The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT)'s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has posted a consolidated advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) in the U.S. Federal Register. NHTSA is seeking public comment on the near- and long-term challenges of testing and verifying compliance with existing crash avoidance (100-series) Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSSs) for Automated Driving System-Dedicated Vehicles (ADS-DVs) that lack traditional manual controls necessary for a human driver to maneuver the vehicle and other features intended to facilitate operation of a vehicle by a human driver, but that are otherwise traditional vehicles with typical seating configurations. This document seeks comments on the suitability of various approaches that could be used to address compliance verification challenges that exist for crash avoidance standards that either require a manual control; or specify the use of manual controls in a compliance test procedure.
NHTSA's long-term goal is to use what the agency learns from this ANPRM, as well as the agency's other research efforts, to develop a proposal to amend the crash avoidance FMVSSs in ways that address these and other compliance challenges with a continued focus on safety. This ANPRM builds on NHTSA's efforts to identify and address regulatory barriers to ADS technologies, including the request for comments (RFC) on this topic in January 2018. NHTSA intends to issue two additional documents to remove barriers in the crashworthiness FMVSSs (200-series standards) and address issues in the FMVSSs pertaining to telltales, indicators, and warnings in ADS-DVs.
All comments must be received by July 29, 2019 and must be identified by Docket Number NHTSA-2019-0036. Comments may be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at www.regulations.gov, by fax to 202-493-2251, or by hand-delivery, courier, or mail to the following address:
Docket Management Facility
U.S. Department of Transportation
Room W 12-140,
1200 New Jersey Avenue SE
Washington, DC 20590-0001.
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) strongly encourages members of the ANSI Federation, standards developing organizations (SDOs), industry representatives, consumer advocates, and other relevant stakeholders to submit comments in response to this request.
The full ANPRM is available online.