Tesla and Waymo execs testify before Senate panel on the future of self-driving cars — 2/4/26

Good morning. The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation will come to order. America is at a crossroads in transportation policy. Autonomous vehicles, or AVs for short, are no longer theoretical. Like it or not, they are here and they will be central to the future of roadways. AVs are now providing mobility to the disabled, improving auto safety, and advancing technologies that have the potential to save millions of wasted hours in traffic, and even more importantly, to save tens of thousands of American lives. Yet, Congress has failed to establish a clear federal framework to govern AV deployment. That inaction is no longer neutral. It is unsafe. Without federal oversight, we risk a fragmented patchwork of state laws that could undermine safety, innovation, and American competitiveness. As we consider a surface transportation reauthorization bill, it is imperative that Congress act now to create a national standard for AVs. Even as some states seemingly wish to put up metaphorical roadblocks to AVs, other states are smartly getting into the fast lane. My home state of Texas understands that clear rules enable growth, investment, and safety. In Texas, AVs are moving freight on some highways and operating as taxis in cities like Austin. But AVs can't just stop at Texas's border. We should be clear about the resistance to federal action. Some insurance interests and advocacy groups argue against national standards, often under the banner of safety while opposing reforms that would modernize our system. The vast majority of automobile accidents and crashes are from human error. But lower accident rates challenge business models built on high premiums driven by preventable collisions. The reality is this. The overwhelming causes of roadway fatalities today are drunk driving and distracted driving. Autonomous technologies never drive drunk. Autonomous technologies, they don't text while driving. They don't change the radio station. They don't drop their sunglasses and look for them while driving down the freeway. Expanding AV deployment offers real, measurable opportunities to reduce these deadly behaviors and to improve safety on our highways. If we want to save lives and avoid tragedy for almost 40,000 families each year, we don't need lawmakers saddling automakers with expensive junk mandates that make little to no real difference. Instead, we should follow the data, follow the evidence, which increasingly shows advanced AVs reduce crashes and prevent serious injuries. We need a consistent federal framework to ensure uniform safety standards, liability clarity, and consumer confidence. Uncertainty benefits no one, not drivers, not manufacturers, and not state and local officials responsible for public safety. Some, but not all, insurers are responding to the data. Companies like Lemonade have lower premiums for vehicles using full self-driving mode, reflecting growing confidence and growing evidence that these systems reduce risk. The numbers confirm what many already see. Technology designed to reduce human error makes roads safer. Let's also acknowledge that the technological progress from AVs won't endanger jobs, that will ultimately create them. AVs require American engineers, software developers, safety technicians, mechanics, manufacturing workers, and infrastructure specialists. AV deployment can support new high-skilled jobs built in the United States by American workers. Moreover, AVs can make people more productive and traffic more bearable. If Congress fails to act, we're not going to stop innovation, we'll simply push it elsewhere. China is moving aggressively to deploy autonomous transportation at scale. The technologies at stake were developed in the United States. They can be built by American workers and they should be governed by American safety standards. A patchwork approach puts that leadership at risk. Finally, let me be clear about one other thing. The American consumer will decide what they choose to drive. No one is and no one should be mandating AVs. This isn't like Biden's de facto mandate killing the gas powered car. But government inaction should not deny consumers access to be able to choose safer options. A federal framework for autonomous vehicles is not about picking winners. It's about setting clear rules, improving safety, creating American jobs, and ensuring that states like Texas can continue to lead. Surface reauthorization is the moment for Congress to act. I'll now turn to Ranking Member Cantwell for her remarks.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think, you know, I certainly want to get the surface transportation bill done. And I think I've mentioned it as my number one priority since you're taking over the committee. So I hope we will get to that. I don't know whether this kind of legislation is the appropriate place for that. But I do know that nearly 40,000 people die on the roads each year. And thankfully we have seen how innovation in vehicle technology can make human drivers safer on the roads. For instance, automatic emergency braking technology has been shown to reduce injuries from rear collisions by 60%. These technologies are saving lives today. Fully autonomous vehicles offer the potential to reduce crashes on roads, but we have seen the risk of letting companies beta test on our roads with no guardrails. In 2024, a report from NHTSA linked Tesla's autopilot to hundreds of crashes, including at least 13 fatal crashes and many more injuries. Safety advocates have linked 65 fatalities to Tesla's automated technologies. These tragedies have occurred in my state. In April 2024, Jeffrey Nissen from Stanwood, Washington was killed when Tesla's autopilot system failed to recognize his stopped motorcycle. Tesla was allowed to market their technology, which they knew needed human supervision as autopilot because there were no federal guardrails. In fact, it was the state of California, not the federal government, that forced Tesla to change its marketing or lose the ability to sell in that state. So, I do believe that federal agencies have a role. But what's happened so far is the Trump administration has tried to gut NHTSA. The federal agency is responsible for ensuring the safety of vehicles. He basically in the efforts of DOGE lost 25% of their employees. I would say at this point in time it's trying to figure out what are the latest and greatest technologies and the people that understand them and can do appropriate oversight. Not basically gut the agency. At one point last year the office of automation just had four people. Four people. Four people. I don't even know if they knew about automation but only four people. Fewer resources mean less enforcement. NHTSA launched 41% fewer recall investigations last year than in 2024. NHTSA recalls protect consumers. For instance, over 67 million Takata airbag inflators have been recalled in the US after NHTSA confirmed that 28 people were killed when defective airbags exploded. Chrysler recalled 2.7 million vehicles after 51 people died in fires from gas tank ruptures and rear-end collisions. And I have a suspicion right now that a lot of repair dealers are installing faulty airbags from Chinese manufacturers that are failing to protect consumers. And where is NHTSA in protecting and finding out what is happening with these faulty airbags? Are we going to just continue to let people die in the United States? Without strong federal oversight, it is no wonder states are seeking to fill the void. You will hear today from witnesses that believe that the best way for the federal government to keep people safe is through a safety case for autonomous vehicles. Companies may try to reassure us that the safety case is a living breathing document, but I have my own experience having seen this played out in the aviation sector. And all I can tell you is strong oversight is needed. Why? Because the best engineers working on the best safety is going to deliver the best product and the best economies for us in addition to the best safety. So we cannot just rely on a checklist. I do agree, Mr. Chairman, we need a new approach. I'm happy to work with you on that approach. I have, you know, industry proposals seek to force autonomous vehicles into the existing framework of the Motor Vehicle Safety Act. This is the 60th anniversary of that law. The federal motor vehicle safety standard has prevented over 18 million crashes. However, the federal motor safety standards were designed to regulate bumpers and car doors, seat belts, and a variety of things that they're not on top of today. The law was passed 20 years before the first Windows computer was ever sold. So, it's time for us to get a NHTSA that understands technology and knows what to do with it. This revolutionary technology needs a new approach to safety that provides for flexible guardrails for beta testing and a clear path to safe commercial deployment. It needs to have an educated, as I just mentioned, strong safety oversight from officials and the resources to make it the gold standard just like we need in aviation. I did find interesting the House debate on this similar hearing in which I think California Teamsters basically came out and called for a Waymo ban in which a lot of anxiety existed really, Mr. Chairman, underneath was the fact that a law most people were concerned about somehow going to allow very large trucks to exist on our highways in automated vehicles. That seems to be the real crux of the issue. So just like everything else, the devil is in the details. The devil is in the details of how we get here. I noticed that after that hearing that again, Teamsters, safety advocates, even insurers found fault with a preemptive strategy that was unclear. I think we're going to hear from Professor Smith about that. But I think the last point of your statement is that, well, I like two lines in your statement. Quote, and people dying today not because we are careful about automated driving but rather because we are careless about the safety generally. And the notion that, further quoting you, quote, I have read many versions of potential preemptive language in every case the preemptive effect and even the preemptive intent of that language has been unclear to me. Okay, so we're dealing with this in AI and I do think we have to talk about the overlay of AI and AV and how that's going to work. And if we're going to have a preemptive strategy, then it has to be a real law and it has to have real teeth. And we have to understand exactly what we're doing. But please understand, many Americans, including Teamsters, are very anxious about how this plays out for them, how this plays out for very large trucks, and how we move forward on advancing both the safety regime that we need here and to continue to be leaders. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. I'd now like to introduce our witnesses for today. Our first witness is Lars Moravy, the vice president of vehicle engineering at Tesla. Mr. Moravy oversees the design, testing, and engineering at Tesla and brings more than a decade of hands-on experience, or more precisely, hands-off experience with automotive technology and vehicle safety. I will also note that I understand it's Mr. Moravy's birthday, so happy birthday. And to celebrate, we decided to hold a hearing. Our second witness is Mauricio Pena, the chief safety officer for Waymo. In this role, he leads Waymo's comprehensive safety efforts and brings decades of experience designing, testing, and deploying complex safety-critical systems across the aerospace and autonomous vehicle sectors. Our third witness is Jeff Farah, the chief executive officer of the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association. He represents companies across the autonomous vehicle sector, including technology, trucking, ride sharing, and automotive. Our final witness is Bryant Walker Smith. He is an associate professor of law in the Joseph F. Rice School of Law at the University of South Carolina, where he researches emerging transportation technologies and teaches product liability, torts, and transportation law. Mr. Moravy, we'll start with you. You're recognized for your opening statement.

Thank you. Dr. Pena, you're now recognized.

Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Cantwell, and members of the committee, it's an honor to be here today. My name is Mauricio Pena, and I serve as the chief safety officer at Waymo, America's leading autonomous driving technology company. Waymo is the first and only company in the United States to provide fully autonomous trips to the public at scale. That means that no human is behind the wheel. When you ride with Waymo, you can enjoy a safe and reliable ride in a space of your own. Thank you for the opportunity to discuss why autonomous vehicles are not just a technological marvel, but a moral and strategic imperative for the United States. Tragically, 40,000 people die due to largely preventable traffic crashes on roads across our country every year with hundreds of thousands more injured, often in life-altering ways. Globally, more than 1 million lives are lost to traffic collisions annually. That's the equivalent of 20 commercial airliners falling from the sky every single day. These aren't just statistics. They are parents, children, friends, and neighbors. At Waymo, we believe it doesn't have to be this way. 17 years ago, we started as a moonshot born out of a simple but radical idea that we could use technology to eliminate serious injury and death on our roads and make autonomous transportation accessible to people who are unable to drive themselves. Our mission is to be the world's most trusted driver. And achieving that mission starts with safety. Today, we have driven nearly 200 million fully autonomous miles on public roads and served over 20 million trips to riders. The data shows that our technology, the Waymo driver, is making roads safer where we operate. Data from our first 127 million fully autonomous miles indicates our driver is 10 times less likely to be involved in a serious injury or worse crash compared to human drivers where we operate, and 12 times less likely to be involved in an injury-causing crash involving a pedestrian. We have developed the most rigorous peer-reviewed analysis to conduct apples-to-apples comparisons of human and automated driving data. We have a relentless safety-first culture that starts at the top and flows through rigorous governance processes. Every software update must be approved by our safety board before it ever reaches the road. For us, safety is not a competing priority. It is the foundation for every decision that we make at Waymo. Today, because of American ingenuity, determination, and investment, AVs are a reality for millions of people. Right now, we operate a fully autonomous commercial ride-hailing service for the public in Phoenix, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Austin, Atlanta, and Miami, providing more than 400,000 rides every week. Americans trust us to get them to their destination safely. And I'm inspired by the positive impact that we're making on their lives. Our riders are taking Waymo rides after their weddings to gain quality time with their families and even to the hospital to deliver their baby or back home with their newborn. We are there for our riders' most important moments as well as their daily needs. Waymo is an American success story, but US leadership is not guaranteed. We are locked in a race with Chinese companies for the future of autonomous vehicles. If they win this race, Chinese companies, not the US, will set the technical standards for the rest of the world. To win, the US needs a predictable, durable national regulatory framework that sets a high safety standard based on a safety case. Without it, we face a fragmented landscape of state regulations that foster uncertainty, slow investment, and create unequal access to the technology. To truly deliver on the promise of fully autonomous vehicles, we need federal leadership and we need it in this Congress. Chairman Cruz and members of the committee, we share your goal of ensuring a national AV framework is included in the surface transportation reauthorization bill. American leadership in autonomous driving technology must be defended. We look forward to working with you to ensure that American safety and American innovation are the gold standard for autonomous driving around the world. Let's not see the future, let's lead it. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

Thank you. Mr. Farah, you're recognized.

Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Cantwell, members of the committee. My name is Jeff Farah and I have the privilege of serving as the CEO of the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association, the unified voice of the autonomous vehicle industry that is committed to American excellence in AVs. I am pleased to testify again this morning. Now is a time of great excitement and promise for the American autonomous vehicle industry. AVs are no longer a futuristic dream of a safer world. Autonomous vehicles are here. They are carrying your constituents to medical appointments, enhancing supply chains for farmers and manufacturers, and creating high-quality new jobs in a mission-driven industry. Autonomous vehicles are not just another application of AI. They are the exemplar of what AI becomes when it moves from the digital to the physical world. What federal policymakers decide to do or not do on AVs will send a clear message about America's commitment to AI leadership. I will use my opening comments this morning to describe two futures for members of this committee. We'll call them choice A and choice B. Choice A means seizing the moment for American leadership on autonomous vehicles. Under choice A, the future looks like this. Safer roads as the US drastically reduces the nearly 40,000 people who die on our streets each year. Enough to fill National Stadium at a sold-out game. More accessible vehicles that finally give new mobility options to the millions of Americans who are left behind by our current transportation system, which holds back the elderly, wheelchair users, the visually impaired, is too expensive and often does not provide the routes to get people where they need to go. New American jobs that simply did not exist until they were created by the autonomous vehicle industry. Jobs like AV fleet deployment specialists, technicians, fleet managers, and manufacturing workers. These jobs will power the future of the American economy. Choice A can be ours if we want it. It does not require a dime of taxpayer funds. Only Congress putting in place federal rules of the road that allow American innovators to thrive. We need action from Congress in these areas. First, raise the bar on safety for all autonomous vehicles by requiring the Department of Transportation to move forward on a series of rulemakings, including requiring that AV manufacturers develop a safety case, that is evidence and documentation demonstrating why their vehicle is safe to be on the roads. The Department of Transportation should also require that AV companies abide by a series of driving competencies so the public understands that the vehicles are safe. Second, put AV data reporting on solid legal footing by enshrining in statute a national AV safety data repository that has NHTSA collecting data and sharing vital information with state regulatory partners. Third, modernize federal standards related to vehicle controls that are intended for human drivers, thereby allowing innovators to develop next-generation vehicles that take meaningful steps forward on accessibility. A federal framework should complement the 26 state AV deployment laws already in place, not replace them. Regulating autonomous vehicles is a shared responsibility between the federal and state governments. But we need the federal government to step up. Under choice A, we set the global standards. We build the technology here. We create high-quality American jobs rooted in US communities. With choice A, America doesn't just adopt autonomous vehicles. America defines them. Then there is choice B under which we reject this opportunity and fail to put in place a federal policy framework. Choice B has the following consequences. China becomes the global leader on autonomous vehicles. At this moment, the People's Republic of China is devoting massive resources to the development of its national champions. It is not waiting to find out what American policymakers want to do. The state-run Beijing Review put it succinctly. Quote, 'Chinese developed autonomous driving technologies have made inroads into a growing number of global markets, citing activity in France, Spain, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, with one Chinese industry member calling the development of AVs quote, a hallmark of made in China innovation.' Finally, under choice B, we accept the status quo. Preventable deaths due to human error, transportation options that leave millions in the rearview mirror, faltering supply chains that let small businesses down, and states leading on AV policy with little guidance from their federal counterparts. Members of the committee, I implore you to choose choice A. This committee can on a bipartisan basis advance American leadership, increase safety standards, and create new high-paying and fulfilling jobs. And with the surface transportation reauthorization bill before this committee, you have the perfect vehicle to lead. Thank you again for the opportunity to testify this morning.

Thank you. Professor Smith, your five minutes.

Thank you for your invitation. I'll offer seven points. First, American driving is dangerous. Automated driving could help if we're careful about it. But people are dying today not because we're careful about automated driving, but rather because we're careless about road safety generally. Other countries do care. Driving in the US is twice as deadly as in Canada and Australia. As a South Carolinian, I'm 10 times more likely to die in a crash than my friends in the UK. 10 times. These countries aren't hiding some vast secret fleet of AVs. I can't yet hail a robotaxi in London, but I can cross the street. Second, arrogance is careless. AVs have tremendous potential, but believing they will be a panacea virtually guarantees they won't because that confidence blinds us to risks. Many engineers working on AVs show humility. They talk with me about what's hard, what went wrong, and what's uncertain. They want to learn from local officials. I wish AV companies would show more of this humility in their PR. Third, the best proxy for the safety of AVs is the trustworthiness of AV companies. There are no self-driving or driverless cars. The companies that develop and deploy AVs are the drivers. This means that an AV is only as safe as the companies responsible for it. We can and should proactively assess their trustworthiness. AVs won't be perfect, but a company can still do right after its technology fails. It can explain what went wrong, how it's addressing the actual harm, how it's reducing future risks, and critically what it's learned more broadly. We need to see more of this. Doing right does not mean forcing victims into arbitrations, and it does not mean buying their silence and thereby misleading the public. These are betrayals of trust. Fourth, safety is a marriage, not a wedding. Safety is a lifelong commitment that continues as long as an AV is on the road. It's not just a one-time test or certification or checklist. A credible safety case must be a living document that is clearly supported, robustly interrogated, and routinely updated. Vehicles placed on our roads stay there for decades, and therefore need oversight for decades. NHTSA provides some of this oversight and AVs will dramatically expand the scope of it. Yet both NHTSA and FMCSA are tiny, under-resourced agencies with huge mandates. Fifth, AVs are an especially visible part of a much broader discussion of AI. As a society, we're likely to place many of our hopes and fears about AI generally on AVs specifically. The Transforming Transportation Advisory Committee which I vice-chaired addressed many of these issues including employment, accessibility, sustainability in the face of climate change, privacy vis-a-vis both companies and governments, and fundamental questions of power. For each we need clear policy goals and an iterative approach to achieving them. Sixth, local government has essential expertise. Few appreciate how much local governments are subsidizing automated driving. First responders, for example, solve all kinds of problems today, from waking up people in robotaxis to literally moving AVs that are stuck. These local officials deserve our respect. They want the people who remotely assist AVs to be in the US. They need to know AVs will help rather than hurt their response to disasters. They want to be able to ticket AV companies for moving violations just as they would any other driver. They emphasize that every city is unique and AVs must operate accordingly. Finally, we must empower, not disempower, our communities. Preempting state and local authority would be profoundly shortsighted. And I say this as someone who believes strongly in the potential of AVs. Many states want the federal government to lead on AV policy. But great leaders lead. Telling US DOT what to do and providing the resources to do it would help much more than telling states what not to do. Preemption could create litigation rather than certainty. It could bar states from getting unsafe vehicles and unsafe drivers, human or otherwise, off the road. Our AV industry started through federal research decades ago and then grew through our system of federalism. Brand America does have a serious credibility problem abroad, but preemption does not solve it. In a scary time of technological change, we need to make sure that communities and the people in them have control and feel in control. We can deploy both technology and policy in a way that protects and empowers them. Thank you.

