Almost every car on the road requires a steering wheel at the moment. That sounds obvious, but with the advent of driverless cars and tech billionaires claiming that full self-driving is already here, it's easy to see how the public can get confused. Regardless of how capable Waymos or any other robotaxis are, though, they still need to have traditional controls inside the car, per federal regulations. That might not last long, though, as the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) wants to end steering wheel requirements for cars that are only intended to be self-driving.
“If you’re developing a vehicle that is designed never to be driven by a human operator, it doesn’t make any sense to require manual controls,” Jonathan Morrison, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, told CNBC in a recent interview.
This comes just a month after the NHTSA said it would remove the physical brake pedal requirement for autonomous vehicles. It doesn't stop there, either. Last year, the NHTSA recently announced a rule that would allow automakers to request exemption from Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) requirements altogether, if they plan on testing purely driverless vehicles. Production of those vehicles is currently limited to 2,500, though.
