At NHTSA's Autonomous Vehicles Safety Forum on March 10, 2026, held at DOT Headquarters and attended by hundreds of industry stakeholders, the through-line was unmistakable: the U.S. risks ceding its global leadership in AV technology if it doesn't get its regulatory act together soon.

In his opening remarks, Secretary Duffy called for a “Goldilocks” regulatory approach that neither stifles innovation nor allows the US to fall behind globally. NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison framed the Agency's posture as one of "deliberate urgency," organized around three pillars: prioritize safety, remove regulatory barriers, and enable commercial deployment.

Several concrete actions are already underway. DOT is streamlining the exemption process for commercial AV applications, citing Zoox's recently published exemption request for its steering wheel-free vehicle was cited as an example. Separately, it is working to update Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) to shed requirements written for human-operated vehicles. The first two proposed changes were published on March 13. NHTSA is also refreshing its developer guidance, which hasn't been touched since 2017, to address realities like remote operations and meaningful safety metrics. A broader National AV Strategy, spanning all modal agencies and extending to state, local, and first responder stakeholders, is in development.

Industry voices from the likes of Waymo, Aurora, and Zoox stressed the necessity of public trust and a federal, technology-neutral approach that isn’t just necessary for national scalability. They emphasized transparency, internal safety audits, blameless reporting, and the use of upstream safety indicators rather than reactive measures. Real-world data, combined with physical and virtual testing, is critical for validating AV safety.

The forum also surfaced harder questions, such as how to measure AV safety meaningfully by focusing on leading indicators like near-misses rather than just crash data, whether humans are even the right benchmark, and how cybersecurity fits as a core safety layer rather than an afterthought.

The motivation is real, and the stakes are as much geopolitical as they are economic. Whether the pace matches it is the question.