By: Dawn Zoldi
Automated vehicles (AVs) and automated driving systems (ADS) are colliding with national security concerns in ways that will shape both America’s roads and its strategic resilience. At GBEF EDGE 2026, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Administrator Jonathan Morrison framed AV autonomy as a pillar of safety, economic strength and technological leadership in a world where transportation infrastructure has become a strategic asset.
From Traffic Safety To Strategic Security
The United States still sees roughly 6 million police‑reported crashes each year, with tens of thousands of deaths and millions of serious injuries. Despite incremental improvement after the pandemic spike that pushed fatalities from about 36,000 in 2019 to more than 43,000 in 2021, the nation remains thousands of deaths above pre‑pandemic levels.
According to Morrison, that toll does not just present a public health challenge. It drags economic productivity and creates a vulnerability in national resilience. Every crash that takes a truck off the road, injures a skilled worker or disrupts logistics is a small blow to the broader system the United States depends on for supply chains, emergency response and defense readiness.
Autonomy As A Safety Engine
Morrison described NHTSA’s mandate in two domains, behavioral safety and vehicle safety. He said both increasingly intersect in AV autonomy.
On the behavioral side, the data has been stubborn for years. About half of traffic fatalities involve people who choose not to wear seat belts. Roughly one third involve impairment from alcohol or drugs. Around 30 percent involve speeding. Distracted driving, from drivers checking messages to posting on social media rather than waiting to reach their destination, compounds those risks.
NHTSA’s traditional responses, such as national campaigns like “Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over” and “Click It or Ticket,” backed by roughly one billion dollars a year in highway safety grants, remain central to educating the public on safety. But the agency increasingly looks to vehicle technology, particularly in advanced AV platforms, to counter the human factors that drive those statistics.
Smart AVs And Automated Driving
On the vehicle side, Morrison emphasized that nearly all new vehicles in the United States now ship with forward collision warning and automatic emergency braking. Both reduce crash forces and, in many scenarios, prevent forward crashes entirely. Blind spot monitoring and lane‑keeping assistance help prevent side‑impact collisions and roadway departures. Collectively they save thousands of lives.
Yet these advanced driver assistance systems are not fully autonomous. They still depend on a human driver supervising the system and intervening when “things go weird.” Morrison drew a clear line between these driver‑assist features and fully automated driving systems that execute the entire dynamic driving task, both operational and tactical, from trip start to destination, without ever requiring human intervention.
Autonomy’s National Security Dimension
While Morrison spoke in the language of safety and mobility, the implications for national security are hard to miss. Automated driving platforms that never drive impaired or distracted, and that should not speed or violate traffic laws if their developers are held accountable, offer more than just crash reduction. They promise a transportation backbone that remains dependable under stress, from disaster response to surges in logistics demand.
Expanding access to mobility is also a security concern in a broad sense. Morrison highlighted the potential for automated vehicles to connect people who cannot or should not drive (think: those without licenses, people with disabilities and older adults) to the economy and civic life. A more fully participating population strengthens labor markets, social cohesion and the ability to mobilize talent and resources in crises.
The U.S. AV Model As Strategic Advantage
Morrison argued that the United States has a structural advantage in how it regulates vehicle safety, one that directly affects AV autonomy and national competitiveness. Under the Vehicle Safety Act, NHTSA issues performance‑based Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) and manufacturers self-certify their compliance. NHTSA verifies compliance in the marketplace and acts when defects create an unreasonable risk to safety.
This differs from premarket approval systems elsewhere, where new technologies cannot be deployed until regulators specifically authorize them. By contrast, the U.S. model allows deployment unless and until technologies are unsafe, backed by broad defect authority and recall powers that apply regardless of whether a specific standard is implicated. Morrison cast this as an “elegant and effective” framework. It keeps pace with technology by enabling innovation while maintaining a strong safety backstop.
Updating Rules For Driverless EVs
Despite that strategic strength, Morrison acknowledged that many FMVSS were written for a world that assumed a human driver and traditional controls. Brake performance rules, for example, are built around manual foot controls and specified pedal forces, which do not map neatly onto vehicles with no steering wheel or brake pedal. Without updates or exemptions, innovative AV designs with automated driving systems are forced into regulatory molds that no longer reflect the realities of software‑defined vehicles.
