Congress Moves to Force National Safety Rules on Robotaxis After Emergency Response Failures

Robotaxis have a pattern of getting in the way at exactly the wrong moment, and lawmakers are done waiting for the industry to fix it on its own.

Rep. Kevin Mullin (D-Calif.) is introducing a bill this week that would push federal regulators to set minimum national safety standards for autonomous vehicle operators, specifically around how those vehicles behave around police, firefighters, and paramedics. The legislation arrives after a string of incidents in which self-driving cars have blocked ambulances, driven into active crime scenes, or failed to recognize cones and flares marking off hazards. A TechCrunch investigation earlier this year found multiple cases where Waymo needed first responders to physically climb in and drive its cars away after the vehicles got stuck or confused.

The bill, called the AV Emergency Response Coordination Act, was unveiled Tuesday at a press conference in San Francisco — fitting, given that the city is both a major AV testing ground and home to hundreds of paying-passenger Waymo rides already on the road. San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, Fire Chief Dean Crispen, and Cathy Chase, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, joined Mullin to back the proposal.

"We have seen disturbing, and frankly, an unacceptable number of incidents where autonomous vehicles inadvertently interfere with emergency responders," Mullin said at the event.

What the bill would actually require

The legislation has three main components. AV companies would need to provide first responders with clear, documented emergency protocols. They'd have to staff a 24-hour hotline giving public officials a direct line to the company when something goes wrong in real time. And the bill would direct the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to write minimum national standards for how autonomous vehicles handle emergency situations.

The provision likely to draw the most attention from AV operators is a new geofencing mechanism. It would give public officials the authority to restrict where autonomous vehicles can operate during an active emergency or safety hazard — essentially a real-time kill switch on a company's operating area, rather than a request the company can choose to honor or ignore. That's a meaningful shift in leverage. Right now, cities and fire departments can flag problems, but they have no formal mechanism to force an AV fleet out of an area while a situation is unfolding.

Crispen, the fire chief, said his department has worked cooperatively with AV companies, but that a recurring pattern of problems has made clear something more binding is needed. He pointed to a specific, mundane-sounding but serious issue: robotaxis picking up and dropping off riders directly in front of fire stations and ambulance bays, physically blocking emergency vehicles from getting out.

Waymo's response — and the deadline it already missed

Waymo told TechCrunch in a statement that it has "long supported" a federal framework for AV standards and said it backs efforts to standardize how developers coordinate with first responders. The company described its existing emergency protocols and first-responder training as central to its operations nationwide, and said a consistent set of minimum guidelines would benefit both the industry and public safety officials who need certainty about what to expect when they encounter a driverless car.

That statement lands against a backdrop of federal impatience that's been building for weeks. In early July, NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison sent a letter to AV developers stating the agency had identified "a clear pattern of driverless AVs interfering with law enforcement and other first responders." Morrison gave companies until the end of the month to present solutions. That deadline has already passed, which raises the stakes on Waymo, Zoox, and other operators to demonstrate concrete progress before regulators decide to act unilaterally.

San Francisco's own experience has fed directly into this fight. Mayor Lurie has been pushing California regulators to tighten AV rules since a July 4th incident in which several Waymo vehicles ran out of power and blocked key streets, contributing to an hours-long traffic jam. That followed a separate episode in December when a widespread power outage left dozens of Waymo vehicles stranded across the city. Lurie has cited both incidents in calling for stronger state-level rules, and he showed up to back Mullin's bill in person.

"Residents and visitors should be able to take an AV, public transit, or bike around our city safely, and they must also trust that our police and fire departments can reach them in an emergency," Lurie said at the press conference.

Why this moment is different

None of this exists in isolation. Robotaxi companies have spent years arguing that their safety records compare favorably to human drivers, and regulators have largely let the technology expand under a patchwork of state and local rules. What's changed is the accumulation of visible, disruptive failures — stalled vehicles blocking entire streets, cars driving through active police scenes — that are hard to wave away as edge cases when they keep recurring in a city where the vehicles operate at real scale.

The combination of a NHTSA ultimatum, a mayor publicly pressing state regulators, and now a federal bill with teeth in the form of geofencing authority suggests the industry's runway for self-regulation is shortening. Whether Mullin's bill advances through Congress is still an open question, and NHTSA's own rulemaking process would take time even if it moves forward. But the direction of travel is clear: emergency response failures have moved from a local nuisance story to a federal policy fight, and companies like Waymo are now being asked to show their work rather than simply assert that their systems are safe.