Jan 82026

Members of Congress Propose a New Bill to Regulate Autonomous Vehicles

Adam M. Raviv
, , ,

This week, U.S. Representatives Bob Latta and Debbie Dingell released the discussion draft of a new bill: the Safely Ensuring Lives Future Deployment and Research in Vehicle Evolution (SELF DRIVE) Act of 2026. This legislation, if enacted, would be the first federal statute dedicated to the safety of autonomous vehicles. It would have major implications for not only federal, but also state and local regulation. It would also raise some key legal questions and require federal regulators to promulgate a new federal motor vehicle safety standard very different from any of its predecessors.

The SELF DRIVE Act is one of 16 bills scheduled to be discussed at a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade on January 13.

New Statutory Language

The SELF DRIVE Act would add a new section focused on autonomous vehicles to the 60-year-old National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. The legislation defines an “automated driving system” subject to the law as encompassing SAE automated driving levels 3, 4, and 5—the first time that federal law would incorporate the automation levels published by SAE International. The SELF DRIVE Act also includes formal definitions of several key concepts, including the dynamic driving task, minimal risk condition, and operational design domain (ODD). Notably, the legislation also would allow the Department of Transportation to update the legislative definitions if SAE updates these terms in its own standard-setting.

Safety Case Requirement

Central to the SELF DRIVE Act is a requirement that manufacturers of vehicles equipped with automated driving systems (ADS) develop a safety case and make it available to regulators. A safety case is a structured argument that a particular system or technology is safe. Safety cases are a commonly used tool in the automotive industry to develop and validate the safety of autonomous vehicles and equipment.

The SELF DRIVE Act would authorize the Department of Transportation—specifically the National Highway Traffic Administration (NHTSA)—to promulgate regulations that prescribe “objective content requirements for a safety case” and “procedures for manufacturers to certify the completion of a safety case and provide the safety case to the Secretary upon request.”

Notably, the legislation would not require manufacturers to obtain regulatory pre-approval for their safety cases. Rather, ADS-equipped vehicles would be subject to the same self-certification requirements that apply to all motor vehicles that operate on public roads in the United States.

The SELF DRIVE Act would require NHTSA to publish—by September 30, 2027—a new federal motor vehicle safety standard (FMVSS) that requires manufacturers of ADS-equipped vehicles “to complete a safety case … for each ADS version produced by a manufacturer … and provide the safety case to the Secretary upon request.”

The safety case would, in turn, have to include certain elements, including a description of various hardware and software elements on the ADS, a description of the ODD, and “an explanation of how the ADS anticipates and responds to potential crashes.”

The safety case would also have to explain how the vehicle achieves various “competencies.” Those competencies include that the “ADS can perform the entire [dynamic driving task] within the ODD of the ADS and is able to recognize the boundaries of an ODD”; that the “ADS can detect and respond appropriately to any vulnerable road user likely to be present and in proximity to the ADS in the relevant ODD”; “the ability to safely achieve [a minimal risk condition] when necessary” for Level 4 and 5 vehicles; that the “ADS is capable of detecting and responding to any object or event, including emergency vehicles and personnel, and school buses likely to be present and in proximity to the ADS in the relevant ODD and relevant to the driving decisions of the ADS”; and “a written cybersecurity policy with respect to the practices of the manufacturer to detect and respond to cyber attacks, unauthorized intrusions, and false vehicle control commands.”

Preemption of State and Local Requirements

The SELF DRIVE Act contains crucial language that would prevent state and local governments from restricting ADS-equipped vehicles if the manufacturer has developed a safety case that complies with the Act’s requirements. Specifically, states and their subdivisions could not enact, enforce, or continue any law or regulation that “prohibits in whole or in part a manufacturer from manufacturing for sale, selling, offering for sale, introducing or delivering for introduction into interstate commerce, or importing into the United States, any automated driving system or ADS-equipped vehicle if the manufacturer develops a safety case.”

Testing Exemption and Commercial Use

The SELF DRIVE Act would expand an existing statutory provision that allows manufacturers to test vehicles that do not comply with all applicable FMVSS. The legislation would allow a manufacturer to introduce non-compliant ADS-equipped vehicles and equipment into interstate commerce, and authorize the Department of Transportation to allow the manufacturer “to undertake limited commercial operations, including the carrying of members of the public as passengers and transporting freight as part of the testing or evaluation.” The Department may set limits on this commercial use “to ensure that the testing or evaluation under this … does not constitute de facto deployment for non-compliant vehicles.”

Manual Control Requirement

The SELF DRIVE Act would require passenger-carrying level 4 and 5 vehicles to allow an occupant to have the means to “command that the ADS safely achieve [a minimal risk condition]” and to safely exit the vehicle. Simply put, self-driving vehicles would have to enable passengers to stop the vehicle and escape it.

Crash Data Repository

The SELF-DRIVE Act would require the Department of Transportation to establish a “National Automated Vehicle Safety Data Repository.” Manufacturers would report data regarding serious crashes in which an ADS was engaged. Manufacturers would also be required, for at least five years, to provide quarterly reports “on the total miles traveled with the ADS engaged.”

