OMB Approves NHTSA V2V NPRM

Yesterday the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced that it had approved a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) on vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V)communications. The advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) for this was published in August 2014.

The abstract for this rulemaking in the Fall 2016 Unified Agenda only provides a generic description of what V2V is, not how the agency plans to regulate those communications. It does note that V2V will form the backbone for future vehicle automation processes.

The ANPRM for this rulemaking was more about asking questions about V2V potential problems and solutions than proposing any actual regulatory language. We will have to wait and see the NPRM when it is published to find out what sort of requirements will be outlined in the new regulations. Hopefully, communications security and vulnerability reporting will be included in the NPRM.

There has been a long delay in the last six months between the OIRA approval of a rulemaking and publication of that rule in the Federal Register. This is undoubtedly due to Administration concerns with perceptions of midnight rulemaking, even with a rulemaking that has been in the works for as long as this one has.