OpenMarket: Automobiles and Roads

Last week, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) released the third iteration of its guidance for automated vehicles, Preparing for the Future of Transportation: Automated Vehicles 3.0 (AV 3.0). Notably, this guidance is the product of a department-wide effort that covers all surface transportation modes, including the interface of maritime infrastructure and trucks at intermodal port facilities.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute is releasing a new video today on automated vehicles (a/k/a self-driving cars) and how they could make our roads dramatically safer. They could, that is, as long as government regulators don't throw up unnecessary roadblocks to their delpoyment. See what Congress can do to get the automated future rolling in this recent blog post.

It has now been over a year since the U.S. House of Representatives passed the bipartisan SELF DRIVE Act by voice vote. Its companion bill, the Senate’s AV START Act, was passed out of the Commerce Committee on a unanimous vote nearly 10 months ago. Since then, the Senate has failed to bring it to a floor vote.

Why are self-styled safety advocates opposing the first legislative step that could help usher in the greatest automotive safety improvements in history? This is a question to ask a handful of senators, led by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who are holding up Senate passage of the bipartisan AV START Act, which would establish the first nationwide regulatory regime for highly automated vehicles (HAVs), often called self-driving cars. The House’s companion bill, the SELF DRIVE Act, passed that chamber by voice vote in September 2017.

In a recent article in Energy and Environment News, several prominent climate scientists bash the Trump administration’s proposed rollback of the Obama administration’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) and carbon dioxide emission standards for model year 2021-2026 motor vehicles. Their argument, or rather innuendo, is that the Trump proposal is wrongheaded because, well, climate change is bad.

Yesterday, the New York City Council voted to impose a one-year cap on the number of ride-hailing vehicles able to operate in the city. The bills also allowed the city to impose a minimum level of compensation for ride-hailing drivers.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on August 2^nd proposed to revise Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards and carbon dioxide tailpipe standards for model year 2021-2025 motor vehicles, and set new standards for model year 2026 vehicles.

Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA), the outgoing chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, this week released a legislative discussion draft of a new infrastructure bill, attempting to build consensus on modernizing federal programs related to surface transportation, water resources, and project permitting and environmental review. In this post, I’ll focus on the surface transportation components.

CEI has released my third annual report on state barriers to vehicle platooning, Authorizing Automated Vehicle Platooning: A Guide for State Legislators, 2018 Edition. (Read the 2017 edition here and the 2016 edition here). Automated vehicle platooning refers to an application of driving automation system technology that allows vehicles via wireless connection to coordinate speeds in order to safely reduce the gap between leading and following vehicles.

Back when CEI published “Free to Prosper: A Pro-Growth Agenda for the 115th Congress” at the end of 2016, we wrote that “[t]o better promote high-value, low-cost mobility, Congress should … remove government barriers to competition and innovation in the transportation sector.” Passing reasonable automated vehicle guidelines would be a strong step in that direction.