The first meeting of the Autonomous Driving Workgroup, of which VACo is a member, was held April 24. This meeting brought together state transportation officials, researchers, and stakeholders to assess the 2026 legislative session’s outcomes, look at the current landscape regarding autonomous vehicles (AV) and chart a path forward for AV governance in the Commonwealth.
The work group, established under 2025 Va. Acts ch. 498 (HB 2627 (Glass)), is tasked with identifying the operational, technical, and legal issues posed by autonomous driving systems and developing draft legislation to govern them. The group is required to complete its meetings by September 1 and deliver a final report by November 1 of this year.
2026 Legislative Session Updates
The 2026 session saw considerable activity on autonomous vehicles, but bills creating a general legal framework for commercial AV operations (SB 670 (Salim) / HB 1125 (Reid)) did not cross the finish line.
The General Assembly passed and the Governor signed HB 1124 (Clark) that will expand the work group’s scope to include an assessment of the labor and workforce impacts of autonomous vehicles, including an overview of job losses and gains. The bill also requires the group to identify and engage stakeholders from the auto manufacturing industry and from passenger and product carrier businesses.
Where Virginia Stands Nationally
Staff with the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI), presented a review of the automated vehicle legislative and regulatory landscape across the country.
Virginia currently has no specific legislation or regulation governing AV testing, permitting or deployment. That means AVs are not expressly prohibited, but there is also no defined framework for how they should operate, who oversees them, what insurance they need to carry, or how law enforcement should interact with them.
Most other states expressly permit AV deployment and have determined questions such as which agency has oversight, whether a licensed driver must be present, what liability coverage is required, and whether a law enforcement interaction plan (LEIP) is required. Virginia has none of these answers yet. The work group’s job between now and September 2026 is to fill that gap.
Autonomous Vehicle Safety
Staff from the Virginia Transportation Research Council’s (VTRC) delivered a data-driven safety assessment of automated driving systems (ADS).
The bottom line on overall safety is promising, but inconclusive. There is growing evidence that AVs crash less often per mile than human drivers, but the technology has not yet been deployed broadly enough across the full range of conditions human drivers encounter to draw firm conclusions.
There are many challenges of comparing ADS data to human benchmarks including: mileage data is self-reported and inconsistent across manufacturers; crash thresholds vary between jurisdictions; and injury statistics are inherently skewed because ADS vehicles often operate without passengers. Research on Waymo’s performance at 56.7 million miles showed statistically significant reductions in certain airbag-level crash types, particularly intersection and single-vehicle crashes, though other crash categories showed no statistically significant difference.
Known Problem Areas with this Technology
Beyond aggregate crash rates, several specific operational challenges have emerged as AVs have been deployed in other states:
Passing school buses – Waymo is under investigation by both NHTSA and the NTSB for multiple incidents in which its vehicles passed stopped school buses with stop arms deployed.
Remote operations staffing – When ADS vehicles encounter situations they cannot navigate autonomously, they rely on remote assistants. Staffing these operations at scale has proven difficult. A 2025 San Francisco power outage knocked out 7,000 traffic signals and left Waymo vehicles frozen at intersections due to a shortage of available remote assistants.
First responder interactions – No standardized protocols exist for law enforcement to interact with AVs at crash scenes or traffic stops. Officers cannot shut down an ADS without physically entering a locked vehicle, and AVs have shown persistent difficulty yielding to emergency vehicles.
Unsafe stopping – AVs in California were struck from behind at nearly 5x the national average. These vehicles tend to stop abruptly in unfamiliar situations, sometimes in dangerous locations.
Environmental challenges – Glare and fog impair camera-based systems; dust and debris affect lidar, which is the vehicle’s navigation technology. Wrong-way driving incidents have been recorded, and snow remains an open challenge.
Commercial vehicles – Safety data for autonomous commercial trucks is even sparser than for passenger AVs, since most testing occurs on private facilities. These vehicles may provide other problems; for example a loaded truck at 65 mph may require 10 seconds of braking to stop. This means the software must account for and predict positions of other vehicles 10 seconds into the future, which is significantly more difficult than for passenger cars.
What’s Next
The work group will continue monthly public meetings through August 2026. VDOT is actively seeking stakeholder input on an ongoing basis and encourages any parties not yet engaged to make contact. Written comments can be submitted at publicinput.com/autonomousdriving, and future meetings will be livestreamed on YouTube.
County leaders, if you have any input to share regarding local priorities as this regulatory and legislative framework is being discussed, feel free to contact VACo staff. To view all of the presentations referenced, click here.
VACo Contact: James Hutzler