Thank you to our witnesses. We'll now begin our questioning and I'll yield to my colleague Senator Blackburn to begin the questioning.

Thank you so much and to each of you. Thank you for taking the time to be here today. Mr. Farah, I want to come to you first. 2017 I was over in the House and chaired Comms and Tech over at the Energy and Commerce Committee and that is when we took the first legislative text to the committee to deal with autonomous vehicles and to allow this technology to flourish. We had worked on it for about three years to get to that point. And of course, we had some folks that did not realize the safety components that come from working on this technology. So, they chose to repeatedly shut down the guidelines that would be there for AVs. And I want you to just touch on how this technology, the autonomous technology, helps make our roads safer, helps make our vehicles safer and more responsive and how it is helping to reduce fatalities.

Senator Blackburn, thank you very much for the question. And before I answer, I'll just say thank you very much for all your leadership going back to when you were in the House and now here in the Senate. And I'll say that it has been quite a few years since a lot of this discussion has started. But a couple of things have really changed. The first thing that's changed is this is no longer science fiction. This is on roads. As I said in my opening statement, 26 states proactively authorize this technology. They are carrying passengers right at this very moment. So this is a reality for many Americans. The second thing that's changed is that we are no longer alone in the quest to have self-driving vehicles. We now have strategic competitors, most notably the People's Republic of China, that are bound and determined to be the global leaders when it comes to autonomous vehicles. But without a federal policy framework, we are asking our innovators to fight with one hand behind their back. And so that is why it's so important to pass a federal policy framework. And you touched on safety. This is the driving force behind our industry. We want to make our roads safer. We reject this idea that we just have to accept all the fatalities, accept all the injuries, accept millions of Americans being held back because vehicles are not accessible enough. And fundamentally, what we're trying to do with safety is we're trying to overcome human error. We're trying to overcome the things that Chairman Cruz talked about in his opening statement, the big drivers of fatalities in this country.

And Mr. Moravy, pardon me, and Dr. Pena, let me come to you. I know that you all are working on safety and we talked about this yesterday when we met and thank you again for your time. And one of the things that people are concerned about is the amount of consumer data. They like the safety. They want you to innovate. They want to lower fatalities. But they're saying, 'What kind of data are you getting?' So, how are you all collecting and storing and working through the data, Mr. Moravy?

Okay. So you do not store the data from the car, you anonymize that data.

Let me ask you this. I know you all are focused on US production. So how are you dealing with supply chains? And Dr. Pena, I'm coming to you on that one also after his answer.

Okay. Dr. Pena.

We are not a vehicle manufacturer. We design and build an autonomous driving system. So that's the hardware and software that we then install onto a variety of vehicle platforms at our factory in Arizona.

But are you affected by supply chains? Is that a constriction?

We like to have a stable supply of vehicles and so it does affect us.

Okay. All right. That's what I wanted to know. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator. I call on Senator Peters now for his questions.

Yeah. Thank you, Senator Cruz. And thank you Ranking Member Cantwell for deferring. I appreciate that. As a senator from Michigan, I have long focused on issues related to autonomous vehicles, and I believe that today more than ever, Congress cannot continue to stand on the sidelines when it comes to AVs. First, we know that this technology is a huge part of the future of the global automotive industry. But right now, as has been said, China is investing heavily in dominating the autonomous vehicle market. So, I believe it's absolutely imperative that we take action to ensure that American innovation and American standards lead the way on the world stage and not China. Second, it's a matter of protecting good paying American jobs. Congress cannot be silent on a technology that will literally shape the future of mobility. Automotive jobs have been at the heart of my state of Michigan and our manufacturing economy for over a century and we need to ensure that those jobs stay here in America. And finally, and most importantly, as has been said, this technology will save lives. Today, more than 100 Americans die on our roadway each and every day. As we sit here today, 100 people will die today. And we must do everything we can to harness solutions with the power to bring that number as close to zero as possible. But that also requires building trust. Americans deserve to know with certainty that these vehicles will deliver safer streets and that federal regulators have laid out clear rules of the road. The bottom line, it's up to Congress to do something. And that's why today I'm calling on our chairman and my colleagues on the committee to work with me to make that a reality. And I'm calling for a bipartisan AV title in our next surface transportation bill. We can't wait any longer. With that, I got a couple questions. First, Professor Smith, you and I share the position that it is both avoidable and unacceptable to have 40,000 deaths on our roads every year. And I believe we need to harness every solution to that problem, as evidenced by the hearing that I held on this issue last year. And I believe that AVs are certainly part of that answer. However, even autonomous vehicles will not be perfect. We know that accidents will occur and I believe we should assess those incidents against the larger backdrop of our extremely dangerous roads today. So my question for you is in your opinion, how should legislators approach the idea of relative safety when it comes to AVs? And why should we not be satisfied with the default level of danger that we see on our roads today?

Oh, thank you, Senator Peters, because the current level of carnage is horrific and is preventable and we know how to prevent it. And so with automated driving, we have these two different frameworks that are kind of in tension. One is the car framework. Can we save one more person? The other is the aviation framework. Any crash is a failure and unacceptable. And so automated driving is essentially this challenge of shifting from that first paradigm to the second. And so in assessing the safety of any crash, right, we could ask, well, did the system perform at least as well as a human driver in the equivalent scenario? Did it perform at least as well as a competing technology? And importantly, did it perform better than the last one that failed? In other words, we can't have static standards. The bar has to keep going up.

Great. Well, I thank you for that answer, but I'd also, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to enter into the record an op-ed from a neurologist published in the New York Times about his experience with car accident victims and how recent peer-reviewed AV data is too promising not to pursue. I think it's important and would like to enter that in the record.

Without objection.

One of the key reasons I believe Congress must act on autonomous vehicle legislation is because AVs represent a huge part of the future of the US automotive industry. We need to not only make sure AV technology is developed here, we also need to make sure these vehicles and their sensor suites are manufactured in America as well. Michigan autoworkers have led the nation and made the US automotive industry internationally competitive and I believe they can do the same for autonomous vehicles. Mr. Pena, Waymo currently does import vehicles from China to pair with its software stack. And I'm glad that you're moving away from this partnership, but from your perspective, how can Congress better ensure that AV companies prioritize US manufacturing and union labor when it comes to building the vehicles hardware of the future? And is this something that aligns with your company's vision of the future?

Senator, we design and build our autonomous driving system right here in America. And as I mentioned before, we use a variety of platforms and we install an autonomous driving system

Great time is low. Mr. Chairman, can I just ask a question for the record? Mr. Farah, some of your automotive manufacturing members, including Michigan's own General Motors and Ford, are driving consumer acceptance by introducing consumers to high levels of autonomy in their personal vehicles, including hands-free highway driving and more. That includes the goal of introducing level three hands-off, eyes-off driving technology for consumers to deploy when they choose. This way, autonomous technologies are delivering safety benefits in personally owned consumer vehicles today. Neither NHTSA nor Congress though has established a dedicated regulatory framework for level three systems. What do you think are the greatest regulatory gaps today for Congress to fill for level three deployment? I can enter that for the record to respond unless you have a quick response.

With the indulgence of the chairman, I would be very glad to elaborate on the response for the record. And certainly, level three is an important piece of automotive technology, and I didn't want to miss the opportunity to thank you for all of your past efforts on behalf of the AV industry.

Great. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. We welcome any other responses afterwards as well. Well, I now yield to myself and appreciate our witnesses being here. Appreciate this topic. I think it's fair to say that there's broad agreement that Congress must lead on this. Professor Smith, I'll give you a little asterisk that states can play a role as well. And I think that's a worthy conversation. And I think that the real question isn't whether or not we should lead, but how we should lead without sacrificing data privacy, without sacrificing transparency, without sacrificing innovation. If not careful, the federal government can clamp down on innovation. And with that in mind, I'd kind of like to turn to the data privacy part of this. Dr. Pena, I was in Los Angeles this weekend and I noticed with some awe the number of your vehicles that I saw. Do you know roughly off the top of your head how many you would have in a market like Los Angeles? Semi vehicles.

I don't know. Don't have an exact number for you, but there's a few hundred vehicles down there.

Yeah. Enough that you see them on almost every corner. Do you know per vehicle how many cameras are part of that?

We have, I think, 29 cameras approximately.

29. Are any of those internal?

Oh, yeah. We do have cameras internally to help our riders when they need it.

Sure. So, if you take 29 cameras and you times it by a couple hundred vehicles, the potential for data collection, that was my first impression when I saw that vehicle go by with those cameras, is the amount of data that potentially could be collected is staggering. And so, I think my first question for you and then Mr. Moravy is what internal policies do you currently have for data privacy?

Yeah, we have strong privacy protections for our riders. We don't share any personally identifiable information, and when we are driving, we collect information to make our Waymo driver better. That is the only purpose of collecting data as we drive through our cities.

So, as a former mayor, I would often be approached if somebody had an accident and they wanted to go get the traffic information from our recordings on the lights. Is that a scenario that's possible where law enforcement's going to come to you and say, 'Hey, you were going by this intersection. Share with us your recordings of what happened at that intersection.'?

Senator, we would only comply with a valid legal order, and even at that point, we would review it to ensure that it is not too broad, and if we believe it's too broad, we can object as well.

Okay, Mr. Moravy.

