Mario Loyola
On April 24, 2025, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy announced a new Automated Vehicle Framework as part of the Department’s Innovation Agenda, saying, “American is in the middle of an innovation race with China, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.”REF The Department’s announcements—streamlining reporting requirements, facilitating research and protype testing, and clearing the way for rapid commercialization of AV technologies,—signals a renewed commitment to winning the innovation race in autonomous vehicles (AVs). And as Secretary Duffy said, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Fully autonomous vehicles (AVs) promise to transform everyday life for the better, liberating Americans to spend more time on productive work and leisure activities through a transportation mode that will almost certainly be much safer than the manually driven cars of today.
If America is able to lead the AV revolution in the decades ahead, the implications for America’s standing in the world will be immense. Just as Ford’s Model T helped to make America the world’s superpower in the 20th century, so can AVs help to maintain that status in the 21st century.
But America’s ability to lead the AV revolution faces significant challenges. The policy innovation at the Department of Transportation during President Donald Trump’s first term stopped under President Joe Biden, as the Biden Administration sought to accommodate powerful anti-innovation pressures from key political constituencies. The disjointed regulatory framework that has evolved as a result does not reflect sound policy and is not favorable to innovation. China is advancing much faster than the U.S. in its development of a transportation policy framework that is favorable to AVs.
As in other areas, America needs to embrace a regulatory framework that prioritizes freedom, privacy, and safety, while facilitating investment, innovation, and competition.
The data collection and transmission entailed in AVs pose a considerable risk to privacy that must be addressed by robust privacy protections. » Read More
https://www.heritage.org/government-regulation/report/paving-the-way-autonomous-vehicles-the-future-mobility-here