2026年2月4日 / 美国东部时间下午1:43 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
华盛顿 — 周三，特斯拉和Waymo的高管在参议院委员会面前为其车辆的安全性进行辩护，坚称尽管近期发生了一些事件，他们的驾驶系统比人类驾驶员更安全。
国会正在考虑如何推进立法，以制定统一的安全法规来管理自动驾驶车辆，这些车辆在主要城市中越来越普遍。目前，美国大约一半的州对自动驾驶汽车有不同的法律法规，而其他州则没有，这导致了一个零散的监管体系。
参议院商务、科学和运输委员会的参议员周三表示，他们渴望通过自动驾驶车辆消除分心或其他受影响驾驶员造成的可避免事故，但也对近期自动驾驶车辆的事故表示担忧。
“完全自动驾驶车辆有潜力减少道路上的事故，但我们已经看到了让公司在没有护栏的情况下在我们的道路上进行beta测试的风险，”该委员会的排名成员、华盛顿州参议员玛丽亚·坎特韦尔表示。
上个月，国家运输安全委员会宣布对Waymo的自动驾驶出租车在得克萨斯州奥斯汀发生的一系列事件进行调查，这些事件涉及Waymo车辆超车并未能避让校车。委员会主席泰德·克鲁兹参议员告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻，这”显然是不可接受的”。本月早些时候，在加利福尼亚州圣塔莫尼卡，一辆Waymo车辆在一所小学附近撞倒了一名儿童。该公司称，这名儿童是从另一辆车后突然冲出，受了轻伤。
Waymo此前表示，它已确定一个软件问题，并在11月推出了更新来解决这个问题——但此后收到了多项违规通知。
特斯拉最近开始在奥斯汀推出其自动驾驶出租车服务。一份分析美国国家公路交通安全管理局（NHTSA）数据的报告显示，其车辆去年的撞车率可能比人类驾驶员更高。特斯拉未回应哥伦比亚广播公司新闻的置评请求。
克鲁兹问Waymo首席安全官毛里西奥·佩尼亚，自奥斯汀和圣塔莫尼卡事件以来，他们采取了哪些保障措施。
“我们非常重视这些事件，”佩尼亚说。”安全是我们的首要任务，特别是儿童和行人的安全。我们正在评估每一起事件并制定解决方案，并且我们已经在软件中纳入了许多更改，以大幅提高我们的性能。我们还与奥斯汀独立学区合作，收集不同照明模式和条件下的数据，并将这些学习成果纳入我们的系统。我们每周安全应对数千次校车相遇，并且我们正在不断学习和改进，因为我们在安全方面的工作永无止境。”
佩尼亚说，Waymo对被其车辆撞倒的女孩的分析”发现，Waymo的自动驾驶系统会比我们模型中的注意力集中的人类驾驶员反应更快。所以在这种情况下，我认为我们减轻了伤害。”
佩尼亚坚持认为Waymo的车辆仍然比人类驾驶的汽车安全得多。
“在超过1亿英里的行驶中，我们的数据显示，在我们运营的城市中，我们发生严重伤害碰撞的可能性比人类驾驶员低10倍，”佩尼亚说。”数据还显示，在我们运营的城市中，我们发生行人伤害碰撞的可能性比人类驾驶员低12倍，所以我认为我们已经在产生影响。”
南卡罗来纳大学法学副教授布莱恩特·沃克·史密斯在委员会听证会上表示，需要对自动驾驶车辆公司进行更多监督。
“不存在所谓的自动驾驶或无人驾驶汽车，”史密斯说。”开发和部署自动驾驶汽车的公司才是驾驶员。这意味着自动驾驶汽车的安全性取决于负责它们的公司。我们可以而且应该主动评估它们的可靠性。”
特斯拉车辆工程副总裁拉尔斯·莫拉维表示，美国国家公路交通安全管理局有着”安全的传统”，自20世纪70年代以来，汽车行业在减少车辆碰撞方面取得了巨大进步，但在过去约20年中，这一进展停滞不前。现在，美国每年约有4万人在车辆事故中死亡。
“我可以毫无疑问地告诉你们，减少这一数字从4万到希望有一天达到零的下一个重大飞跃将是自动驾驶技术，”莫拉维说。”简而言之，自动驾驶系统或计算机不会睡觉、不会眨眼、不会疲劳。”
共和党参议员伯尼·桑德斯问，谁对因软件或硬件故障导致的碰撞承担责任。
“当然，在自动驾驶系统软件错误发生的极不可能情况下，我们会对此事件承担责任，这与当前法律体系中如果驾驶员犯错则由其承担责任的方式类似，”特斯拉的莫拉维说。
“同样，”Waymo的佩尼亚补充道。
对制定联邦安全标准的呼吁
周三的听证会正值民主党和共和党呼吁为自动驾驶车辆制定统一的联邦标准，尽管他们可能在具体内容上存在分歧。
“如果我们希望每年拯救近4万个家庭的生命并避免悲剧，我们不需要立法者给汽车制造商强加昂贵的、几乎没有实际效果的强制规定，”克鲁兹周三表示。”相反，我们应该遵循数据和证据，这些数据和证据越来越表明先进的自动驾驶汽车可以减少碰撞并防止严重伤害。我们需要一个一致的联邦框架，以确保统一的安全标准、明确的责任划分和消费者信心。”
马萨诸塞州民主党参议员埃德·马基周二致信七家主要自动驾驶汽车公司，要求提供有关其远程协助操作（RAOs）的信息，即当自动驾驶汽车遇到棘手情况时，谁会进行干预。
马基写道：”如果没有适当的保障措施，自动驾驶汽车行业对远程协助操作的依赖可能会造成严重的安全、国家安全和隐私风险。”这些信件呼吁自动驾驶汽车行业更加透明，询问公司远程协助会话是否”远程驾驶车辆”以及发生频率等问题。
马基正在推动两项旨在提高自动驾驶汽车行业透明度的新法案。
第一项法案名为《自动驾驶安全数据法案》，要求美国国家公路交通安全管理局强制要求自动驾驶车辆提供诸如行驶里程、涉及人类驾驶员、行人和骑自行车者的事故以及未计划的停车等数据。
“我们需要行业更加诚实，这样公众才能够了解他们应该知道的所有信息，”马基说。
