Carmakers and tech companies working on self-driving cars are pushing back against the Obama administration’s request to share data and safety specifications with the federal government. But they are expressing hope that President-elect Donald Trump will continue the current administration’s approach to regulating self-driving cars, which has so far avoided making any concrete rules or mandates.
“Extrapolating President-elect Trump’s posture on regulations, he’s clearly looking to having a much lighter regulatory environment,” said David Strickland, a lawyer and former federal administrator who now heads a lobbying group formed by Uber, Google, Volvo, Ford, and Lyft. He added that the Obama administration’s “less-than-regulatory approach hopefully provides some foundation that the next team could take up.”
“he’s clearly looking to having a much lighter regulatory environment.”
Strickland acknowledged that the Obama administration’s effort to impose some structure and coherence to self-driving cars has been relatively hands-off already. The president and his appointees have said they are hoping to avoid a “patchwork” of regulations from state to state, but also don’t desire to stifle innovation through onerous regulations.
“This is voluntary guidance: you can choose to follow it or you can choose not to follow it,” Strickland said of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s recently released guidelines. “It does not have the force of law. But it does give a template in dealing with uncertainty for folks in this environment that are investing significant sums of money, frankly, to help bring to market technology that could have huge impacts for vehicle safety.”