, the promise of the second Trump administration is that it would cull all those pesky bureaucrats impeding innovation.
But sometimes, a new industry needs bureaucrats to cut red tape.
The autonomous vehicle industry could soon face this catch-22. As driverless cars continue to roll out in American cities, AV companies need the help of federal regulators to deal with the landscape of safety rules. Yet my colleague Pavan Acharya reported last week that the Transportation Department’s Office of Automation Safety, which helps regulate AVs, is on the verge of becoming a ghost town.
The Republican-led Senate Appropriations Committee noted in a report that the office had “lost almost all of its staff,” and encouraged the department to prioritize hiring.
Silicon Valley has generally pooh-poohed regulators as getting in the way of both moving fast and breaking things. However, it’s regulators who are trying to work around policies designed for analog cars, so that AVs can start operating legally within the federal highway rulebook.