According to The Detroit News, U.S. DOT Secretary Anthony Foxx said at the CES Trade Show on Thursday that while it’s not out of the question for lawmakers in Washington D.C. to eventually begin laying out some federal regulations for autonomous cars, there are no plans in the near future. He said the focus currently should be on evaluating the new technologies.
“There’s a lot the federal government can do in terms of laying out safety standards and producing guidance for model legislations at the state level,” Foxx said. “It may happen at some point that there’s a desire for a national approach for these things, but I think we’re a little ways away from that point. Right now, we’ve got to develop a mechanism to evaluate the technology that comes to us and as rapidly as we can.”
He said that the focus should instead be on making sure products are safe, and to make sure that new technologies can be evaluated at a much faster rate.
“Our goal as an agency is to step up the speed with which we can make those evaluations,” he said. “We don’t want to be in a situation where technology is presented to us and it takes four years for us to evaluate it. We have to move faster.”
However, The Detroit News reported that at a roundtable discussion Audi AG executives bemoaned that it’s difficult to test autonomous vehicle technology because state rules vary. But Foxx responded that the auto industry is at “a moment where the convergence of technology and transportation offers enormous opportunities for communities all across the country and world.”
