AUSTIN (KXAN) — It’s becoming more common again to see vehicles with no drivers inside making their way autonomously through Austin neighborhoods, and Texas lawmakers are looking at ways to potentially make their operations safer since they’re tasked with regulating this growing industry.
Ahead of next year’s regular legislative session, the Texas Senate Committee on Transportation held a hearing Wednesday, where the members discussed recommended changes for autonomous vehicles to follow in the state.
Ariel Wolf, general counsel for the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association, testified that Texas could require a “first responder interaction plan” so that operators lay out what to do in situations like the times when some Cruise vehicles inexplicably blocked traffic in Austin before the company suspended driverless operations.
Waymo, Uber launching driverless rideshare services in Austin next year
“The idea would be that that plan would need to be submitted to (the Department of Public Safety) in advance of any operation or testing, and if it were not to be submitted and wouldn’t contain the elements, we would potentially recommend having the authority to submit a cease-and-desist order,” Wolf told lawmakers Wednesday. “So that needs to be done in advance, and that’s bedrock best practice for the autonomous vehicle industry.”
Wolf said Arizona now has a law regarding these kinds of plans from autonomous vehicle operators. State Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, D-Austin, asked whether that’s a place Texas should look to monitor which policies to pursue next.
“Because many of our first responder communities, this is new territory to them. They’re not quire sure how to handle an AV (autonomous vehicle). Pulling over an AV, what do you do? AV in an accident, what do you do?” Eckhardt said from the dais. “So we could establish those protocols in advance.”
This idea already has support from the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation. David Dunmoyer, TPPF’s technology policy director, wrote in a report earlier this year that the state should consider enacting first responder interaction plans, among other possible changes.
“It’s a way to streamline the style of communication between companies and law enforcement, so both parties know what are the rules of the road,” Dunmoyer said. “As manual operators of vehicles, we know what to do when an officer pulls us over, and so those rules of the road should apply to self driving cars as well because some companies have a microphone in their car, so you can communicate with the the operator. Others don’t — maybe they have a QR code, so let’s make it consistent so that law enforcement is trained prudently on how to interact with these companies.”
However, Selena Xie, president of the Austin EMS Association, seemed skeptical about how helpful that information truly would be when seconds matter.
“When we’re responding to emergencies, we’re trying to get to a patient in under eight minutes,” Xie said. “It would probably take much longer than that just to be able to find the right phone number, to get through the automated system, to get to somebody and then to have them actually help us. So that absolutely would not help our response times.”
Another idea discussed Wednesday included rules to require autonomous vehicle companies report crash data to the state. The federal government already tracks that kind of information.
Whether any of these ideas will gain traction at the Texas Capitol remains unclear, but these debates will only help drive forward the debate when the session begins again on Jan. 14.
These discussions are also happening a week after Waymo, the self-driving vehicle operation run by Alphabet, announced it would partner with Uber so that people could start requesting rides in fully driverless vehicles in early 2025.
Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KXAN Austin.