Governing Autonomous Vehicles is humanity’s greatest engineering challenge
Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) could play a key role in advancing road safety, according to the new head of America’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
Jonathan Morrison, speaking at the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, said AVs held “the potential for a complete elimination of so many of the human behaviours that cause crashes,” such as drink- or drug-driving, distracted driving and speeding.
He also highlighted their capacity for an incredible expansion of personal mobility, for those unable to drive.
Yet developing a system to govern AVs was “one of, if not the, most challenging engineering problems humanity has ever attempted,” said Morrison. Current AV technology was still prone to what he described as “odd and annoying behaviours,” which had prompted defect investigations by the NHTSA.
But the promise of AV technology was, he said, “far too great to ignore, or worse, discourage or prohibit.”
Click here for the full text of Morrison’s speech.
