Shapiro Wants Federal Regulators to ‘Defer’ Autonomous-Car Development to States

self-driving car technology “to truly gain speed,” carmakers “need to be able to test their cars on all kinds of roads in various conditions,” Shapiro said. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is drafting operational guidelines on self-driving cars (see 1608250049), Shapiro said. “In the absence of federal guidance, state regulatory policies run the gamut. ... Instead of squashing experiments in the states, federal regulators ought to defer, allowing controlled markets like those in California and Michigan to grow. What happens there now will make its way into fully autonomous cars for the rest of us later.” Shapiro emailed us Tuesday to emphasize that "my point" in the opinion piece "was that states need some leeway to experiment and compete in the early stages" of autonomous-car development, not that federal regulators should bow out of any involvement. In fact, Shapiro thinks "there is a huge federal role" to be played in autonomous cars, he said, and even called on President Barack Obama in a December op-ed piece to convene a government-industry advisory committee on driverless cars modeled after an effort in the 1980s during the Reagan administration that helped jump-start the transition to digital TV.