Yeah. And I think that's, I don't want to overstate that point with complying with law enforcement. I think more of my point is the vast amount of data, particularly with 29 cameras collecting through a community, and have we really thought through that data and what to do with it. And Mr. Farah, I kind of turn to you as an industry, is the industry ready for this data privacy question and are you prepared or is industry prepared with future legislation to discuss how we deal with data privacy?

Senator Curtis, thank you very much. And I think that Mr. Pena articulated very well what's the industry standard, which is that you would need to get a valid order from a law enforcement agency or court in order to comply with that, and if it was appropriately overbroad, that would be something that the company would certainly evaluate. And I would say that we are very eager to participate as Congress, as this committee takes on future data privacy discussions, we absolutely want to be a part of that process.

Yeah, and I would point out we've got good actors at the table today, but as industry grows, you'll have people who may not take good care of that data, you may have data breaches. And I just think it's something that's very important for us to consider. We talked just briefly before the hearing about Utah. Utah would love to be a leader on this. We have the Olympics coming. We talked a lot about safety. Could you briefly just discuss traffic congestion and how a state like Utah might use autonomous vehicles to deal with less traffic on the roads and the impact that that could have on a state like Utah?

Absolutely, Senator. And as you know, I'm a huge fan of your state. As I told you, I've been there many times, and I will say that Utah is one of the 26 states that has an AV deployment statute. So, you're very well positioned to take advantage of this, including for the upcoming Olympics. In terms of traffic congestion, what we're really trying to do is to give more transportation options. So, in many cases, for example, in Salt Lake, this may be an elegant solution for moving people through city centers in a more effective way in some sort of shared-use vehicle. That's something that, on a city-by-city basis, we're trying to give new optionality.

Great. I've used up my time and I'll yield to our ranking member for her questions.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Professor Smith, you talked about trust and faith and building that over a period of time. My point is that the information age is delivering a lot of technology change. I'm not sure Boeing understood software as well as they should have understood software. I think here we may not have a NHTSA that understands these challenges either, but we certainly can't dismantle them. And we need to have people when it comes to AI or privacy, we need people in the federal government who are going to understand the issues. Otherwise, we're not going to do a good job. So, I think that's part of building that trust and faith you're talking about because you're going to continue to repeat issues. Not everything is going to be known. You're still going to, again, there's a difference between a beta program and a large-scale program and then something else you find out happens. So I'm trying to get to this point because we have these, you know, we have an autopilot issue. I mentioned a constituent of mine, Mr. Nissen, who was run over, he was on a motorcycle and he was run over by a Tesla car on autopilot that the family is saying did not detect the motorcycle. This isn't like blaming it on the people who were supposed to be in the car, although that is a pretty big debate that did the term autopilot mean something to the users of Tesla and then they're responsible. But I think the family in some of these cases, there was a case in Florida where they basically are saying no, it's still negligence because of the way autopilot was marketed. I'm assuming Dr. Pena, you like this binding arbitration that your users are under now, that they sign an agreement and then if something goes wrong... could you describe the user for Waymo, you basically sign an agreement that basically if there's a dispute about what happened you now are in a binding arbitration with the manufacturer, with Waymo, over the results of those cases. I'm trying to get to liability here. I'm trying to get to liability. So you approve that now, correct?

Ranking Member Cantwell, that's not my area of expertise. My area is primarily AV safety. But I'd be happy to get back to you.

Okay. My understanding, Professor Smith, these are just like binding arbitration contracts.

It's very common in industry. Yes. Unfortunately,

We are not going to take this common standard in software where I'm downloading a game or some app and now we'll apply it to cars. We're just not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to allow that to happen. I'm not going to sign a binding arbitration agreement with Waymo and then basically say I can't sue them. I'm just stuck in binding arbitration. I guarantee you this Congress isn't going to be for that either. The Senate has already taken action trying to be more aggressive. But where do we go with this issue, you know, of building that trust that you're talking about and showing Mr. Farah just said he doesn't believe in preempting states. That's a good thing. But how do we get this to the point where there is true liability so that people will build products and be accountable for them.

Thank you. And the reality is that we all do sign these agreements every day agreeing to arbitration and we don't realize it. We don't realize it matters until we're hurt, until we're the victims, and then we realize that we can't use the courts and no one else realizes it because arbitration is often secret and therefore that information is not coming out. So you talked very much about trustworthiness. The companies in this field are necessarily saying to regulators and to the public, trust us. And that needs to come with substance, right? With great power comes great responsibility. So, they need to say, 'Here's what we're doing. Here's why we believe it's safe, and here's why you can trust us.' And then that needs to be interrogated by, as you've described, competent, capable, well-resourced officials. The idea that our automated driving office could fit in a McDonald's or our defects agency could fit in a warehouse is astounding to me for a country of this size and sophistication.

Well, I think not. I think the chairman of this committee berated the then CEO of Boeing, Dave Calhoun, for, you know, basically breaking that trust and faith. I think Kelly Ortberg is trying to reestablish it and to say that no, it has to be based on good engineering and a constant accountability. But I do think figuring out the federal responsibility so that we can have predictability and certainty, but it has to come with some liability. It just does. And when you look at these instances of NHTSA playing this role in the past, it also had to come with changing a culture. We're trying to change the culture of the FAA right now. But you're going to have to change the culture. You know, when companies just want to go along and just keep promoting airbags that don't work, then that's a problem. You got to get rid of and change the culture. So anyway, I look forward to hearing more about what you think that federal framework looks like. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you. Today autonomous vehicles are being deployed on public roads. Yet, there's no unique safety standard for AVs from the federal regulator, NHTSA. There's no federal framework governing their deployment. There's no accountability or consistency across states. The patchwork of state laws means that driverless AVs can be deployed commercially in states like Texas, Arizona, and California, but they aren't allowed in New York, Massachusetts, and Vermont, where a driver must be present. Or in the case of California, AV operational data must be turned over to regulators, but not in Florida or Michigan. Mr. Moravy, from Tesla's perspective, what risks does this regulatory gap create and why is a clear national framework necessary sooner rather than later?

Dr. Pena, when incidents occur with AVs, they're highly scrutinized in part because the technology is so novel and different. Recently, there have been incidents with Waymo involving school buses in Austin, and a child in Santa Monica, California. What safeguards has Waymo implemented since the school bus incidents in Austin, and how do you verify that these changes will protect school bus riders moving forward?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We take those incidents very seriously. Safety is our top priority, especially safety of children and pedestrians. We're evaluating every one of those events and developing fixes to address them. And we have already incorporated many changes to our software to dramatically improve our performance. And we are working with the Austin Independent School District to collect data on different lighting patterns and different conditions. And we're also incorporating those learnings into our system. But we do safely navigate thousands of school bus encounters every single week and we're continuously learning and improving because our work on safety is never done.

And the report of Waymo striking the child in Santa Monica indicates the AV quickly slowed down from 17 miles per hour to 6 miles per hour. What lessons can be drawn from what occurred and how might that have been different if a human driver had been driving?

Mr. Chairman, first I'd like to express that we are grateful that the young girl was able to walk away from the scene. And as you state, our analysis indicates that our technology was able to detect the young girl as she emerged from behind a parked SUV, brake hard, reduce speed, and reduce harm. And we performed an analysis as well of how we compared with an always-attentive human driver. And we found that the Waymo driver would have responded faster than our models of an attentive human driver. So in this case, I believe that we mitigated harm.

Question for both Mr. Moravy and Dr. Pena. In your assessment, what are the safety benefits of widespread adoption of AVs? What human lives do we think could be saved?

By the way, one just marketing suggestion. I'm not sure I would use the litany from the Terminator to describe your AVs. Dr. Pena, same question.

I think we have demonstrated our performance today in over 100 million miles. Our data shows that we are 10 times less likely to be involved in a serious injury collision as compared to human drivers in the cities where we operate. And data also shows that we're 12 times less likely to be involved in a pedestrian injury collision in the cities where we operate. So I think we're making a difference already.

All right, final question. There's quite a bit of concern that the advent of AVs with automobiles may jeopardize jobs. At the same time, I think Tesla is demonstrating that AVs can produce an awful lot of high-paying jobs, that there is a strong, positive job story. Share with this committee, how many new jobs has Tesla's automatic driving system already created in Texas and how many more are projected?

Thank you. I've also received outreach from 33 stakeholders who support an autonomous vehicle federal framework. And I ask unanimous consent that these be entered into the record without objection. So ordered. Who's next? Senator Kim.

Thank you, Chairman. Thank you to all of you for coming out for this really important conversation. Before I even came into Congress, I spent years and years working on cybersecurity, national security related issues. So, as we're talking through safety and control, I guess I just wanted to get a sense from you just where we're at when it comes to the capacity to protect ourselves from cybersecurity attacks as we are worried about the growing number of devices that we have that are connected to the internet. I have to say at the top of the list, you know, I do have concerns just about autonomous vehicles and I wanted to just get a sense from you what's true and what's not. So maybe Dr. Pena, maybe we can just start with you. Just what levels of concern have you had and what steps are you all taking to try to prevent the ability for someone else to be able to access data as well as take control of controls and features of the vehicles?

Yeah, cybersecurity is a very important part of our safety framework. It is something that we take very seriously and we take a number of measures to identify vulnerabilities, perform risk assessments and then mitigate those vulnerabilities. One example is by design our safety-critical systems in the vehicle are protected from external connections. So you cannot actually hack into it, connect to it and drive it remotely. And so we do design, we do testing. So we do a pretty extensive evaluation of cybersecurity and mitigations.

So with your company, with your fleet, have you had any instances where someone was able to access data or features or control of any of the vehicles?

