Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao has been asked by a coalition of organizations across the country to get more involved in stricter oversight of driverless cars.
According to The Hill, in a letter signed by more than 25 organizations, the group’s leaders call the Transportation Department (DOT) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) “detached spectators instead of engaged safety regulators” on autonomous vehicles.
“We urge DOT, under your watch, to encourage and oversee the development and deployment of life-changing and lifesaving motor vehicle technologies by issuing minimum performance standards instead of ‘voluntary guidelines’, providing consumers with essential information on the capabilities and limitations of autonomous vehicles, and rigorously enforcing current legal mandates for industry to immediately report problems,” the letter reads. “Regardless of Congressional activity on AVs, DOT’s obligation to carry out its mission of ensuring a safe transportation system must be met.”
The letter was signed by twenty-six groups, including Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, Consumer Action, and the American Public Health Association.
The letter comes as result of the legislation that is designed to speed up the development and testing of autonomous vehicles remains stuck in the Senate after unanimously passing through the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee last year.
A group of stakeholders earlier this month pressed the Senate to expedite the passage of the American Vision for Safer Transportation Through Advancement of Revolutionary Technologies (AV START) Act.
But a group of Democratic senators last week sent a letter addressed to Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune and ranking member Gary Peters where they expressed their worries if the legislation imposes adequate safety measures.
“We are concerned that the bill indefinitely preempts state and local safety regulations even if federal safety standards are never developed,” Senators Dianne Feinstein, Kirsten Gillibrand, Richard Blumenthal, Edward Markey and Tom Udall wrote.
The coalition’s letter demands from the Transportation Department that they should first analyze the safety technologies before they even enter the marketplace.
“This is the most effective and assured approach to prevent unproven and potentially dangerous technologies from being sold to the public and allowed on public streets and highways across the country,” the groups wrote.
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