The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) proposed a new national framework that could make it easier for companies to deploy at scale autonomous vehicles without traditional manual driving controls. The AV industry has been anticipating NHTSA’s proposal since last year, when the agency first proposed the ADS-Equipped Vehicle Safety, Transparency and Evaluation Program, known as AV STEP. The program’s goal, among other things, was to allow NHTSA to greenlight the sale and commercialization of autonomous vehicles that are not compliant with federal safety standards due to a lack of manual controls. Today, autonomous vehicles that have all their manual parts are allowed to operate on public roads without oversight from NHTSA. But any AVs that can’t be taken over by a human driver have to get an exemption from the agency. Unless, of course, they’re Zoox. The Amazon-owned company has maintained that it doesn’t need an exemption from NHTSA because it has “self-certified” the safety of its vehicles — a claim that the agency is actively investigating. Read more on the proposed national framework at the link in the bio 👆 Article by Rebecca Bellan Image Credits: Zoox #TechCrunch #technews #robotaxi #selfdrivingcar #Zoox #Waymo #Tesla