Not that I'm aware of. Senator,

Dr. Moravy, I guess I wanted to ask you just similar questions. Just, you know, how are you able to protect your consumers, your drivers from cyber attacks and have you had any instances of cyber attacks upon vehicles that were able to access data, features or gain control?

Yeah, Mr. Farah, just from an industry side, I mean, I think we all are in agreement here. We want to make sure that answer continues to be no in terms of ability to be able to access. Just what are you seeing in terms of across the industry as well as what we should be thinking about here in terms of setting standards to be able to ensure that we can look the American people in the eye and say, you know, this is not a scenario that can happen. You don't have to worry about this.

Senator Kim, I appreciate the question and I think what Mr. Pena described is very much industry standard. There's a thought of this as being a closed universe that the company controls and that is a natural way of keeping out certain cybersecurity intrusions. I'll also just note here that from our perspective, we want Americans to understand that these vehicles are safe. We want Americans to trust these vehicles and understand that this is a huge priority of each of the companies that are there. If we don't have that trust, the technology doesn't get developed and it doesn't get deployed. And that's obviously not something that we want to see. And so there's a massive incentive on the part of the companies to do everything they can to address cybersecurity intrusions and that's I think why we have the track record that we do.

Yeah. Dr. Pena, one last quick question for you on a different topic. You know I'm from New Jersey, very densely populated area. Just as I'm talking to people in my state, how do you explain a deployment to a densely populated area? What types of markers, what types of metrics you need before you can say, you know, this is safe now to deploy in these different areas.

Yeah. Before we enter any market, we do an extensive evaluation and test of the different driving features, different road types. We do analysis, simulations, and we also perform testing with our vehicles with what we call autonomous driving specialists behind the wheel prior to us removing the human driver. So we take our time. We do it very methodically and we have a very strong safety framework and all of that evidence needs to be presented to a safety board in which I'm a part of and we approve that deployment with the sufficient evidence that the system has been demonstrated to perform safely in that city.

Okay. Thank you so much and I'll yield back, Chairman.

Thank you, Senator Marino.

Mr. Moravy, if a Tesla robotaxi is in an accident and there is a question about liability, it turns out that it was a software error, it's possible hardware error, who would accept the liability?

Right. So, it'd be no different. Dr. Pena, how about at Waymo?

Likewise. So, you would take that liability and you wouldn't look to skirt the types of protections that we have now, which is obviously some sort of terms and conditions that nobody reads that's 17 pages long that you just said accept. It would, in other words, a driver does not have binding arbitration against somebody that they hit. So you would not be in favor of that. Correct.

Senator, that's again not my area of expertise. So, I would have to discuss with my team and I can get back to you.

Okay. I mean, that's not a great answer. Are you familiar with that 7 years ago, President Trump issued a national emergency around foreign adversaries accessing our critical infrastructure and put in place something that we call the connected vehicle rule. Are you familiar with that?

Yes, I am.

Okay. And Mr. Moravy, are you familiar with that as well?

Okay. And Mr. Moravy, are you in favor of the connected vehicle rule? Do you think that was good policy?

And how much of your vehicle again for the record is made in America?

So you get to the point soon with these robotaxis that 100% US content. So the connected vehicle rule would have no impact on you whatsoever because obviously all the telecommunications infrastructure connections would be US-based. Correct.

And Dr. Pena, how about you?

Our autonomous driving system is designed and built in the US and we install it onto several different platforms. We are in support of the connected vehicle rule.

But how is that possible given that you said in your testimony that we're locked in a race with China, but it seems like you're getting in bed with China. The cars that you're looking to bring into the United States are Chinese automobiles owned by Chinese auto companies. Are they not?

We use a variety of platforms. They are...

Right. Right now you use a Jaguar that's made in Graz, Austria. And the car that you're looking at doing is a car by a subsidiary of Geely, which is a Chinese company. Is that not accurate?

Yes. And we...

So then how would advancing the US interest over China be met by having a company allow Chinese-made automobiles to enter the US market which are currently not allowed to enter the market? It seems like a very backdoor way of bypassing the connected vehicle rule?

Those Chinese vehicles, the Geely vehicles have no smarts, no connectivity. What we do is we install our autonomous driving system right here in America and we don't share any information whatsoever. And so I feel that having a stable auto supply actually enables us to scale more quickly and more efficiently which is in fact helping us retain our lead over China even extended.

So giving a natural market to a Chinese company to ship us cars is making us better and creating more jobs for Americans. That's completely ridiculous. Let me ask you another question. When you operate in the cities that you do, what's the price difference between Waymo and Uber? Like if I were to go on and pick an Uber and then I go and pick a Waymo, what's the price difference?

Senator, it really varies more or less by market. It varies so much that I probably can't give you an accurate answer.

Well, I'll give you the answer. It's almost exactly identical. So, what you're really doing is really taking the labor cost out of your business model. So, just let's just be clear, which is by the way, I'm a capitalist, but don't we need to frame this as, hey, look, we figured out a way to save a ton of money, which is to get rid of the human driver in the vehicle so we could make more profit. But let me ask you another question. You're owned by Google, correct?

Alphabet is our parent company amongst others.

Are you going to be using disaggregated data to target advertising towards your users?

No, that's not our plan.

That's not your plan. So that would not be any kind of situation where you'd serve up different ads. People could use the service and then get that data to allow them to target ads towards your users.

That's not the plan.

Is that plan subject to change?

I'm not privy to that.

Okay. All right. Thank you. I'm out of time.

Senator Lujan.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Many of you may be aware of some legislation that I was proud to work on years ago with some of my Republican colleagues and we got together and we came up with some legislation that would require technology and vehicles that would prevent drunk driving deaths. I remind my colleagues that when I was in my early 20s, I was hit by a drunk driver. Thank God I'm here today. As many as 10,000 people, 11, 12,000 people lose their lives every year because of this. Now, one of the questions that I have in this particular space is around the many types of anti-drunk driving technology that already exists. There's even a recent announcement from a company that will provide a Japanese OEM with a driver monitoring system that includes alcohol impairment detection. The current NHTSA administrator, Jonathan Morrison, recently warned, quote, 'There's a very major difference between an advanced driver assistance system and an automated driving system. The system you can buy in your vehicle today, with very rare exception, is a driver assist system. If you have an extra cocktail or two and you get behind the wheel and put it in quote hands-free mode, you're a drunk driver. I want you to be pulled over and I want you to be removed from the road.' That's what Jonathan Morrison, the current NHTSA director, recently said. Mr. Smith, can you explain why self-driving features in cars requires a person to be alert and able to safely take over the vehicle's operations?

Thank you, Senator, for the question, but particularly for your work on the HALT Drunk Driving Act. That is incredible to be able to do something that will eventually save tens of thousands of lives every single year. And what you're describing is the fact that we have technologies that can do that. We have technologies that can drive a vehicle. Some of the same ones and other ones are able to detect if a human is actually capable of safely driving the vehicle. And as you point out, certain applications of driving automation envision that a human might still be able to or even need to drive for a portion of the trip. Not the kind of robotaxis that we might talk about, but features on production vehicles often. And as part of the safe design of the system, the manufacturer needs to know that when the system says, 'Hey, human, drive,' that the human is in a position to do so. That they're not sleeping, that they're not drunk, that they're able to re-engage. And so, a lot of that is the ability to understand directly or indirectly if a human is able to drive.

Mr. Moravy, what technology does Tesla leverage to ensure that a driver is alert? In other words, not impaired, drunk, distracted, or fatigued, and ready to take over the vehicle at a moment's notice. For your self-driving or autopilot technology to work correctly, isn't it necessary to determine that the driver can safely take over the vehicle?

So when NHTSA completes its rule and sets standards to passively detect drunk or impaired driving with the HALT Act, do you believe Tesla will be able to implement this technology in the near future?

Appreciate it. Dr. Pena, do you support implementation of the HALT Drunk Driving Act? And how can your company help advance this life-saving initiative?

This is, you know, one of my goals as well to eliminate impaired driving and so we supported and this is one of the benefits of our vehicle. We never drive drunk, never distracted.

Dr. Pena, your systems, you're a systems engineer by trade, correct?

Yes, I am.

Can you explain the role of redundant systems in safety-critical systems?

Oh, absolutely. Having redundancy allows you to have higher reliability and higher levels of safety. You always have to plan for the unexpected. So if some of your systems malfunction, you want a backup system to be able to come into play and allow you to continue to travel safely.

One of those tools is sensor fusion if I'm not mistaken. And I'd ask if we could just get that entered into the record and we'll get the definition. As my time expires here, Mr. Moravy, can you explain to me why Tesla has decided to limit redundancy for its sensing systems by removing radar and relying solely on cameras?

Well, I mean, would you say that when Elon, Elon Musk, your CEO, said LiDAR and radar reduce safety due to sensor, you agree with that?

You don't want to answer, you don't have to because I don't want to compromise you with whatever your next endeavor is.

All right. Well, Mr. Chairman, I know that when we talk about these self-driving things, there seems to be unanimous agreement, Democrats, Republicans, everyone involved, that LiDAR, cameras, all of this stuff works to keep everybody safe. And so, I'm hoping we can get drill in more. One question that I didn't have time to ask today, Mr. Chairman, is as we talk about all of these rules around self-driving cars, before you can get to full self-driving, Congress has to take action. Mr. Moravy, will you commit that Tesla, I don't want to call them salespeople, but the people that are at your facilities where people go pick up the cars that they order, to stop telling people that are purchasing Teslas that they can order a little hand weight from Amazon to trick the vehicle. Will you commit to sending an order out and saying please stop that or not? Please, but demand that it stops.

If you don't know what's going on, I can tell you and if you want to see a video, I'll show you one.

