Rules & rights · US
NHTSA withdraws the AV STEP rulemaking: the voluntary ADS evaluation program is dead as of June 26, 2026
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has withdrawn its January 2025 proposal for a voluntary AV STEP program. The withdrawal notice relays commenters' concerns about sparse expected participation and overlap with State rules, and points to substitute initiatives under the April 2025 Automated Vehicle Framework. A look at what the proposed program would have required, why the agency pulled it, and what the notice says remains in place for automated driving systems in the US market.
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The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has formally withdrawn its proposed Automated Driving System-Equipped Vehicle Safety, Transparency, and Evaluation Program, known as AV STEP. The withdrawal notice published in the Federal Register on June 26, 2026 ends the notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) that the agency had issued on January 15, 2025 at 90 FR 4130. According to the notice, the NPRM "is withdrawn as of June 26, 2026." The document carries docket number NHTSA-2024-0100 and was signed by Administrator Jonathan Morrison.
AV STEP had been pitched as a voluntary framework rather than a binding regulation. The proposal would have covered vehicle manufacturers, developers of Automated Driving Systems (ADS), and fleet operators or system integrators of ADS-equipped vehicles, with participation open to entities that applied rather than imposed on the whole industry.
What the proposal would have required
The NPRM, published on January 15, 2025, would have set up a program in which participating entities agreed to certain reporting requirements and public disclosures about their operations. The comment period closed on March 17, 2025, and NHTSA received 37 comments.
Two levels of participation were proposed, based largely on the extent to which a vehicle relied on an ADS in its operations. Entities could have applied with vehicles that met all applicable Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS), or with vehicles covered by one of two new exemption types: one for vehicles that do not comply with all applicable FMVSS, and a second for vehicles that originally complied but would be taken out of compliance by an ADS retrofit. The program also included specific application and participation requirements, such as application information that applicants would have had to submit to NHTSA regarding their equipment and operations, and, for certain aspects of the proposal, submission of a third-party summary.
Why the agency pulled it
NHTSA says it acted on its reevaluation of the proposal, consideration of the comments received, and subsequent progress on other ADS initiatives. A central theme of the comments was that the program was not likely to be as effective or as robust as intended; because the program's intent was voluntary, comments suggested it would have had sparse participation and a low expected value. Industry commenters also suggested the proposal would have maintained an undesirable lack of consistent State laws and regulations for ADS, because its requirements would have sat on top of any State or local rules.
The notice also records that safety advocates, among other stakeholders, expressed concern that a voluntary program would not offer a sufficiently comprehensive regulatory tool. NHTSA adds that several key goals of the proposal, such as improving the agency's exemption programs, have recently been furthered through separate initiatives as part of the Automated Vehicle (AV) Framework announced in April 2025, and that these improvements addressed certain considerations that originally prompted the proposal.
What remains in place
The withdrawal notice points to the April 2025 AV Framework as the vehicle for the initiatives that took over several of AV STEP's goals, citing in footnotes a Department of Transportation announcement of the framework dated April 24, 2025 and open letters from NHTSA Chief Counsel Peter Simshauser dated April 24, 2025 and June 13, 2025 concerning, per their file names, the automated vehicle exemption program and Part 555 exemptions. The notice itself describes these as separate initiatives that furthered goals such as improving NHTSA's exemption programs.
The withdrawal is styled as a deregulatory action under Executive Order 14192, Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation (90 FR 9065, Feb. 6, 2025), because it withdraws an NPRM issued before January 20, 2025 that had been determined to be "significant" under Executive Order 12866. It was issued under authority delegated in 49 CFR 1.95 and 501.4.
Readers can check the withdrawal themselves in the Federal Register document 2026-12980 (91 FR 38619), published June 26, 2026, which states the withdrawal date and the citation of the withdrawn NPRM; the older NPRM of January 15, 2025 remains viewable on FederalRegister.gov under its own document listing.