Comment from David Clark

As a motorist in the United States I STRONGLY OPPOSE this proposal. Autonomous vehicles are still motorized vehicles which have significant weight. When one of these machines gets confused or needs a manual intervention, one cannot simply pick or push it out of the way - there must be a way to operate the vehicle directly at/in the vehicle. Therefore they must have appropriate controls for a human operator to operate. There have been many documented cases of these vehicles getting 'confused' or 'freezing up' due to various conditions they are unable to process. In those cases humans have had to enter the vehicle and fully control the car to get it out of the predicament it was in. If NHTSA removes these manual control interfaces it will eliminate this capability. That would then require a tow-truck that is specially equipped, and a tow operator who is specially trained on how to interface with these autonomous vehicles to correct the malfunction - even if it's simply having difficulty making a 3-point u-turn. Companies like Waymo have managed to create systems which operate autonomously while still having the legacy control systems in place. Most modern cars also have self-driving or highly assisted driving modes with all the control systems in place. It is illogical to remove these manual control systems from autonomous vehicles and would place the motoring public at greater risk of accident or injuries, or even death, should a autonomous vehicle need to be moved in an emergency situation. Please reconsider this proposal an DO NOT ALLOW these companies to remove manual controls from autonomous vehicles use on public roadways in the US.