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Requiring driverless vehicles to keep human brake controls impedes innovation, the NHTSA says

If a self-driving car is going to stop, it may need to stop itself. US vehicle safety regulators are proposing to let robotaxi designers get rid of brake pedals, calling regulatory requirements for manually operated methods of stopping driverless vehicles a barrier to innovation. 

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) published a notice of proposed rulemaking on Friday to modify federal brake safety standards for light vehicles by eliminating the requirement for vehicles equipped with automated driving systems (ADS) and no manual controls to have foot-operated service brakes or manually operated parking brakes.

The NHTSA argues the controls themselves could pose a safety risk by allowing passengers to intentionally or unintentionally override an ADS. Existing braking performance requirements would remain in place, the agency said, even as brake pedals and handbrakes are on the chopping block.

“Regardless of the manner of brake control application, the brake systems must be capable of safely stopping the vehicle, as already required by the standard,” the agency said in its proposal. “This rulemaking would remove unnecessary regulatory burdens and costs with no negative impact to vehicle safety.”

The NHTSA would keep existing stopping-distance requirements for robotaxis, thankfully, but said standardized methods for testing driverless vehicles may need further development. Vehicles equipped with ADS that still have steering wheels and other manual controls, as well as cars equipped with driver-assistance systems such as Tesla Autopilot, Ford BlueCruise, and similar technology, will still need to have brake pedals, naturally.

A number of automakers and driverless taxi operators (Tesla, Waymo, Amazon, etc.) have been developing vehicles that lack manual controls, but current FMVSS still require them to have a brake pedal. That’s simply not safe, says the NHTSA. 

“The inclusion of a manually operated driving control that directly overrides ADS operation could pose a safety risk through intentional or unintentional misuse by a vehicle passenger,” the proposal argues. All people in a driverless taxi, it continues, are passengers who “should also not be expected to perform driver functions such as engaging the parking brake.”

In other words, despite the NHTSA's admission in the proposal that ADS tech "is still maturing and many of the potential benefits are yet to be realized," the agency is prepared to remove mandatory brake pedals and handbrakes from ADS-only vehicles, even as robotaxis and driver-assistance systems continue to generate safety headaches, from Waymo vehicles entering flooded roads and running over dogs to fatal crashes involving Tesla's Autopilot, without requiring a standardized method for passengers to tell the vehicle to stop.

It doesn't want to completely eliminate manual overrides, mind you, but the agency isn't going to force automakers to conform to any one method of giving passengers the ability to stop their driverless car.

“It is NHTSA’s expectation that if these controls are removed, passengers will still be provided with a means to direct an ADS-operated vehicle to come to a stop, though how a passenger would indicate they wanted the ADS-operated vehicle to stop would likely vary by manufacturer,” the NHTSA said. 

The NHTSA has frequently butted heads with automakers deploying controversial driver-assistance technology, like Tesla, but the agency was gutted during Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s time heading up the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, with the cuts falling particularly hard on staff responsible for regulating self-driving vehicles. 

Comments on the proposal are being accepted through July 27, but the docket number for the proposal (NHTSA-2026-0728) does not yet appear on the web portal for registering support or dissent. ®