By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the nation’s auto safety regulator will argue on Wednesday that the agency must actively oversee self-driving vehicle technology, a potential sign of a tougher approach than some critics expected.
Jonathan Morrison, chief counsel of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the first Trump administration, will testify to the U.S. Senate that autonomous vehicles offer potential benefits but also unique risks.
“NHTSA cannot sit back and wait for problems to arise with such developing technologies, but must demonstrate strong leadership,” Morrison said in written testimony seen by Reuters.
The comments suggested NHTSA will continue to closely scrutinize self-driving vehicles. Some critics of the technology had expressed alarm over NHTSA staff cuts this year under a cost-cutting campaign led by Elon Musk, who was a close adviser to Trump and is CEO of self-driving automaker Tesla.
The Musk-Trump alliance prompted some critics to speculate that NHTSA would go easy on self-driving vehicle developers. But the relationship began to unravel in late May over Trump’s spending plans, and the two are now locked in a feud.
NHTSA said last month it was seeking information from Tesla about social media videos of robotaxis and self-driving cars Tesla was testing in Austin, Texas. The videos were alleged to show one of the vehicles using the wrong lane and another speeding.
Since October, NHTSA has been investigating 2.4 million Tesla vehicles with full self-driving technology after four reported collisions, including a 2023 fatal crash.
“The technical and policy challenges surrounding
these new technologies must be addressed,” Morrison’s testimony said. “Failure to do so will result in products that the public
will not accept and the agency will not tolerate.”
Other companies in the self-driving sector also were subjects of NHTSA investigations including Alphabet’s Waymo, which last year faced reports its robotaxis may have broken traffic laws. Waymo in May recalled 1,200 self-driving vehicles, and the probe remains open.
Regulatory scrutiny increased after 2023 when a pedestrian was seriously injured by a GM Cruise self-driving car.
The first recorded death of a pedestrian related to self-driving technology was in 2018 in Tempe, Arizona.
(Reporting by David Shepardson, Editing by Franklin Paul and Cynthia Osterman)
