"The state needs to be in a position to step in and have a set of rules," said state Sen. Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee. "But we are not fixing to slip something through here. We are going to have a methodology."
Nichols, with support from other senators, said he expects legislation in the upcoming session will require companies such as Waymo, Cruise and Aurora to inform the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles when they pull drivers from vehicles and allow the vehicles to make solo trips. The DMV would then handle permitting and registration of the vehicles and some oversight of reported problems with the systems.
The new regulations, which would require approval from the legislature and Gov. Greg Abbott, would apply only to fleets of driverless cars and trucks, such as those used to ferry trailers of goods or small robotaxis carrying people.
The rules and registration would apply to privately owned autonomous vehicles. That exclusion is important to the industry, which is nearing — albeit slowly — sales of private self-driving cars and small trucks, said Nick Steingart, director of state affairs for the Alliance of Automotive Innovation.
Nichols and other lawmakers began talks over the summer with companies involved in autonomous vehicle development. The aim, he said, was to not rewrite or change trucking and paid ride rules, but integrate driverless vehicles into those rules. Federal officials, meanwhile, govern the technology and the safety requirements related to the industry.
Nichols said the state must have a system that responds to issues related to the driverless vehicles and maintain that the companies are using Texas' roads safely without stifling innovation.
"The industry is already working with us, we do not want to disrupt that," Nichols said.
Texas lawmakers in 2017 approved rules for autonomous vehicles, largely to get ahead of cities in the state setting their own rules. Following the debate over ride-hailing companies such as Uber and Lyft — wherein the state superseded city and county rules that attempted to regulate the companies similar to cab companies, which the companies fought — state leaders opted to get ahead with driverless cars. Rather than leave the changing technology and its regulations to cities, state lawmakers stepped in.
The rules, which led to investment in autonomous vehicle research in the state, however, left gaps in terms of regulations. When Cruise, an autonomous vehicle company owned by General Motors, debuted in Austin and Houston, the cars seized up on local streets, stopped behind one another and caused gridlock.
Federal laws require autonomous vehicle manufacturers to report collisions, but not other incidents, and state law also currently has no requirements. Nichols said what he expects lawmakers to discuss is establishing a system where autonomous vehicles are registered to TxDMV, then procedures can be established so that should a company continually have issues, the state can restrict their use of the roads without a driver in place.
"I don't want to get into the levels (of autonomy)," Nichols said, noting that is up to federal officials. "You either have a driver or you don't have a driver. If you want to operate without a driver, we want to know about it."
Fewer problems have been reported in the trucking industry side of autonomy, such as Waymo and Aurora. Trucking is transitioning faster to driverless vehicles with Interstate 45 and Interstate 10 both major testbeds for the technology, in part because California has limited testing of autonomous vehicles to those below 10,000 pounds in gross weight.
"The autonomous trucking industry has left California and come here," said Ariel Wolf, general counsel for the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association.
Keeping the innovation centered in Texas, but keeping track of it and its successes and failures, is the balance lawmakers are trying to strike.
"If you stayed out of the newspapers we would not be here today," said state Sen. Kelly Hancock, R-North Richland Hills, referring to the problems with companies that used driverless cars as shuttles and caused gridlock and complaints in Houston and Austin.
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