Comment from ClearX LLC

I submit this comment as an independent consultant specializing in autonomous systems safety, certification risk, and institutional readiness, with prior experience in flight test engineering and airworthiness certification for autonomous and safety-critical systems. Without corresponding litigation or regulatory oversight into manufacturing risk, this proposal is an ambitious step forward that could endanger public safety and expose users to citations and liability arising from unknown malfunctions in degraded sensor or instrument conditions. Removing the manual brake control requirement without mandating an alternative, verifiable safety mechanism to preserve human-in-the-loop override would allow manufacturers to effectively absolve themselves of responsibility for human factors and algorithmic errors — permanently shifting the locus of vehicle safety decision-making to engineering teams who are frequently driven by competitive deadlines rather than safety outcomes. This concern is not speculative. NHTSA's own proposal acknowledges, in a footnote, that the agency is "taking no position at this time as to how a passenger should be able to direct an ADS-operated vehicle to stop, or how the ADS should respond to such direction," and separately states that the rule does not address "whether the vehicle's brakes are actuated appropriately given a specific driving scenario." In other words, NHTSA is proposing to eliminate the sole existing hardware safeguard for occupant-initiated stopping while explicitly declining to define the behavioral or performance standard that would replace it. Deferring this question to future ADS performance standards and after-the-fact defect enforcement authority means the safety gap this rule creates will exist in practice before it exists in regulation — with real vehicles, real passengers, and real roads bearing that interim risk. Certification frameworks in other safety-critical domains — aviation among them — do not permit removal of a fail-safe control pathway before an equivalent, independently validated alternative is proven and standardized. I urge NHTSA to either (1) delay finalization of this rule until a corresponding occupant-override or fail-safe performance standard is concurrently adopted, or (2) require manufacturers to demonstrate, through independent third-party validation, an equivalent level of safety assurance for stopping-command reliability before deployment of any vehicle relying on this exemption.