Capitol Tonight: Self-Driving Cars & AI on Texas Roads

HOST: Welcome back. Next week, new regulations are coming for self-driving cars and trucks on Texas roads. A new law will now require self-driving vehicles to get state approval before operating without a driver. It also gives the Department of Motor Vehicles the ability to revoke that approval if companies don't follow safety standards. The law goes into effect on Monday, September 1st. In light of the incoming regulations, for today's Business Roundtable, we're looking at the state of self-driving cars in Texas and where things could go next. For that, we're joined by a political economy reporter at the Houston Chronicle, Megan Kimball, and the founder and CEO of TexCap Policy Institute, Gavin Nicholson. Thank you both for joining us.

HOST: So Megan, let's start with you. What are the current rules around autonomous vehicles — are there any?

MEGAN KIMBALL: There is a state law that was passed in 2017 that effectively prohibits cities from regulating self-driving cars. Otherwise, it basically just welcomes self-driving vehicles onto Texas roads. So I could start a self-driving car company tomorrow, deploy my cars, and I wouldn't have to register with the state. What the new law does is mean that I would have to proactively register with the state — and they could withdraw that approval at any time.

HOST: And what does that do in terms of safety, in terms of what these companies have to do?

MEGAN KIMBALL: It means the state has more control over potentially bad actors. If a company's cars are not acting as they should, the state can withdraw that approval. It gives them much more control over safety standards. Companies also have to submit first-responder interaction plans — here's how our cars can be pulled over by police, here's how you might ticket a car, here's who's responsible for paying a potential fine. So it gives the state much more oversight over safety.

HOST: Gavin, I want to go to you, because you just put out a white paper that, among other things, shows autonomous vehicles are less likely to get involved in a crash compared to human drivers. It's still a new technology, so people are understandably a little iffy about it. What can you tell us about this, and the fears some people have about driverless cars?

GAVIN NICHOLSON: Well, the issue at hand — and the Texas Department of Transportation will tell you this — is that Texas is one of the worst offenders when it comes to car accidents and road deaths. At both the national and state level, any attempt, any technology that can reduce those fatalities and crashes is greatly appreciated. Where autonomous vehicles come into play, safety is the biggest liability — the questions that arise are what happens when a vehicle gets into a crash, and who's responsible. And even though there's some apprehension, that apprehension comes with any new technology. Think about when the internet came out in the '90s — how many people said this is never going to catch on? Now it's connected to everything we do. I think we'll see real applications for autonomous vehicles, both for personal use and, really, in the trucking industry. If you don't have a physical driver behind the vehicle, a semi-truck can go from point A to point B — it doesn't get tired, it's not going to swerve on the road.

HOST: I'm fascinated by this, because I want to live in a world where I don't have a car — I can just call one. But on safety: you had a specific number for how much safer driverless cars are compared to driven cars. What can you say about that?

GAVIN NICHOLSON: Based on publicly available data — we don't have access to companies' private internal data — we know they're about 60% safer than a human driver. That doesn't mean these vehicles will never get into a crash; they absolutely will. But they report every single crash, whether it's a small fender-bender or a fatality. The specific figure is about nine crashes for every million miles. Scale that up to how Texas measures crashes — per 100 million miles — and it's about 90 crashes. For comparison, the Texas Department of Transportation reports roughly 156 crashes per 100 million miles for human drivers. So it's a pretty significant difference, and that's just the reported data.

HOST: Megan, Gavin mentioned autonomous semi-trucks — some are already on I-45 between Houston and Dallas, some in the Permian Basin. How could that revolutionize how we move things around?

MEGAN KIMBALL: The biggest potential is, like Gavin said, safety. There are already autonomous trucks on highways between Dallas and Houston and in the Permian Basin — a lot of people don't know that, and many respond understandably with fear at the idea of these 60,000-pound vehicles without a driver. But it's important to note how many people are killed by human-driven semi-trucks every year in Texas. More than 4,000 people die on Texas roads every year, and a large share involve semi-trucks. To me, as a Texan and a driver, the biggest revolution is around safety — knowing that on I-45 you're not next to a tired driver.

HOST: Gavin, in your white paper you said policymakers should continue to create a responsible regulatory environment, but balance that by not being scared of AI. How do you walk that line?

GAVIN NICHOLSON: AI is the big buzzword — everyone loves talking about it, and everyone thinks it's brand-new technology that's never been explored. The reality is AI has been around since the '50s in its most rudimentary form. Alexa is an AI. The AI in these autonomous vehicles is trained on millions upon millions of miles of driver data, with engineers coming in and fixing the mistakes. When I say we need to balance accountability and innovation, it means that when we write policy, we shouldn't apply it to just autonomous vehicles — it has to make sense across the board.

HOST: That's all the time we have. Gavin, Megan — thank you so much for joining us.