Ford, GM Petition NHTSA to Deploy Cars Without Steering Wheels on Public Roads

The US federal government is occasionally willing to bend the rules, provided certain steps are followed. While vehicles without driver controls are not currently allowed under the letter of the law, automakers are allowed to submit petitions for exemptions, provided they have a good enough reason, and both Ford and GM think they do.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has published petitions from both Ford and General Motors that seek to put self-driving development vehicles without traditional driver controls on public roads. Both petitions have been published to the Federal Register, where the public will have 30 days to leave any comments.

Let’s take a look at Ford’s petition first. The automaker asked NHTSA to be given exemptions from seven different federal vehicle safety standards, which would allow them to deploy up to 2,500 self-driving vehicles lacking driver controls per year. According to the petition, these vehicles would be used to help develop the automaker’s SAE Level 4 automation tech, which means the vehicle would be able to operate without driver monitoring in certain situations.

Human control is still possible, through what Ford describes as “non-traditional driving controls,” although it did not supply further details, only mentioning that the vehicles would be hybrids.

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GM’s petition is a little more specific in terms of the vehicle. This petition seeks to grant public-road-use clearance for the Cruise Origin, a boxy electric people-mover capable of SAE Level 4 automation that was first unveiled in 2020. GM asked for confidential treatment for some parts of its petition, so there’s a little less information to dig through here.

In both cases, the vehicles will remain company-owned and neither manufacturer seeks to make these vehicles available for sale to the public.

Both petitions also make the case that further developing automated vehicles will be beneficial to the public interest for a variety of reasons, whether it’s reducing congestion or improving individual mobility.

“This petition is an important step toward helping create a regulatory path that allows autonomous technologies to mature over time, eliminating controls and displays that are only useful to human drivers,” wrote a Ford spokesperson in an emailed statement. “We look forward to continuing to work with NHTSA on our shared goal to shape the future of smart mobility.” A GM spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.

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