House Lawmakers’ Caucus at Forefront to Encourage Self-Driving Vehicles

Bryan JungAugust 9, 2022

There is a bipartisan effort by two members of the U.S. House of Representatives to help revive legislative efforts to promote self-driving vehicles in the United States.

Reps. Robert Latta (R-Ohio) and Debbie Dingell,(D-Mich.) spoke with Reuters about their new Congressional Autonomous Vehicle Caucus, which they hope will put forward federal autonomous vehicle standards, which currently are nonexistent.

They hope to use the caucus to educate their fellow lawmakers on self-driving vehicles as they work to revive previous attempts at legislation.

Congress has been divided for years over how to amend regulations to take into account self-driving vehicles, as well as consumer and legal protections regarding the new technology.

Latta als0 expressed a need to ensure that autonomous vehicle companies in the future will utilize technology developed in the United States rather than that of foreign rivals like China.

“It’s important we keep our competitiveness in the United States,” Latta said, adding, “it’s got to be done here in the United States.”

“We’re working hard to find that common ground to get something that we can pass,” said Dingell.

The lawmakers want to introduce new federal vehicle legislation that will cover self-driving vehicles in order to avoid the creation of a complicated patchwork of laws that differ between states.

She said that the United States has a major need to update motor vehicle safety standards written decades ago, when the concept of self-driving cars was not even seriously considered.

Dingell added that the United States “cannot afford to have a patchwork of laws, either, across 50 states.”

The two congresspersons also pointed the recent uptick in auto deaths in the country over the past year, rising by 10.5 percent, to 42,915, the single highest annual increase since 2005, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

Dingell and Latta believe that