Agency schedules meetings with each firm by end of July
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has documented a pattern of autonomous vehicles impeding or ignoring emergency responders, according to a Wednesday letter from NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison.
“An AV that cannot safely interact with first responders is a danger to the general public,” Morrison wrote. “Every second matters when law enforcement officers, firefighters, or paramedics are answering a call.”
Morrison said the agency has recorded incidents in which robotaxis drove into active emergency scenes and blocked the paths of ambulances and firefighters. The vehicles also failed to recognize traffic cones, flashing lights, and other safety threats such as smoke and fire, according to the letter.
The Wall Street Journal, which originally reported the letter’s date as Tuesday, corrected its article to say Wednesday.
Morrison called on developers to give priority to improving the cars’ ability to interact with first responders. NHTSA will schedule meetings with each company by the end of the month to hear their proposed solutions, he said.
The letter arrives as autonomous-vehicle fleets, most of them operated by Waymo, a unit of Alphabet, have expanded their service areas. Waymo has become the early industry leader with a fleet of nearly 4,000 vehicles offering driverless rides in 11 cities. This week, the company announced plans to expand to Denver, Las Vegas, San Diego and Tampa. Amazon’s Zoox and Tesla’s Robotaxi service are also working to catch up.
Goldman Sachs projects that by 2030, the total U.S. commercial robotaxi fleet will reach 62,800 vehicles in a market worth nearly $19 billion.
In his letter, Morrison acknowledged the potential for autonomous vehicles to reduce roadway fatalities and help disabled Americans travel. At the same time, he stressed that the vehicles must be held to the same standard as human drivers in responding to law enforcement.
“Public trust on our roads is earned, not given,” he wrote.
The Trump administration has sought to advance autonomous vehicle technology, including working to streamline federal regulations. Without comprehensive federal standards, individual states have been largely on their own to regulate how first responders interact with AVs. Some states, including California and Arizona, require robotaxi companies to create law enforcement interaction protocols before they can offer driver-free rides.
According to The Verge, a bill expected to come up for a vote in New Jersey later this year would require companies seeking to operate fully autonomous vehicles in the state to use cameras plus two other sensing technologies, most commonly lidar and radar. The report said the proposed legislation would effectively prevent Tesla’s camera-only Robotaxi system from operating in New Jersey unless the company changed its hardware.