The Trump administration just took a major step towards eliminating brake pedal requirements for autonomous vehicles. On Thursday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) proposed updating the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards to eliminate the mandate for manual brake pedals in cars designed to be fully self-driving. “If we want America to lead the way, we have to reimagine our regulatory framework,” NHTSA administrator Jonathan Morrison said in a press release. “That’s why under Secretary Sean Duffy’s AV Framework, NHTSA is tearing down pointless barriers to innovative designs while strengthening the fundamental safety requirements that matter and holding AV developers accountable for safe performance.” Under the current rules, all cars, no matter how autonomous they are designed to be, require hand or foot-operated manual brake controls. Autonomous vehicle makers can apply for an exemption from the restrictions, but each approved exemption would allow them to sell no more than 2,500 vehicles per year.
With the newly proposed rule, all autonomous vehicles would still have to meet the same stopping distance performance criteria as other vehicles, but those meant to be fully self-driving wouldn’t have to include a manual brake and would have to ensure that criteria via alternative testing procedures instead.
