You’ve Got Mail: Democrats Pen Concerns on Landmark Autonomous Car Bill

Aerial view of overlapping highways

Political letters: an underappreciated variation on political memos. Five Democratic US Senators released a letter on March 14 that urged changes to the Senate autonomous vehicles bill.

The bill, which would fast-track the development and deployment of self-driving cars, raised concerns that “the bill indefinitely preempts state and local safety regulations even if federal safety standards are never developed,” according to the letter by Senators Feinstein, Blumenthal, Gillibrand, Udall, and Markey. The letter also addressed exemptions from current safety standards and obliquely referred to the Tesla crash in January, in which the vehicle was apparently operating in semi-autonomous mode. The bill needs Democratic support to avoid several days of time on the Senate floor - TBD if the pending legislation gets returned to sender.

To read the story from Reuters, click here.

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