Mr. Chairman, I'll follow up with you on this one. I think we can get this one done. You don't have to do something publicly, but to teach people how to trick the rules, to put a little weight, and if you do a search on Amazon, you can get one right now. They're like 10 bucks. You strap the sucker on the wheel and then it tricks the vehicle like your hands are on it. Tell them to stop doing that. And I just hope that we can work on that one, Mr. Chairman. It doesn't have to be a big thing. Just tell them to stop it. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

Senator Schmidt.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. These kinds of hearings I think are fascinating because I try to bring the perspective of the folks back home, what they really want to understand because this is emerging. It's not going away. I think Missouri is kind of going through its own process right now of figuring out what sort of rules of the road for lack of a better term that they want to have in place. And one of the things that I think is most exciting about it and I know that we have some advocates here is the opportunities that it provides for individuals with disabilities to get more places and have that kind of connectivity that in many ways they don't have right now or it's much more challenging for them. So I think there's a lot of opportunity but I suppose the nature of the questions I get from back home which I want to pose to you guys now is related to safety. As you can kind of tell, there's obviously it's a new technology. People have concerns or questions, I guess, is a better way to put it. Mr. Moravy, in your testimony, you make the argument that Tesla's full self-driving, the FSD supervised system, already performs significantly better than the US average, driving 5.1 million miles before a major collision. What in that analysis or that study or that data, what sort of independent validation do you guys rely on for those results?

Okay. Dr. Pena, I want to ask you, there was in December of 2025, pretty recently, was a power outage in San Francisco. I'm sure you're well aware of this where traffic lights went down and your vehicles there were just sort of frozen. What changes are you making to the software that you guys use that would and the decision-making logic to ensure that those kinds of situations like dark signals or whatever are not a problem because this is the kind of stuff that people get concerned about, right?

Yeah, it was a widespread power outage with many traffic lights as you said disabled and I think it was the sheer number of traffic lights that created a challenge for us in terms of delays in traversing intersections. In a way we had tuned the system to be very conservative and what we're doing is we are updating our software. We've already done it to provide more context about a regional power outage so that we can more confidently traverse those lights. And we're also updating our incident procedures and working with law enforcement to ensure that we're communicating, that we're collaborating.

Okay. Mr. Moravy, I want to ask you from your perspective and I think that when we talk about so many things are happening in this country bringing back manufacturing in this country not relying on other places for the things that we need that are critical whether it's iPhones or F-15s and certainly the auto industry in this country has been the gold standard for a very long time. From your perspective, what's at stake in this competition with China for autonomous vehicles and what happens if we lose?

We need to maintain that leadership in order to hopefully transition autonomous vehicles into a state where the FAA has with Boeing and become the gold standard of the future of aviation, you know, some 70, 80 years ago. If we take that same leadership now and we put forth an AV framework that Congress instructs NHTSA to enact, we will have that leadership where the best American companies will make the most AVs for the world to follow. And to put a finer point on it, it matters not just for here, but you see what China does worldwide with their EVs, right? They effectively subsidize them. They dump them in a market. They take over a whole continent because they wipe out an entire industry and then all you're left with are Chinese EVs. If you think about the data that can be gathered from having AVs all around the world as sort of roving sensors for our chief adversary, I think that is an underrated aspect of this competition. Then finally, with the four seconds I have remaining, I just want to ask between you guys if you want to weigh in, how should we're talking about this federal framework? You got all this kind of patchwork of the states, but how should the federal framework account for local differences? I mean, they're going to be differences. And what do those, how do you minimize it? What's important? How do you guys see it?

Senator Schmidt, I'll just briefly say this is an opportunity for federalism. We have states that are passing AV deployment statutes. They need to be involved in all this. At the same time, the federal government needs to step up with regard to vehicle design, vehicle construction, and vehicle performance. There's an opportunity for both states and the federal government to be involved together to make sure that we are winning this race.

Thank you. And I will say the last point Senator Schmidt raised about the dangers of Chinese surveillance in EVs and Chinese manufactured cars are very real concerns and one that I think all of us need to take very seriously.

Senator Markey. Yep. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to start with a little known fact about autonomous vehicles. When an AV such as a Waymo encounters a situation on the road that it doesn't know how to handle, the Waymo phones a human friend for help. The autonomous vehicle communities then communicate with a so-called remote assistance operator, a human being who is located remotely and guides the self-driving car through the difficult driving environment. And despite the crucial role these operators play in autonomous vehicle safety, the public knows almost nothing about those people, those human beings. And that is why yesterday I opened an investigation into all of the major autonomous vehicle companies demanding answers about their remote assistance operators. Mr. Pena, let's learn more about Waymo's remote assistance operation. I understand that Waymo calls these people live agents and rider agents, these human beings. Yes or no? Does Waymo employ humans located remotely to help its vehicles navigate difficult driving scenarios?

Senator, they provide guidance. They do not remotely drive the vehicles. As you stated, Waymo asks for guidance in certain situations and gets an input, but the Waymo vehicle is always in charge of the dynamic driving task. So that is just one additional input.

But the human being helps the vehicle to navigate those difficult driving scenarios. Is that correct?

Yes.

Okay. So are all of these human operators located in the United States? Are they all here?

No, we have some in the US and some abroad.

So how does that break down? What percent are abroad?

Senator, I don't have that number for you. We could get back to you.

Is it a majority are abroad?

I just don't have that number.

Well, that's very curious that someone who's running the program has no idea how that workforce breaks down. Just seems kind of curious that you don't know that answer. But are some of these operators located outside the United States?

Yeah, some are located abroad.

Yeah. And so for me, that's fairly shocking. Waymo has critical safety employees who may need to intervene in a split second if a Waymo encounters an unknown dangerous situation located in the United States but they are outside the United States. In what countries are these employees located?

The Philippines.

Jimmy, the Philippines.

The Philippines.

So they are in the Philippines. Mr. Pena, that is completely unacceptable. And here's why. Having people overseas influencing American vehicles is a safety issue. The information the operators receive could be outdated. It could introduce tremendous cybersecurity vulnerabilities. We don't know if these people have US driver's licenses. And let's not forget Waymo is trying to replace the jobs of hardworking taxi and ride share drivers. And now you're saying that of the human beings, the human jobs that remain in the system, you're shipping those jobs overseas. It's one thing when a taxi is replaced by an Uber or a Lyft. It's another thing when the jobs just go completely overseas, which is what we're talking about because no one likes a backseat driver, but a transatlantic backseat driver is downright dangerous in our country. Now, I want to turn to another autonomous vehicle issue. When designing an autonomous or partially autonomous vehicle, engineers define where and when the system is safe to drive. This operational limit is known as the operational design domain. Virtually every automaker with one notable exception restricts their driving systems to these domains. Mr. Pena, yes and no. Does Waymo restrict its vehicles to safe pre-mapped operational design domains?

Senator, we do. We have a very well-defined operational design domain. Different road types, weather, different conditions, and so we ensure that our vehicles are capable.

That's good. Thank you. So, just to be clear, Waymo vehicles include technological safeguards to prevent them from operating on certain roads. Yes. Let's turn to Tesla. Mr. Moravy, yes and no. Does Tesla restrict its partially autonomous driving systems such as Full Self-Driving and Autopilot to safe pre-mapped operational design domains?

So what Tesla is doing, unlike Waymo, Teslas do not have technology that prevents drivers from triggering the Full Self-Driving and Autopilot in unsafe conditions. So from my perspective, that's outrageous because Autopilot and Full Self-Driving have already been involved in dozens of deaths because in part Tesla drivers can enable these driving systems on any road under any conditions and by failing to follow the best practices of every other AV company, Tesla is putting American lives at risk and that is unconscionable. And it's why in December I introduced the Stay in Your Lane Act, which requires automakers to define where and when their driving systems are safe and restrict the driving systems to those conditions only. Tesla does not do that. Tesla's vehicles say Full Self-Driving, but really they are only partial Full Self-Driving for the driver. That's very misleading to call something Full Self-Driving when you cannot in fact meaningfully use that technology without increasing the danger. We need to ensure that they are supervised by human drivers when they are using Full Self-Driving. So that's my message to Tesla. You got to do that. Other companies do it. You have to do it as well or else we're going to continue to see recurrence of these accidents on the streets of our country.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Senator Lummis.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Among the things that have come up as I've listened in this hearing is the human factor behind the wheels. So, Mr. Moravy, you've spent your career involved in designing systems for automobiles, both with drivers and without drivers. Am I correct?

Could you tell me what things that you've worked on designing over your career have reduced deaths in automobiles, in passenger automobiles?

And but then didn't it drop to a point where it kind of plateaued?

And what has, what made it plateau?

So, texting and driving. So, it sounds to me like efforts have been made to help humans not kill themselves in cars, but it reached a plateau because texting and driving and distracted driving is something that you can't correct for in a way that continues the decline of automobile deaths. Am I correct?

Well, so one of the things that makes me excited about autonomous vehicles is it does provide another leap in our ability to prevent human error in automobile deaths. Am I correct?

