AV Safety Data Act Forces Monthly Crash and Stop Reports from Self-Driving Car Companies, Mandates Public Data Release

The new AV Safety Data Act is forcing companies that make or operate self-driving cars and advanced Level 2 driver-assist systems (think high-end adaptive cruise control) to significantly open their books to the federal government. Specifically, the bill requires these companies to send the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) a detailed monthly report covering all incidents from the previous month. This isn't just a quick note; the report must include specifics like mileage broken down by location and software version, details on any crash involving pedestrians or other vehicles, and comprehensive information on all 'unplanned stoppage events.'

The Fine Print on Roadside Stops

If you’ve ever been stuck behind a self-driving test vehicle that suddenly froze up in traffic, this bill is focused on that. An "unplanned stoppage event" is defined as when the automated system causes the car to stop in a travel lane or mess up public transit, law enforcement, or work zones. The only exception is if a human driver intentionally caused the stop or it was a collision. The reporting requirements for these stops are intense: companies must provide the VIN, the exact time and place, the road type, environmental conditions, and how long it took for the company to manually intervene and resolve the situation. For the average driver, this means we should finally start getting concrete data on how often these systems get confused and cause problems in real-world traffic.

Transparency is the Engine

The biggest win for the public is transparency. Starting 120 days after the law passes, NHTSA must post all of this collected data online in a machine-readable format. This means researchers, safety advocates, and even competing companies will have access to standardized, comprehensive safety statistics. For consumers looking to buy a vehicle with advanced driver assistance, this data dump could finally provide the hard numbers needed to compare the safety performance of different systems, moving beyond marketing claims to actual road results. This shift gives NHTSA the standardized data they need for proper oversight, which is a massive benefit for public safety.

The Level 2 Loophole and Regulatory Grip

For vehicles using Level 2 driver-assist systems (where the human is still responsible for monitoring), the bill includes a specific restriction: companies can only report data when the system was actively engaged or in the 30 seconds before an unplanned stop. Critically, these reports cannot include any personal information about the human driver. This is a sensible privacy protection, but it also limits the scope of data collected for systems where human interaction is key. Furthermore, the bill locks in these reporting requirements for a decade, preventing the NHTSA Administrator from reducing the burden for 10 years, though they are explicitly allowed to make the rules stricter at any time. For manufacturers, this means a significant, long-term increase in compliance costs and the public release of data that might reveal proprietary operational details.