Congress Divided: Self-Driving Car Laws Prioritize Speed Over Safety Concerns

To put America’s traffic fatalities into perspective, consider the Miami Marlins. Since 2012, the team has played its home games at LoanDepot Park, a stadium with an official capacity of 36,742. That’s roughly the number of Americans who die in traffic crashes every year. In other words, the U.S. loses a baseball stadium’s worth of lives to vehicular accidents annually.

For the first time, there is a viable solution to prevent many—perhaps most—of these deaths: self-driving cars. Yet the technology remains controversial. Some critics cite safety concerns, while others worry about job losses. Opposition from labor unions and local officials has already delayed deployments in cities like Washington, D.C., and Boston. Now, Congress is attempting to draft legislation to regulate self-driving cars, including safety standards and operational guidelines.

Instead of a single bill, lawmakers have produced two opposing pieces of legislation, each reflecting different priorities. The first, the SELF DRIVE Act, aims to establish the first federal statute governing automated vehicle (AV) safety. It would allow manufacturers to self-certify their systems against a “safety case” standard—a structured, evidence-based argument that their technology poses no unreasonable risk of accidents. The bill would also raise the cap on deployed vehicles from 2,500 to 90,000. The SELF DRIVE Act passed a House subcommittee in February by a 12–11 vote but has not yet been scheduled for full committee markup.

The second bill, the Stay in Your Lane Act, introduced in the Senate by Sens. Ed Markey (D–Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D–Conn.), takes a stricter approach. It would require manufacturers to define an operational design domain (ODD)—the specific conditions under which their system is designed to operate safely—and prohibit operation outside those parameters.

The Hidden Forces Behind Self-Driving Car Legislation

The competing bills reveal a familiar pattern in high-stakes regulation, one that traces back to Prohibition. A century ago, both moral advocates and criminal enterprises pushed for alcohol restrictions. Economist Bruce Yandle later coined the term “bootleggers and Baptists” to describe such unlikely alliances: the Baptists provide moral legitimacy, while the bootleggers stand to gain financially and exert political influence.

A similar coalition is shaping the debate over self-driving car laws. Though both bills are framed as safety measures, each has its own mix of advocates and commercial interests. Yet despite their safety-focused arguments, neither side is engaging with the actual safety data that could resolve the dispute.

The Bills Congress Wrote for Its Own Interests

The “Baptist” case for the SELF DRIVE Act argues that faster deployment of self-driving cars would save more lives. There is merit to this claim. Most of