So here's why I think it's so important that we work with NHTSA, that we have some national standards for autonomous vehicles. I think everybody here in this room, unless you're really young, knows somebody who was driving drunk and died. Who fell asleep at the wheel and died. Who slipped on black ice because they were driving too fast and died. Who were texting and got in an accident. These are so common in my state of Wyoming where we're driving long distances alone. I was once asked what is the most important factor for running for political office in Wyoming? And I've always said it's the ability to drive long distances alone without falling asleep because we're campaigning one day in Matitzi and the next day in Rock Springs and the next day in Cody and the next day in Cheyenne and so you're driving because it's retail politics. You have to get around. And I am so excited about autonomous vehicles for a couple reasons. I have three grandsons. They're all under the age of seven. Autonomous vehicles provides an avenue for them to get home at night when they have exercised poor judgment as human beings. And I hope they don't exercise poor judgment, but they're boys and they might. It also protects people who have driven and fallen asleep in Wyoming because they're pushing themselves too far. And this texting and driving thing is not something that plagues me, but it terrifies us as parents. So, the last thing it makes me excited is I'm quickly entering the era when I might be a little old lady who wants the freedom to still be able to drive when maybe she should not. And I just want a button in a car that if I don't know where I am or I'm not as sharp as I was behind the wheel that I can push a button in the car that says grocery store and another button that says home, take me home. And the freedom that will give elderly people is such a comfort to me as I become an elderly person. And Mr. Chairman, the work you're doing on this, I join you in being excited about it. You know, I got to ride in a Waymo out in San Francisco and there were two interesting things to me. One is how safe I felt. The other was when we pulled into their yard, how many jobs there were for people that were working on the cars. They're different jobs in the same industry. And what Tesla's talking about doing with automobiles where all the parts are made in America and they're using like US lithium and other raw materials to make these cars. That's transformative. That's game-changing for personal passenger vehicles. So, I just want to compliment the people that are testifying today. I think that the opportunities provided for human safety are unparalleled and that the jobs that will be created within the same industry are a little different than the jobs that we have today in that industry, but there are jobs nonetheless and they're going to be good jobs. So, I'm excited about this technology. I can't wait because if I ever get dementia, man, I want that little take me home button on a car. It's freedom for old people and it's safety for young people. And so I want to thank you all for what you're doing to advance the opportunity for those of us who want to get home safely. And Mr. Chairman, you know, count me in on your efforts to create a federal standard below which you cannot fall, but that has the criteria NHTSA needs to move forward and help this industry embed and grow in the United States. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Well, and I will say at least for the next year, you're in a good place for dementia. You're in the US Senate. I also want to encourage people to listen to Senator Lummis' excellent description of being a parent or a grandparent and concern for the safety of young people. And I think you're exactly right that AVs are a total game-changer. I say this as the father of two teenage girls. I am very concerned. I will not let my daughters go in an Uber. In my hometown of Houston, four Uber drivers were just indicted for sexually assaulting teenage girls in their car. And I am thrilled for the day that I can send an AV to take my girls where they need to go and I don't have to worry about a man in the front seat who might do something violent. And I think there's a lot of parents who share exactly the concern that I have. And I think that's an enormous safety improvement as well. Senator Duckworth.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I too am excited about the future of autonomous vehicles, especially for those in the disability community. Unfortunately, we as a nation have become collectively numb to the tens of thousands of lives lost on our roads every year. But the federal government and the automotive industry's shared failure to significantly reduce traffic fatalities must never be weaponized as an excuse to rush out AV designs that are merely as deadly or perhaps slightly less deadly than the status quo. So, let's not kid ourselves. While self-driving technology is exciting, it has a long way to go and our regulatory system is even further behind. And so I want to bring the panel's focus to where self-driving cars have been massively hyped but inadequately prioritized helping Americans with disabilities lead more independent lives. Senator Lummis touched on this a little bit. Everybody hopefully will live long enough to develop disabilities. But I got to tell you, I'm somewhat skeptical. Because no matter how much lip service is paid to accessibility by so-called autonomous driving technology companies, the reality is that all of you are dependent on traditional OEMs. Let's be real, the auto industry has not exactly been a proactive leader in designing, building, and testing vehicles that embrace universal design principles as a default. They treat it as a luxury. Wheelchair users often pay nearly double the price of the vehicle because of necessary aftermarket modifications. Mr. Moravy, I understand that Tesla offers no model that is wheelchair accessible right out of the factory. Is that correct?

So, you don't have a single vehicle right now that is wheelchair accessible out of the factory.

Okay. So, given your broad ambitions, indeed existential necessity when you consider how much of Tesla's valuation is tied to future promises of widespread Full Self-Driving. I am deeply disappointed that not only does Tesla not provide a wheelchair accessible model, but the leading aftermarket conversion company, BraunAbility, does not even list Tesla among its common conversion platforms. So, for example, I have a Toyota minivan. But I could actually purchase an accessible wheelchair platform from the factory when I purchased my car. Actually, when the VA purchased my car. Mr. Moravy, is Tesla currently working with BraunAbility or any other mobility modifier to develop a specific common conversion platform for electric vehicles?

Okay. Dr. Pena, while Waymo appears to be far ahead of Tesla when it comes to actually deploying a limited robotaxi service, at least when it comes to wheelchair users, I'm afraid that Waymo doesn't seem that far ahead of your competitors sitting next to you. What percentage of Waymo's current fleet is wheelchair accessible?

We do provide a wheelchair accessible option. It is not fully autonomous. But I don't have a percentage for you, but we can get back to you with the specific number.

Okay. How many of those wheelchair accessible Waymo rides can be used by a passenger in a wheelchair without human assistance?

Currently, we don't have a fully autonomous service.

Okay. As you know, beginning in 2020, the Department of Transportation began an inclusive design challenge to spur the invention of innovative design solutions, and Waymo was a semi-finalist in that competition. So, congratulations on that. As a member of the Secure Ride Coalition, I trust that Waymo is actively seeking to incorporate automated wheelchair securement systems to its fleet so that you can actually get to that fully autonomous option in the future.

And we're not a vehicle manufacturer. So, we are looking for an OEM who's able to meet our requirements to have a safe wheelchair accessibility fully autonomously, but it has to meet our safety requirements first.

So, what time frame is that? If you're looking for somebody now, I mean, by what date would a wheelchair user be able to request a Waymo ride featuring a universal securement system such as the automated wheelchair tie-down and occupant restraint system that was designed by researchers at University of Michigan?

Senator, I don't have a timeline for you. We have not found an OEM that provides a vehicle that would meet our safety requirements yet. So, I don't have a specific timeline for you.

This is my point. Yes, we need to prioritize making sure AV autonomous vehicles move forward. I fully support it. But I need to make sure that as you're moving forward that there are options available for people with disabilities and that whatever the, for example, wheelchair securement standard is applied across personal vehicles, public transit, rails and airplane, and I think this happens during the development phase as you're looking for an OEM, you need to find the most effective and efficient system, cost-effective, but also we need to try to make it more universal. Will Waymo commit to working with other developers in this space, including the team at Purdue University and BraunAbility? I'm hyping Indiana here to my colleague down the other end of the dais. They've developed life-size operational demonstration platforms known as the Easy Rider who need more support to bring these products to market.

We definitely would like to explore those partnerships.

Thank you. I just want to make sure that I want to emphasize how important this function is for persons with disabilities. But it is also an opportunity for profitability for each and every one of you. As my colleague from Wyoming mentioned, baby boomers are aging. They have a car culture from the time they were teenagers. They want their cars. They want to keep their cars well beyond a time when they can personally drive them. So the demand is going to be there. We just need to make sure that we can meet that demand in a safe way and that we do it in a way that also allows those same baby boomers who are going to develop disabilities access to these vehicles. Whether it's somebody who is vision impaired, whether it's somebody who is hearing impaired, cognitively impaired, whether it's in a wheelchair, this is a market that has spending power and I urge you to keep them in mind as you move forward with your developments. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Senator Young.

Well, thank you, Chairman. I want to thank our witnesses for being here today. I share the excitement and enthusiasm that many of my colleagues do for autonomous vehicles and their potential deployment. I've visited with a number of you and so many other stakeholders really over recent years and consistently tried to elicit from you what regulatory constraints there are to safely deploying different technologies that are already available, highly vetted and seem very sophisticated. And then to learn how surface transportation reauthorization, which is coming up here in Congress, could serve as a vehicle to address these sorts of regulatory roadblocks. I continue and I know as does the chairman of the committee, I continue to have this desire to work with you on this and I think it's essential that we seize this moment of opportunity. I'll be chairing for the remainder of the year the Surface Transportation Subcommittee and this reauthorization is something that's very important to me and I think it's our one opportunity for this Congress to make some serious headway for the benefits of safety, mobility and economic benefits that have been highlighted here. Mr. Farah, if you could just very quickly once again summarize what you believe are the components we should be focusing on as part of a federal framework to deploy AVs so that we can enjoy all of these value propositions.

Senator Young, I'd be glad to. I'll give you just a few items. I would say first of all, we need to make sure that Congress is directing the Department of Transportation to require a safety case and also to establish certain driving competencies. Second, we need to create a national AV safety data repository that allows for incident data to be housed at NHTSA and shared out with state regulatory partners. And then third, but certainly not finally, we need to evolve some of the standards that apply to human-driven vehicles. A lot of the accessibility challenges that Senator Duckworth was talking about, these are ones because we are trying to adapt to rules and regulations that were written when it was only contemplated that a human would be the one driving the vehicle. That's no longer the case. Now, an autonomous vehicle can do the driving. We need to evolve a lot of those standards.

Fantastic. And because of the different design of our autonomous vehicles, there'll probably be a whole lot of solutions to that problem set of how you can accommodate someone in a wheelchair. Right? So, we need to, if not loosen up the regulations, fundamentally rework them to accommodate this new era. Is that accurate?

We can have safety but also innovation at the same time. We can have a situation where vehicles can look fundamentally different. When we all get into our cars and drive home today, look around you. The things around you, they're placed there by and large because you're a human. You're the one that's driving the vehicle. When that's not the case, you would design the vehicles in a better way. You can make them more accessible.