马基还与康涅狄格州参议员理查德·布卢门撒尔合作提出了《保持车道法案》。
该法案将要求自动驾驶汽车制造商定义其驾驶系统安全运行的道路和驾驶条件，并禁止其车辆在这些道路和条件之外运行。
康涅狄格州民主党参议员理查德·布卢门撒尔认为，这将类似于飞机制造商如何通过美国联邦航空局的标准认证飞机。
“现在我们处于’西部荒野’状态。我希望看到一些道路规则，这样汽车就能留在自己的车道上，”布卢门撒尔说。
莎拉·普洛斯和克里斯·范·克利夫为本文报道提供了帮助。
Tesla and Waymo executives defend the safety of self-driving cars before Senate committee
February 4, 2026 / 1:43 PM EST / CBS News
Washington — Top executives at Tesla and Waymo made the case for the safety of their vehicles before a Senate committee on Wednesday, insisting their driving systems are safer than human drivers, despite recent incidents.
Congress is considering how to move forward with legislation to create uniform safety regulations to govern self-driving vehicles, which are becoming increasingly common in major cities. Roughly half of U.S. states currently have differing laws and regulations governing self-driving cars, while others don’t, creating a patchwork regulatory system.
Senators on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on Wednesday expressed an eagerness to eliminate avoidable crashes from distracted or otherwise impaired drivers through autonomous vehicles, but also expressed concerns about recent autonomous vehicle incidents.
“Fully autonomous vehicles offer the potential to reduce crashes on roads, but we have seen the risk of letting companies beta test on our roads with no guardrails,” said the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington.
Last month, the National Transportation Safety Board announced it opened an investigation into Waymo robotaxis passing and failing to yield to school buses after a series of incidents in Austin, Texas, which Sen. Ted Cruz, the committee chairman, told CBS News is “obviously unacceptable.” In Santa Monica, California, earlier this month, a Waymo vehicle struck a child near her elementary school. The child, who the company said darted out from behind another vehicle, suffered minor injuries.
Waymo previously said it identified a software issue and launched an update in November to address the issue — but has since received multiple violations.
Tesla recently started rolling out its robotaxi service in Austin. Its vehicles may have experienced crash rates worse than human drivers last year, a report that analyzed NHTSA data showed. Tesla did not respond to CBS News’ request for comment.
