Thank you for your invitation. I’ll offer seven points.
First: American driving is dangerous.
Automated driving could help, if we’re careful about it. But people are dying today not because we’re careful about automated driving but, rather, because we’re careless about road safety generally.
Other countries do care. Driving in the US is twice as deadly as in Canada and Australia. As a South Carolinian, I’m ten times more likely to die in a crash than my friends in the UK. Ten times.
These countries aren’t hiding some vast secret fleet of AVs. I can’t yet hail a robotaxi in London. But I can cross the street.
Second: Arrogance is careless.
AVs have tremendous potential. But believing they will be a panacea virtually guarantees they won’t, because that confidence blinds us to risks.
Many engineers working on AVs show humility. They talk with me about what’s hard, what went wrong, and what’s uncertain. They want to learn from local officials. I wish AV companies would show more of this humility in their PR.
Third: The best proxy for the safety of AVs is the trustworthiness of AV companies.
There are no “self-driving” or “driverless” cars. The companies that develop and deploy AVs are the drivers. This means that an AV is only as safe as the companies responsible for it. We can and should proactively assess their trustworthiness.
AVs won’t be perfect, but a company can still do right after its technology fails. It can explain what went wrong, how it’s addressing the actual harm, how it’s reducing future risks, and—critically—what it’s learned more broadly. We need more of this.
Doing right does not mean forcing victims into arbitrations, and it does not mean buying their silence and thereby misleading the public. These are betrayals of trust.
Fourth: Safety is a marriage, not a wedding.
Safety is a lifelong commitment that continues as long as an AV is on the road. It’s not just a one-time test or certification or checklist. A credible safety case must be a living document that is clearly supported, robustly interrogated, and routinely updated.
Vehicles placed on our roads stay there for decades and therefore need oversight for decades. NHTSA provides some of this oversight, and AVs will dramatically expand the scope of it. Yet both NHTSA and FMCSA are tiny, underresourced agencies with huge mandates.
Fifth: AVs are an especially visible part of a much broader discussion of AI.
As a society we’re likely to place many of our hopes and fears about AI generally on AVs specifically. The Transforming Transportation Advisory Committee, which I vice-chaired, addressed many of these issues, including employment, accessibility, sustainability in the face of climate change, privacy vis-à-vis both companies and governments, and fundamental questions of power. For each, we need clear policy goals and an iterative approach to achieving them.
Sixth: Local government has essential expertise.
Few appreciate how much local governments are subsidizing automated driving. First responders, for example, solve all kinds of problems, from waking up people in robotaxis to literally moving AVs that are stuck.
These local officials deserve our respect. They want the people who remotely assist AVs to be in the US. They need to know AVs will help rather than hurt their response to disasters. They want to be able to ticket AV companies for moving violations just as they would any other driver. They emphasize that every city is unique and AVs must operate accordingly.
Finally: We must empower, not disempower, our communities.
Preempting state and local authority would be profoundly short-sighted—and I say this as someone who believes strongly in the potential of AVs.
Many states want the federal government to lead on AV policy. But great leaders lead. Telling US DOT what to do (and providing the resources needed to do it) would help much more than telling states what not to do.
Preemption could create litigation rather than certainty. It could bar states from getting unsafe vehicles and unsafe drivers—human or otherwise—off the road.
Our AV industry started through federal research decades ago and then grew through our system of federalism. Brand America does have a serious credibility problem abroad, but preemption does not solve it.
In a scary time of technological change, we need to make sure that communities, and the people in them, have control and feel in control. We can deploy both technology and policy in a way that protects and empowers them.
Thank you.