19. Department of Transportation · Notable
Have NHTSA update vehicle standards and issue performance-based AV rules
Printed page 625 19. Department of Transportation
“NHTSA should work to remove regulatory barriers by focusing on updating vehicle standards as well as publishing performance-based rules for the operations of automated vehicles (AVs).”
What has happened
- Attempted
NHTSA published interim guidance on commercial-deployment exemptions under 49 U.S.C. 30113 and 49 CFR part 555, and a companion notice announcing that it will replace the 2017 ADS 2.0 guidance chapter by chapter. The same notice records that NHTSA has "announced the commencement of work to establish ADS performance requirements" — that is, the performance-based rules this Quote asks for do not yet exist. NHTSA had also withdrawn the AV STEP proposal on 2026-06-26. The route it has taken instead is case-by-case: it granted Zoox a temporary FMVSS exemption on the same day.
- Attempted
NHTSA opened the first of four rulemakings to strip human-driver assumptions out of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards for ADS-equipped vehicles, proposing on one day to modernize FMVSS No. 102 (transmission shift position sequence) and FMVSS Nos. 103 and 104 (windshield defrosting and wiping). Two more followed — FMVSS No. 110 on 2026-04-01 and FMVSS No. 135 on 2026-06-26. All four are proposals; none had been finalized by 2026-09-01, so no vehicle standard has actually been updated.
- Attempted
The origin of everything below, now read first-hand rather than through a later Federal Register notice. Secretary Duffy unveiled NHTSA's Automated Vehicle Framework, built on three principles — "Prioritize the safety of ongoing AV operations on public roads", "Unleash innovation by removing unnecessary regulatory barriers" and "Enable commercial deployment of AVs" — and said that "[t]he first actions under this framework will help accelerate work toward modernizing Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) to blaze a path for the safe commercial deployments of AVs". *Accelerate work toward* is the whole of it: on the day of the announcement no vehicle standard had been updated and no performance-based operating rule had been published. The two named first actions are the streamlining of the Standing General Order (which belongs to #1716) and the expansion of the Automated Vehicle Exemption Program to domestically produced vehicles, neither of which is either limb of this Quote.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- attempted and not partial: the Quote names two means — updating vehicle standards and publishing performance-based rules for AV operations — and neither has been delivered. Four FMVSS modernization NPRMs are pending and the performance-requirement work has only been announced. Under §3b’s two-object test (#2125), where neither object is delivered the ordinary ladder governs.
- Corrected 2026-09-03. This note previously said the 2025-04-24 announcement “403s to
curlwith a browser User-Agent and to WebFetch alike”. It opens on thefull-headersrung ofscripts/fetch-page.mjs, was read in full, and is now the item’s correctly-dated first event rather than being stood in for by the 2026-07-31 Federal Register notice. The read-queue row is answered. The Chief Counsel’s open letter to AV developers on exemption eligibility is named in the announcement but not linked from it and was not opened; it remains an unread lead. - Checked 2026-09-03 against the FY2026–2030 DOT Strategic Plan: objective 3.2 lists “Moving forward an automated vehicle framework” as a strategy. Under §3b’s strategic-plan rule that names the framework, not the vehicle standards or the operating rules this Quote asks for, so it belongs here and does not move the rung.
- Same p. 625 block as #1715 (FMCSA) and #1716 (the Standing General Order). The trail map marked the page search from nothing; the way in was the Federal Register agency filter for NHTSA, not the Mandate’s own words.
- Action
- issue
- Object
- NHTSA vehicle standards and automated vehicle rules
- ID
- 1714