Cruz asked Mauricio Peña,Waymo’s chief safety officer, what safeguards they’ve put in place since the Austin and Santa Monica incidents.
“We take those incidents very seriously,” Peña said. “Safety is our top priority, especially the safety of children and pedestrians. We are evaluating every one of those events and developing fixes to address them, and we have already incorporated many changes to our software to dramatically improve our performance. And we are working with the Austin Independent School District to collect data on different lighting patterns and different conditions, and we’re also incorporating those learnings into our systems. We do safely navigate thousands of school bus encounters every single week, and we are continuously learning and improving because our work on safety is never done.”
Peña said Waymo’s analysis into the girl struck by a Waymo vehicle “found that the Waymo driver would have responded faster than our models of an attentive human driver. So in this case, I believe that we mitigated harm.”
Peña insisted Waymo vehicles are still much safer than cars driven by humans.
“In over 100 million miles, our data shows that we are 10 times less likely to be involved in a serious injury collision as compared to human drivers in the cities where we operate,” Peña said. “And data also shows we are 12 times less likely to be involved in a pedestrian injury collision in the cities where we operate, so I think we’re making a difference already.”
Bryant Walker Smith, an associate professor of law at the University of South Carolina, told the committee hearing there needs to be more oversight of autonomous vehicle companies.
“There are no self-driving or driverless cars,” Smith said. “The companies that develop and deploy AVs are the drivers. This means that an AV is only as safe as the companies responsible for it. We can and should proactively assess their trustworthiness.”
Lars Moravy,Tesla’s vice president of vehicle engineering, said the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has a “legacy of safety” and the auto industry has made leaps and bounds in improvements to reduce vehicle crashes after the 1970s, but that progress has fallen flat in the last roughly 20 years. Now, around 40,000 people in the U.S. die each year in vehicle incidents.
“I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that the next big jump we have in reducing that number from 40,000 to hopefully a day where it’s zero is autonomous driving,” Moravy said. “Simply put, an autonomous driver, the system or the computer that operates it, doesn’t sleep, doesn’t blink, and doesn’t get tired.”
Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno asked who accepts liability for a collision resulting from a software or hardware failure.
“Of course, in the unlikely event that a software error occurred in our autonomous driving system, we would take liability for that event, much in the same way that a driver takes liability in our current legal system if they make an error,” Tesla’s Moravy said.
“Likewise,” Waymo’s Peña said.
Calls for federal rules to regulate safety standards
Wednesday’s hearing comes as Democrats and Republicans are calling for uniform federal standards for autonomous vehicles, although they may differ on what that looks like.
“If we want to save lives and avoid tragedy for almost 40,000 families each year, we don’t need lawmakers saddling automakers with expensive junk mandates that make little to no real difference,” Cruz said Wednesday. “Instead, we should follow the data, follow the evidence, which increasingly shows advanced AVs reduce crashes and prevent serious injuries. We need a consistent federal framework to ensure uniform safety standards, liability clarity and consumer confidence.”
Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, sent letters Tuesday to the seven major autonomous vehicle companies requesting information regarding their remote assistance operations (RAOs) or the individual who intervenes when an autonomous vehicle gets into a sticky situation.
Markey wrote, “Without proper safeguards, the AV industry’s reliance on RAOs could create serious safety, national security, and privacy risks.” The letters call for more transparency in the AV industry, asking the companies questions such as if RAOs ever “tele-drive a vehicle” and how frequently do remote assistance sessions occur.
Markey is championing two new pieces of legislation aimed at making the autonomous vehicle industry more transparent.
The first bill, called the AV Safety Data Act, would require NHTSA to mandate AV vehicle data such as miles traveled, injuries involving human drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists and unplanned stoppages.
“We need more honesty from the industry so that there is in fact transparency in everything that they know that the American public should know as well,” Markey said.
Markey also partnered with Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal to introduce the “Stay in Your Lane Act.”
The bill would require autonomous vehicle manufacturers to define the roads and driving conditions in which their driving systems are safe and designed to operate in and would prohibit their vehicles from operating outside of those roads and conditions.
Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut sees it working similar to how airplane manufacturers can certify a plane as meeting FAA standards.
“Right now we have the Wild West. I want to see some rules of the road so that cars stay within their lanes, so to speak,” Blumenthal said.
Sarah Ploss and Kris Van Cleave contributed to this report.
