CEI Joins Organizations to Comment on California’s Draft Self-Driving Car Regulations

The Competitive Enterprise Institute today joined the R Street Institute, TechFreedom, and the International Center for Law & Economics to provide comments to the California DMV on draft regulations for autonomous vehicles. The comments flag problems with the agency's approach to safety and consumer welfare. On October 19, the DMV will hold a public workshop to get public input on the draft regulations. CEI transportation expert Marc Scribner has said the following about the comments on autonomous vehices:

California’s latest draft autonomous vehicle operations and licensing regulations offer some improvements over the previous draft, but unfortunately create new problems.

Most troubling is the California Department of Motor Vehicles’ proposal to bake in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s nonbinding, voluntary safety performance guidelines. Not only is the agency attempting to bind developers to nonbinding federal guidelines, the guidelines themselves remain half-baked and NHTSA is still accepting public comments on how it can improve them.

To say the California DMV’s proposal is premature is an understatement and their draft regulations suggest the agency lacks the competence to implement a sensible testing and deployment process.”