IN BRIEF: The brake pedal could become optional in some future autonomous vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has proposed changes to federal safety rules covering fully self-driving vehicles. Under the plan, vehicles built without manual driving controls could be certified without foot-operated service brakes or manually operated parking brakes.
The change targets purpose-built robotaxis rather than ordinary cars with driver-assistance systems.
Vehicles that still include steering wheels, pedals, or other manual controls would remain subject to the existing requirements. So would consumer cars featuring systems such as Tesla Autopilot, Full Self-Driving, or Ford BlueCruise – your next car is not suddenly going to arrive with an empty footwell and a reminder to trust the system.
Today, companies that want to deploy vehicles missing required manual controls generally have to seek exemptions, which are capped at 2,500 vehicles per manufacturer per year. NHTSA has spent years reviewing some of those petitions, making the proposed rule a potentially important shortcut for purpose-built robotaxi fleets.
NHTSA says Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 135 was written around vehicles designed for human drivers, making some of its language awkward or impossible to apply to automated driving systems (ADS).