NHTSA has already spent several years identifying where legacy standards conflict with nontraditional designs, translating requirements so they can apply to new vehicle architectures without compromising safety. For example, a major rulemaking finalized in 2022 addressed occupant protection in vehicles with forward‑facing cabin configurations but no manual driving controls. It clarified that occupant protection standards do not apply to vehicles never meant to carry humans, such as fully automated delivery platforms.
Enforcement, Recalls And Public Trust
Autonomy’s promise does not mean regulators look the other way when things go wrong. Morrison noted that as developers test automated driving systems on public roads, NHTSA has observed both odd but annoying behaviors, such as vehicles stopping in lanes for extended periods, and more serious unsafe actions that trigger enforcement. The agency has launched multiple defect investigations into AV developers and pushed several recalls, signaling it “will not be shy” when it sees risks to the public.
That enforcement stance is deeply tied to national security. An automated vehicle ecosystem that the public does not trust, because failures are ignored or data is not captured, would be brittle in a crisis. By insisting on robust crash reporting, modernized defect oversight and transparent corrective action, NHTSA is trying to build a foundation where AV autonomy can scale without undermining confidence in critical transportation systems.
A New Federal AV Framework
Under direction from President Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, NHTSA has been tasked with building a new federal AV framework that balances safety and innovation rather than treating them as opposing goals. Morrison said the framework is built on three core principles to enhance safety and mobility:
- Prioritizing the safety of AV operations on public roads
- Removing unnecessary regulatory barriers to unleash innovation and
- Enabling commercial deployment of AVs, including purpose‑built vehicles without traditional controls.
Concrete steps already underway include streamlined AV crash reporting focused on essential information, an expanded and simplified exemption program for research and development (R&D) that places U.S. developers on a more level playing field with foreign competitors and a more efficient process for deciding AV exemption applications. NHTSA has also convened in‑person workshops with industry and completed the final volume of its technical translations of FMVSS for vehicles with nontraditional designs, which is now feeding into a broader rulemaking agenda.
2026: A Pivotal Policy Year
Morrison signaled that 2026 will be a “big year” for federal AV policy as NHTSA accelerates updates to FMVSS to remove barriers to new technologies while maintaining or strengthening safety requirements. The agency has already announced proposals addressing items such as windshield wipers, windshield washers, gear shifters and lighting to better accommodate ADS.
More rulemakings remain in the pipeline, alongside new guidance for the AV exemption program aimed at supporting commercial deployment and fresh iterations of NHTSA guidance documents that reflect technological progress since the first Trump administration. Topics under consideration include safety cases, safety management systems (SMS) and the way developers use remote assistance when vehicles encounter unexpected or challenging situations, areas that matter for both day‑to‑day safety and resilience under abnormal conditions.
Avoiding Distorted Designs
Beyond AV‑specific regulations, Morrison pointed to a subtler policy frontier: removing “artificial distortions” in rules that nudge vehicle designs in directions unrelated to safety or consumer demand. In a recent fuel economy proposal, for example, NHTSA examined how classification criteria incentivized automakers to add certain design elements purely to achieve favorable regulatory categories, which helps explain why so many small crossovers look similar.
The same dynamic appears in safety regulations, where detailed requirements that stray from core safety goals can constrain creative designs that might otherwise deliver greater safety more efficiently.
Morrison’s vision is to “liberate” the auto sector to build a new generation of safer vehicles, using novel approaches that align with customer preferences, rather than a never‑ending list of check‑the‑box features. This shift matters for AV autonomy where hardware, software and infrastructure must evolve together.
Autonomy, Competitiveness and The Road Ahead
At the close of his remarks, Morrison tied this regulatory evolution to global competition, noting that the United States is in a “tight race” to maintain its technological edge. Automated vehicles, many of them electric, networked, and heavily software‑defined, can play a major role in improving safety, efficiency, and accessibility on American roads…but only if policy keeps pace with engineering.
By modernizing standards, enforcing defects rigorously and enabling commercial deployment through clear frameworks and exemptions, NHTSA is positioning AV autonomy as both a public safety tool and a strategic asset. 2026 and the years beyond will determine whether the United States turns that promise into a resilient, secure and smarter transportation system…or cedes the field to others willing to move faster.