Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

19. Department of Transportation · Notable

Have FMCSA align its regulations with DOT's AV 3.0 guidance

Attempted

625 19. Department of Transportation

“FMCSA should work to clarify the regulations to align with DOT’s AV 3.0 guidance, which would allow the drivers to be safely removed from the operations of a commercial motor vehicle.”

What has happened

  1. Attempted

    FMCSA has formally stated its intent to write the rule the Quote asks for, and has not written it. RIN 2126-AC17, *Motor Carrier Operation of Automated Driving Systems (ADS)-Equipped Commercial Motor Vehicles*, stands in the 2026 Unified Agenda at Proposed Rule Stage with an NPRM projected for 08/00/2026; its abstract is the ask almost word for word — FMCSA "proposes to amend certain Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations (FMCSRs) to ensure the safe introduction of automated driving systems (ADS)-equipped commercial motor vehicles (CMVs)", changing the CMV operations, inspection, repair and maintenance rules to "recognize the difference between human operators and ADS" across 49 CFR 382, 383, 390, 392, 393 and 396. `RIN Status: Previously published in the Unified Agenda`: the rulemaking was opened in 2018 and this administration's agenda republished it with a stage and a date, which is what §3b levels. Nothing has been published: the projected month passed with no NPRM in the Federal Register (FMCSA published 40 documents from 2026-06-01 to 2026-09-05, one of them a proposed rule and that one on English language proficiency), and the last entry on the RIN's own timetable is still the second ANPRM of 2023-02-01, before the window. FMCSA's own newsroom page for the rulemaking carries the 2019 ANPRM text and nothing later. `attempted` is the ceiling here — only a published NPRM climbs further. Corrected 2026-09-05: this stood at `not-started` pending the agenda clause, which §3b has since settled.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • An exemption for one carrier is not the ask. The Quote asks FMCSA to “clarify the regulations to align with DOT’s AV 3.0 guidance”; §3b’s “progress is measured on this ask” keeps a case-by-case exemption off the ladder. The Aurora exemption is still undecided: a Federal Register full-text search for “Aurora Operations” from 2025-01-20 to 2026-09-05 returns the 2026-04-15 request for comment and no grant or denial.
  • PHMSA opened an adjacent rulemaking on 2025-12-04, “Hazardous Materials: Modernizing Regulations To Facilitate Transportation of Hazardous Materials Using Highly Automated Transportation Systems” (2025-21970). It is DOT aligning a different body of regulation with automation, not FMCSA aligning the FMCSRs, so it is a lead here.
  • fmcsa.dot.gov was never a wall. The read queue recorded it as a hard 403; the bare hostname does not resolve, and www.fmcsa.dot.gov answers 200 to the full browser header set. Its own program page for this rulemaking — https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/newsroom/safe-integration-automated-driving-systems-equipped-commercial-motor-vehicles — was read in full on 2026-09-05 and reproduces the 2019 ANPRM (Docket FMCSA-2018-0037, 84 FR 24449) with no later document on it. The agency’s sitemap (sitemap.xml?page=1…5, 10,813 URLs) carries no AV 3.0 alignment page and no ADS exemption decision.
Action
issue
Object
FMCSA commercial motor vehicle regulations / AV 3.0 guidance
ID
1715