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

19. Department of Transportation · Notable

Reverse the Standing General Order mandating automated vehicle data reporting

Partially done

625 19. Department of Transportation

“DOT has pivoted from a successful focus on the voluntary sharing of data to improve safety outcomes to adoption of a more compulsory and antagonistic approach to mandating data collection and publication through a Standing General Order related to automated vehicles. This needs to be reversed.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    NHTSA recorded that it is "developing a proposed rule to codify the SGO reporting requirements into NHTSA's regulations" — moving the compulsory reporting the Quote wants reversed from an enforcement order into the Code of Federal Regulations. It had already asked OMB, on 2026-03-04 and again on 2026-05-26, to extend the underlying information collection with modifications. Between the amendment and July 2026 the reports drove seven formal investigations and seven recalls.

  2. Partially done

    NHTSA issued the Third Amended Standing General Order 2021-01, dated 2025-04-24, which "takes effect on June 16, 2025, and, as of that date, supersedes NHTSA's April 5, 2023 Second Amended Standing General Order 2021-01". Read against the order it replaces, exactly three classes of crash stopped being reportable: (a) **Level 2 ADAS crashes whose only trigger is a tow-away** — the 2023 order made tow-away or air-bag deployment reportable for ADS and Level 2 ADAS alike, while Request 1.D.v now reads "Vehicle tow-away, **if the crash involved a subject vehicle equipped with an ADS**"; (b) **crashes touching a vulnerable road user in any way short of a strike** — the 2023 trigger covered a VRU "injured as a result of the crash, … struck by any vehicle …, … an occupant of any vehicle that is damaged …, or … alleged to have caused or contributed", and Request 1.D.iii now reads simply "Strike of a vulnerable road user"; and (c) **ADS crashes with property damage at or below $1,000** that do not fall in the single-vehicle or struck-an-object carve-out, where the 2023 monthly report caught every ADS crash with no damage threshold at all. The 2023 order's Request 4, a monthly "No New or Updated Incident Report" nil return, is gone; the fastest deadline moved from one calendar day with a day-ten update to five calendar days; and updates are now due only on materially new information. **The mandate itself was not reversed.** The order was reissued under the same docket and the same authority (49 U.S.C. § 30166(g)(1)(A)), it states that "[t]his action does not affect the enforceability of NHTSA's June 29, 2021 … or April 5, 2023 Second Amended Standing General Order", and the fatality, hospital-transport, air-bag, VRU-strike and ADS tow-away core remains reportable for both ADS and Level 2 ADAS. Part of what the Quote objects to was delivered and the compulsion was not: that is `partial`. Corrected 2026-09-03: this note previously described the removed classes as ones "that seldom led to agency follow-up" and dated its Evidence to a 2026 Federal Register notice because the order itself could not be read; both orders have now been read in full from NHTSA's own PDFs.

Research log

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

Research notes

  • Boundary call, settled 2026-09-03 on the documents themselves. partial stands. The not started alternative rested on not knowing what, if anything, had actually stopped being reportable; the Third Amended order and the Second Amended order it supersedes have now both been read in full and compared Request by Request, and three real classes of crash did drop out (they are enumerated in the first event). The order was not reversed — same docket, same statutory authority, prior versions expressly still enforceable, the severe-crash core intact for both ADS and Level 2 ADAS — so it is not done on any reading and not not started either. The spot-check row for this item can be cleared.
  • The second event repeats partial rather than dropping the Status, per playbook §4.
  • Corrected 2026-09-03: nhtsa.gov is not a wall. The Third Amended SGO PDF opens on the full-headers rung of scripts/fetch-page.mjs, as does the Second Amended order it supersedes (nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/2023-04/Second-Amended-SGO-2021-01_2023-04-05_2.pdf, read on the same day and the basis of the comparison in the first event) and NHTSA’s own FAQ at nhtsa.gov/laws-regulations/standing-general-order-crash-reporting. The comparison in the first event is derived from the operative Requests of the two orders, not from the FAQ’s summary; the FAQ then agrees with it, describing the change as adding “a property damage threshold for less severe crashes involving ADS”, eliminating duplicate reporting by multiple entities, and requiring monthly reports only where a reportable crash occurred. The read-queue rows are answered. The Second Amended order is a lead, not Evidence — it is the 2023 baseline and predates the window.
  • Same p. 625 block as #1714 and #1715.
Action
rescind
Object
Standing General Order on automated vehicle crash reporting
ID
1716