Partner Christopher Grigorian, special counsel R. Nicholas Englund and associate Jack Haake coauthored a WardsAuto article, “Congress Wades Into Self-Driving Industry,” about pending legislation known as the Safely Ensuring Lives Future Deployment and Research in Vehicle Evolution (SELF DRIVE) Act, the first major federal effort to regulate autonomous vehicles beyond the voluntary guidelines issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The proposed legislation passed the U.S. House of Representatives in September; the Senate is now in the process of drafting its own version of the bill. Entities developing advanced-vehicle technologies are keenly interested in what this legislation, if passed, could mean for the patchwork of state laws and federal guidelines that currently govern the industry, the authors write.