The Repository would replace NHTSA Standing General Order 2021-01, which for several years has required manufacturers to report crashes involving ADS-equipped vehicles. The Repository would be accessible by state and local transportation agencies, but would also prohibit those agencies from requiring crash reporting that is already encompassed by the Repository’s requirements.

Takeaways

  • The new legislation is the third version of the SELF DRIVE Act to be proposed. Earlier iterations were introduced in 2017 and 2021, without being enacted into law. Whether this legislation gets further than the previous two remains to be seen. In 2026, Congress will take up Surface Transportation Reauthorization, and the SELF DRIVE Act or some variation thereof could be folded into that larger legislation.
  • The legislation’s safety case requirement would mandate an FMVSS like no other.
    • As required by the Safety Act—and strictly enforced by courts—the FMVSS must “be stated in objective terms.” Accordingly, the FMVSS are typically performance standards and equipment requirements with specific and highly quantified requirements.
    • By contrast, the various competencies in the SELF DRIVE safety case requirement includes words like “sufficient,” “appropriately,” “likely,” “necessary,” “relevant,” and “unambiguously.” These are not objective terms and reasonable manufacturers and regulators may differ on what they mean.
    • The SELF DRIVE Act allows the Department to develop “objective content requirements for a safety case.” It does not mandate the development of objective performance requirements for autonomous vehicles. Rather, the legislation appears to simply authorize rules providing additional detail on what topics the safety case should address. Regulators will have to consider how to square the qualitative competency language in the SELF DRIVE Act with the Safety Act’s existing objectivity requirement for FMVSS. In addition, push could come to shove if a regulator determines a company’s safety case to be noncompliant—based on a disagreement with the manufacturer over whether the safety case adequately establishes the required competencies.
  • The preemption language in the Act would override much of the considerable regulation that state and local governments have applied to autonomous vehicles in recent years.
    • Some states have imposed testing mandates and permitting requirements for autonomous vehicles, some only allow testing and piloting rather than full deployment, and others prohibit a vehicle from operating without a driver behind the wheel. The various state and local regulations have been frequently derided as a “patchwork” and the SELF DRIVE Act would slice that patchwork to tatters.
    • Whether the SELF DRIVE Act would preempt particular state and local restrictions would require case-by-case determinations and close analysis of the relevant state and local requirements. In particular, the Act on its face only preempts state and local laws that restrict “manufacturing for sale, selling, offering for sale, introducing or delivering for introduction into interstate commerce, or importing into the United States.” This language leaves open the possibility that states and local governments could maintain regulations that apply to vehicles already in use, such as the authority to revoke an existing operating license.
  • The SELF DRIVE Act’s expansion of the testing exemption may provide a significant new pathway for manufacturers to introduce ADS-equipped vehicles that do not comply with all FMVSS.
    • Regulatory exemptions are an important tool for manufacturers of innovative vehicles that take advantage of the design possibilities when a human driver is not required. The Act would also create new opportunities for the limited commercial use of non-compliant vehicles, such as robotaxis or commercial trucks.
    • Notably, the Act would not change an important limit in the primary statutory provision that allows NHTSA to grant an exemption for full commercial deployment of non-complying vehicles. Currently, an exemption under that provision cannot cover more than 2,500 vehicles per year. However, a separate draft bill also slated for discussion at the January 13 hearing, proposed by committee Chairman Guthrie, would raise the statutory limit for these exemptions to 90,000 vehicles.

This post is as of the posting date stated above. Sidley Austin LLP assumes no duty to update this post or post about any subsequent developments having a bearing on this post.

Adam M. Raviv

Washington, D.C.

adam.raviv@sidley.com

You might also like
Walk Like a CSHO: Cal/OSHA Proposes Its Own “Walkaround Rule”

On February 13, 2026, Cal/OSHA published a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to clarify who can join its onsite inspections. To be codified as Title 8 § 331.8 if implemented, Cal/OSHA’s stated goal is to match federal OSHA’s 2024 updates to 29 C.F.R. § 1903.8 and expand upon California Labor Code section 6314, which already states that “a representative authorized by . . . employees” can accompany Cal/OSHA inspectors during their “tour” of the worksite. In its new proposal, Cal/OSHA explicitly expands the definition of “representative(s) authorized by employees” to include an “employee of the employer, a third party, or the collective bargaining representative.”

The State of Play in California for Autonomous Vehicles

More autonomous vehicles are operating in California than anywhere else in America. And yet California has some of the most extensive autonomous regulations in the country. While some other states have taken a relatively laissez-faire approach to autonomous vehicles, California’s rules are lengthy and elaborate. Even as various operators have been able to work through the requirements to operate in the state, they have been a major lift. And autonomous heavy trucking has been entirely prohibited.

Department of Transportation Proposes Dramatic Rollback of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards

On December 3, in connection with a highly publicized announcement in the Oval Office and a statement from the White House, the Department of Transportation proposed a rulemaking that would reset Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for passenger cars and light trucks sold in the United States for model years 2022-2031.  Along with Congress’s recent elimination of civil penalties for CAFE noncompliance, the proposal would roll back more stringent fuel economy targets set in previous Administrations—including the first Trump Administration.  The proposed changes have significant implications for, among other things, the electric vehicle market.