As robotaxis come for a city near you, tech and car companies are looking for guidance on how to navigate a thicket of federal and state regulations on automated vehicle driving. There's only one problem: there's almost nobody left to offer that guidance. And that's because one very particular tech and car CEO fired them all, apparently thinking this would cut all the red tape in his way. Instead, he's gotten tangled in it, along with everyone else.
As Politico details in a report, the Office of Automation Safety was set up by the Biden administration in order to regulate how autonomous vehicles would integrate onto public roads. Partly, that means setting and enforcing safety standards. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has run afoul of government oversight before, doesn't seem to have liked that idea, which is likely why his DOGE initiative slashed staff at the OAS by nearly half. No one to stop Tesla now, right?
Well, turns out, that office was also meant to flash green lights, not just red ones. Because without someone setting federal standards for what AVs can and can't do, it becomes difficult for a company to actually put them on the road. In other words, DOGE cut the people who cut the red tape. Oops.
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Rules Of The Road, Circa Last Century
The current regulatory framework was created in the 20th century, when cars were introduced to the world. For the U.S., the general idea was that the federal government, through the National Highway Traffic Safety Adminstration, would determine the criteria for what a car needed to have to drive on public roads. This is codified as the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. By contrast, state governments would individually determine who should actually get behind the wheel, issuing driver's licenses and setting driving laws.
So what happens when the car is the driver? That's never actually been spelled out before. To really get the industry moving forward, it needs the government to help it out with the legal snarls. That was part of the Office of Automation Safety's job. It could also offer exemptions for the federal safety standards, literally making things easier for thos companies.
Instead, after DOGE's cuts, it appears that most of the rest of the office has left, leaving the place empty. That has slowed the pace of exemptions to a crawl, and left the AV industry in the lurch for any assistance with the legal quandaries. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy did loosen safety requirements for AVs back in April, but that doesn't seem to have been enough. So now, a Senate Appropriations Committee report "highly encourages the Department [of Transportation] to prioritize hiring" in the OAS.
Firing everyone, just to quietly admit you need to rehire them later? Surely not. Such things never happen. In any case, let's hope the government can fill up that office again, both for our safety and so that robotaxis can navigate the legal mazes a little better than they navigate the urban ones.
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