Dr. Pena, thank you for our recent visit. I'd like to sort of pull on a thread that was mentioned by Mr. Farah, which is the safety case. You've indicated this is the backbone of your operations at Waymo. What does a safety case look like in practice and how does this framework allow you to identify and mitigate risks in real time before they ever manifest in the real world?

Thank you. Senator, the safety case is really an aggregation, a combination of the assessment that is done to ensure that the system is safe to deploy. That includes analysis, tests, simulation, and is put together in a logical argumentation that determines safety with evidence. So, you have to show evidence that backs it up.

Well, very good, very good. And we think that if we can get the regulatory atmosphere right, again, that we'll have immeasurable safety benefits to consumers. In my very limited time, I have not yet heard a lot of emphasis on the economic case which is also pretty compelling. Our need to stay ahead of not just the innovation curve but also the deployment curve in this country so that we'll continue to have the right incentives so that our workers and our industry can benefit from the economics of this. What are the economic benefits to the United States that we'll see if we can establish the right regulatory framework and what happens if China wins this competition?

Mr. Farah, do you have anything to add about the economic benefits to the United States generally and paint a brief picture of what happens if our chief national security adversary wins this economic competition?

Senator, I'll briefly state that what's really special about job creation in the AV sector is that you get all the jobs involved in building vehicles, but then you get all these other additive jobs involved in the technology development, involved in the servicing, involved in the fleet management and so on and so forth. So, this is really an economic boon to the United States.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Senator Rosen.

Thank you, Chairman Cruz. I appreciate you and all the witnesses for being here, for testifying today, and for the work that you're doing. Nevada's been at the forefront of autonomous vehicle testing and deployment. I'm proud to say, and I'm proud also to say our state is really helping to pave that way for this technology. AVs offer enormous potential to improve safety, reduce congestion, expand mobility for seniors and people with disabilities. I want to associate myself with Senator Duckworth's remarks. This is going to be critical for the future incorporation of AVs into all of our lives as we go from being a young person into, hopefully we all live to 105, right? But that promise of this is going to depend on robust safety standards. So, Nevada allows fully driverless operations in certain limited areas and autonomous vehicle companies have been operating in my hometown for some time and we're also hopeful that Waymo's autonomous ride-hailing service will begin in Las Vegas this summer after phased testing and local approvals bringing another major player into our AV ecosystem. So, Mr. Pena, you've been talking about the data sets and all the things that you've been learning. So, can you describe how the safety data that has emerged from what you've been doing, your test beds, your deployments so far, how does that data inform your approach to remote intervention protocols? Because we think about when something happens, you mentioned all the multitude of stoplights going out in maybe an emergency, a flood, a hurricane, whatever that is. And so, could you talk about how that is informing your remote intervention protocols?

Yes, Senator, we evaluate our system very thoroughly and methodically before we go into any particular area and in the event that the vehicle faces uncertainty, we have been conservative in terms of asking for guidance and as we evaluate those situations, we determine whether we can tune the vehicle or provide an update so that it can more confidently handle that scenario so that eventually that need to ask for guidance will be further reduced.

Well, and that leads me to calibration standards I guess as we re-evaluate, reapply on the data that we learn because Nevada's again been long been a leader on testing and deployment of AVs, an emphasis on real-world performance, what you really learn out there. Hopefully it's going to be shared with everyone because it's to the benefit of all of our safety, public safety and they continue to evolve on our roadways and their reliability. Ensuring that is critical again for the incorporation of this technology in our lives. So Waymo vehicles rely on a suite of sensors, radar, LiDAR, cameras. They come together for automated driving system. They allow the vehicle to perceive and respond to the environment just like all the vehicles do. I do believe that you need more than cameras for redundancy. Just for the record, these same types of sensors are also used in advanced driving assistance systems, increasingly common in vehicles today. They enable safety features like emergency braking, lane-keeping assistance now. And so we know that proper sensor calibration is really essential for these systems to function, right? Research shows that even a 0.2 degree misalignment, just a little bit in a camera at just 25 miles an hour can be the difference between a timely response and an untimely system activation that could result in devastating consequences whether the vehicle avoids collision or not. So Mr. Pena, I'm going to ask you again with that in mind. Can you speak to the importance of sensor calibration for Waymo's vehicles? How often are your vehicles calibrated, checked? How often do you make sure that they remain aligned over time? And appreciate that. And then if the others want to join in if they want to talk about that after.

And we do use a variety of sensors. So we use LiDAR which is a laser sensor, radar and cameras as well. And we're continuously checking their performance and their data. So this happens continuously as we drive. We check that they're performing to our expectations.

But if I'm the end user, how often are you going to calibrate my car? Be software updates? Are you going to be checking like how does this happen? Do I take it just for maintenance in between? I mean, I can see that this 0.2 degree misalignment causing a collision. If it's in between my regular maintenance, that seems a little bit of a hole there.

Real time, we're able to detect whether our sensors are misbehaving. And then because we have a variety of them, they're complementary. We're able to correct for that real time as we drive.

Real time as we drive. Does anyone else want to talk about calibrating of the sensors in real time or notifying the owner of the car that the sensors have been recalibrated? Take it to the next, like we, you know, some little emergency light, go to your service station wherever that is, service department.

Get that little check engine light, right?

Senator Fetterman.

Thank you, Chairman Cruz. And I trust you enjoyed your Permanis.

It was absolutely delicious. And I have to say you look damn handsome with that Texans bling.

Yes. Thank you. Okay. So, hi. I'm proud to represent Pennsylvania. Now, Pennsylvania has the fifth most truck drivers in the nation. Clearly, it's a very, very critical piece of our economy. And now, it's not an interesting story, but back in 1994, I worked with UPS drivers there, and I was proud to work with the Teamsters then back then, and now I also realized how difficult their way of life is, but I also think that something necessary that we need to protect. And now I am not going to bash AV or any of these things, nor am I a Luddite or anything. And I see it's a necessary part of the future moving forward. So that's I want to get that established. And I also want to acknowledge that Pittsburgh played a significant part of the history of developing AV as well too. So that means that we have, you know, two things must be true. Now for me, I'm going to be the voice for the 90,000 drivers here and I'm going to be the Teamsters' voice here. So, I don't ever ever let them be left behind. So, I think it's really those union members are very critical in this economy. So, I mean, Mr. Farah. What is your organization's proposal to deal with the workers like those 90,000 truckers here in my state? And now they of course they're concerned about losing their job because of the technology. If they were going to replace senators with chat bots, you know, we'd be pretty concerned here too and I assure you as well, too. So for me, it's an honest question, not anything. It's like why shouldn't trucks and other AVs be supervised by qualified operators on the roads and our highways? I mean, that's a sincere question.

Senator, I appreciate the question and I'll first thank you for acknowledging the role that Pennsylvania has played in autonomous vehicle development, both includes the companies itself, but also institutions like Carnegie Mellon. I want to be very clear in terms of the impact on truck drivers here. If someone is a truck driver today and they want to retire a truck driver, they absolutely will have the opportunity to do that. Autonomous vehicles are not out to replace truck drivers. Truck drivers are an indispensable critical aspect of our supply chain. They are the backbone of the American economy. I think people take for granted how many of their goods are brought to them by truck drivers in this country. The goal of the industry here is to coexist with autonomous trucks. We see roles for human truck drivers and autonomous trucks doing different types of functions. And when I talk to people that are involved in autonomous vehicle deployment, they see a hybrid network where certain functions are done by autonomous vehicles, others by human drivers. And that is something that is fundamental to the industry. And I will just say to conclude that we've had an incredible dialogue with many different entities within labor and we're very very sensitive to a lot of those concerns. We want opportunities to get out and talk to your constituents to describe how it is that we see a lot of this unfolding and make sure that we really answer any misconceptions that might be out there.

Yeah. No, I mean so for me absolutely your technology and are part of the future, but I also have to be clear that I'm going to make sure that the Teamsters are in their future as well now too. I'm not sure how many people would be comfortable getting in an AV jet, you know. I mean, I don't know. I do think it's entirely appropriate to have a human, you know, part of the equation. Anyway, moving. Now, I've heard that Waymo is bringing AV to Pennsylvania, you know.

Yes, we are. We're excited to serve your constituency.

Yeah. And now we've had some constituents reach out and now there are different kinds of, what's looking for, a lot of people in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia reached out. And it's different kinds of places with different streets and different kind of circumstances that are very unique there now too. And now a lot of people brought that to me where especially after that super storm, you know, Pittsburgh we got 16 hours of snow and Philadelphia got a lot now too. So now my question is how does your technology account for these kind of different drivers and the cultures in different communities across, you know, my state and the country. You know, questionably, are Waymo going to respect the parking chair?

Before we go into any territory, we do a very methodical approach. We first send our vehicles with a human driver to make sure that we understand the different street types, the topology. We understand the unique rhythms of the city and then we systematically and slowly then provide a little more autonomy still with a human behind the wheel just learning the city and we do that evaluation over time and when we feel we're ready we go through a safety board that evaluates, hey, are we really ready to deploy for that particular environment and we do a very thorough review before we fully take the human out of the equation. Which is what we're doing in your state.

Yeah. Well, I would strongly encourage Waymo to incorporate that to respect the parking chair. When you see examples of people that don't, it doesn't really end very well for folks like that. So regardless, so thank you. And now after all the questions are now complete, Chairman Cruz will bring this hearing to a close. Thank you for all the witnesses for all of their important testimony today. Senators have until close of business on Wednesday, February 11th to submit questions to the record. The witnesses will have close of business until Wednesday, February 25th to respond to any of those questions. This concludes today's hearing and the committee stands adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you, Senator.