10-4 Magazine / June 2025 57 Operation Safe Driver Week will run from July 13-19 this year, with a focus on reckless, careless, and dangerous driving. Officers in Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. will be looking for commercial drivers’ unsafe habits. During last year’s initiative, officers in Canada and the U.S. pulled over 11,050 vehicles, issued 2,712 tickets and citations, and gave 3,228 warnings to both commercial and passenger vehicle drivers. Research shows these interactions have had a positive impact on safe driver rates over time. The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) runs Operation Safe Driver Week every summer to help encourage safe driver practices and improve road safety. Law enforcement personnel are looking for speeding, following too close, drunk, drugged and distracted driving, and other unsafe driving habits. Drivers who engage in these types of behaviors will be pulled over and issued a warning or citation. Any person who drives a vehicle with clear disregard for safety is considered a reckless driver. All drivers must operate with due care and attention, with a reasonable consideration for everyone else on the road. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration revealed that 42,514 people were killed in crashes in 2022. In Canada, there were 1,931 fatalities in 2022, while Mexico reported 15,979 road deaths. The goal of Operation Safe Driver Week is to address and reduce these rates by improving awareness. To boost these efforts, CVSA offers driver education initiatives to bring added attention and information to their cause including resources for teen drivers and new drivers, commercial motor vehicle drivers, and public service announcements. Moving on to our next topic, testing and deployment of self-driving trucks may accelerate after the federal government announced a new “automated vehicle framework” and California is contemplating new rules allowing them, as well. The first actions under this new framework will help accelerate work toward modernizing Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) is maintaining its Standing General Order on crash reporting for vehicles equipped with certain advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and automated driving systems (ADS). However, the agency will streamline the reporting to sharpen the focus on critical safety information while removing “unnecessary and duplicative” requirements. NHTSA is expanding the Automated Vehicle Exemption Program (AVEP) to now include domestically produced vehicles. Previously open only to imported automated vehicles, AVEP has promoted vehicle innovation and safety through simpler, faster exemption procedures that allow companies to operate non-compliant imported vehicles on U.S. roads. NHTSA announced the change via an open letter to AV developers on April 24, 2025. “This administration understands that we’re in a race with China to out-innovate, and the stakes couldn’t be higher,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy in a news release. “As part of DOT’s innovation agenda, our new framework will slash red tape and move us closer to a single national standard that spurs innovation and prioritizes safety.” The California Department of Motor Vehicles is proposing regulations for testing and deployment of heavy-duty commercial autonomous vehicles on California’s public roads. Under the newly proposed framework, heavy-duty autonomous vehicles (weighing 10,001 pounds or more) can now be tested with an approved permit from the DMV. The state currently prohibits these autonomous vehicles weighing more than 10,000 pounds on public roads, but self-driving heavy-duty trucks are already being tested in other states such as Texas and Arizona. Safety advocates and the Teamsters union will likely oppose the regulations. The California legislature passed a bill backed by the Teamsters in 2023 to require human drivers aboard any self-driving heavy-duty trucks, but it was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. What do California’s proposed autonomous-truck regulations say? Applications received after the new regulations are implemented will be subject to a phased permitting process for AV testing and deployment. Initially, manufacturers must obtain a permit for testing with a safety driver. Subsequent phases require obtaining a Driverless Testing Permit and a Deployment Permit after completing the required test miles and submitting a report detailing the testing conducted. These steps ensure that manufacturers meet stringent safety requirements through a comprehensive process tailored to each manufacturer’s technology and operational environment, according to a California DMV news release. Heavy-duty autonomous trucks would be limited to testing and deployment in an “operational design domain” that only includes routes legal for the vehicle’s size and weight load. They aren’t allowed on local roads with a speed limit of 25 mph or less unless those roads are “within the shortest distance to freeways from hubs, motor carrier and shipper facilities, distribution centers, fueling and charging stations, and end points, while using arterial roadways wherever possible.” Autonomous commercial vehicle test drivers, remote drivers, and remote assistants would need to comply with the state and federal commercial driver requirements, including licensing and hours-of-service restrictions. Manufacturers would be allowed to receive compensation for transporting goods during the testing. Certain types of commercial vehicle operations would be excluded including household movers, oversized loads, hazardous materials, and bulk liquids requiring a tanker endorsement. The DMV said the proposed regulations offer the nation’s most comprehensive rules for the operation of autonomous vehicles. The updated rules also refine the guidelines for light-duty AVs, enhancing data reporting requirements and implementing recent legislative changes from AB 1777. These include updated protocols for autonomous vehicle interactions with first responders and a new procedure for law enforcement to report potential non-compliance with traffic regulations. There’s a 45-day public comment period that ends June 9, 2025. After the conclusion of the public comment period, the DMV will conduct a public hearing to gather further input on the regulations. Details regarding the date and location of this hearing will be announced separately, closer to the event, along with an invitation for public participation. Written comments may be submitted to LADRegulations@dmv.ca.gov during the 45-day period. The proposed regulations are available on the DMV’s Autonomous Vehicles web page, so check it out. n MORE FUN STUFF! Wayne’s World: By Wayne Schooling
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