Trump administration rewrites auto safety rules to clear the road for driverless vehicles

The federal government just told autonomous vehicle makers they might not need to install brake pedals anymore.

On June 25, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposed updating Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards to remove the mandate for physical brake controls in vehicles designed exclusively for automated driving systems. The move is part of a broader, aggressive push by the Trump administration to rewrite decades-old safety regulations that were built around a simple assumption: a human is behind the wheel.

What the new framework actually changes

The specific proposal targets FMVSS No. 135, the federal standard governing braking systems. Under the current rules, every passenger vehicle sold in the US needs a brake pedal. The update wouldn’t eliminate braking performance standards entirely. Vehicles would still need to meet stopping distance requirements. They just wouldn’t need a physical pedal to do it.

This single rule change sits inside a much larger initiative. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy has been leading what the administration calls the “Automated Vehicle Framework,” which has introduced at least five updates to FMVSS since its launch. The framework covers everything from simplifying exemptions for non-compliant vehicles to establishing national performance standards specifically for autonomous driving.

Previous administrations, including Trump’s own first term and the Biden years, mostly tried to work around existing regulations by granting exemptions or issuing guidance documents. This time, the approach is fundamentally different: rewrite the rules themselves.

Who wins and who worries

The companies most likely to benefit are the ones building purpose-built autonomous vehicles. Tesla and Amazon-owned Zoox are among the firms positioned to capitalize on less restrictive regulations for ADS-only vehicles. For Zoox, which has been developing a bidirectional vehicle with no steering wheel, removing the brake pedal requirement eliminates one of the biggest regulatory obstacles to commercial deployment.

Safety advocates have called for the establishment of specific performance benchmarks for AVs before loosening the regulatory framework, arguing that the government is moving quickly without first defining what “safe enough” actually means for a car with no human backup.

What this means for investors and the broader market

For investors in AV-adjacent companies, the regulatory shift represents a meaningful reduction in one of the biggest risks in the sector: the possibility that federal rules would keep purpose-built autonomous vehicles off public roads for years. By rewriting rather than merely exempting, the administration is creating a more durable legal foundation for commercial deployment.

There’s also the question of state-level regulation. Federal standards set the floor, but states retain significant authority over vehicle registration and road access. A vehicle that meets updated FMVSS standards could still face restrictions in states that haven’t updated their own AV laws.

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