What We’re Reading

• NHTSA planning to require automatic emergency braking on new vehicles (The Hill, May 31, 2023)

  A notice of proposed rulemaking published last week by NHTSA contemplates a new Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard requiring automatic emergency braking (AEB) on all new passenger vehicles (as of a date three years after the final rule is published). The proposed rule responds to mandates in the Department of Transportation’s National Roadway Safety Strategy, launched in January 2022, and the administration’s 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law.

  “NHTSA chief counsel Ann Carlson said 90 percent of new vehicles already include the emergency braking through a voluntary program. But she said the agency wants to have the brakes become more effective at higher speeds and better at avoiding pedestrians.” Requiring AEB on all new vehicles is expected to “save 360 lives and reduce injuries by 24,000 every year.”

  Comments to the proposal can be submitted and/or accessed here.

• California lawmakers and AV industry battle for future of self-driving trucks (TechCrunch, May 31, 2023)

  The California bill we have been following that would require a trained human safety operator to be present any time a heavy-duty autonomous vehicle operates on public roadways is continuing to gain momentum. AB 316, first introduced in January, passed the state’s Assembly last week and will now face a committee review and vote in the Senate.

  “If enacted, AB 316 will make California an outlier by prohibiting autonomous trucks from operating on their own unless approved by the [California Legislature] through a convoluted process,” said Safer Roads for All, a coalition of AV advocates. “Let’s hope other states are more sensible and let road safety experts do their jobs.”

  Proponents of the legislation, however, argue that safety should not be compromised to facilitate frontier technology. “California highways are an unpredictable place, but as a Teamster truck driver of 13 years, I’m trained to expect the unexpected. I know to look out for people texting while driving, potholes in the middle of the road, and folks on the side of the highway with a flat tire. We can’t trust new technology to pick up on those things,” said Fernando Reyes, Commercial Driver and Teamsters Local 350 member, in a statement. “My truck weighs well over 10,000 pounds. The thought of it barreling down the highway with no driver behind the wheel is a terrifying thought, and it isn’t safe. AB 316 is the only way forward for California.”

  We will continue to monitor the status of this legislation as it inches closer to Governor Newsom’s desk.

• Cruise Robotaxi Gets Stuck In The Middle Of An Intersection, Elon Musk Replies (InsideEVs, June 6, 2023)

GM’s Cruise is facing criticism yet again after one of its robotaxis stopped dead in the middle of a San Francisco intersection—but this time the criticism is directly from Elon Musk. On Sunday, a video of the confused robotaxi was posted to Twitter and then reposted with the message, “[g]eneralized autonomy (see Telsa) is 100x harder than the brittle ‘self driving’ tech we see here.” Musk commented within seconds, agreeing that the Cruise technology is “extremely brittle to local conditions and doesn’t scale.”* No comment from Cruise.

*According to this ABA article, “[b]rittleness means that the automated features of the vehicle function well under the conditions in which it was intended to be used, but the system requires human intervention to handle situations that the software was not designed to handle.”