Amid skyrocketing road deaths in the United States, members of Congress emphasized at a hearing Tuesday the role autonomous vehicles (AVs) can play in improving safety but called for other technology to be implemented in the short term.

Lawmakers remain determined to encourage faster AV development and deployment and to legislate on the nascent technology…

Several of those present at the hearing warned that if the U.S. does not lead the way on AV development and deployment, it risks falling behind China.

“China’s ability to catch up with our advances has been aided in part by their relatively lax regulatory environment,” said Raj Rajkumar, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. “While we should not aim to mirror their regulatory model, we must recognize what is at stake in the overall race and seek to out-innovate them in the core technologies that will ultimately enable the safe deployment of AV technology.”
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