The Texas Senate Committee on Transportation examined the expansion of autonomous vehicles on Texas roads Tuesday and flagged potential gaps in current law after officials acknowledged that the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles is not automatically notified when an autonomous vehicle is involved in a serious or fatal crash. The hearing came as Texas begins implementing a new regulatory framework for commercial autonomous vehicles. Senate Bill 2807, passed in 2025, requires commercial driverless vehicles to receive authorization from TxDMV and provide DPS with a first-responder interaction plan. The authorization requirement became enforceable on May 28. A slide shown in a hearing of the Texas Senate Transportation Committee While the TxDMV has the authority to restrict or suspend AV authorizations, officials said current law does not require serious or deadly crashes to be reported directly to the agency. In an exchange with lawmakers, TxDMV Enforcement Director Corrie Thompson told State Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, the agency learned of a deadly crash involving an AV in Dallas through media reports rather than through a required notification. “The current statute as written does not have a mandate for reporting to the department,” said Thompson. You gave me the answer that scares the living [hell] out of me as a legislator,” Perry said. Perry later said media reports should not be the state’s first source of information about a potentially serious incident involving an autonomous vehicle. TxDMV officials said the preliminary Dallas police report did not contain a final fault determination. According to the agency’s description of the report, a human-driven vehicle struck a pedestrian who entered the roadway outside a crosswalk, throwing the pedestrian into an autonomous vehicle traveling in the opposite direction. Lawmakers pointed to the incident not as evidence that the AV caused the crash, but as an example of a potential gap in how serious incidents are communicated to state regulators. The committee is tasked with studying autonomous vehicle technology and how the tech intersects with current regulations and public safety needs as one of three total interim charges ahead of the 2027 legislative session. “I want this hearing to produce more than a transcript. I want it to produce a roadmap that is clear, that is also actionable, with recommendations that the members of this committee can carry into the next legislative session,” said Committee Chair Tan Parker. A slide shown in a hearing of the Texas Senate Transportation Committee North Texas emerges as an autonomous vehicle hub Much of the technology’s growth is happening in North Texas. Representatives from multiple autonomous trucking companies pointed Tuesday to operations in Lancaster, where companies are developing and testing technology and hauling commercial freight. Blake Calvert of Kodiak AI told lawmakers the company has been autonomously delivering freight across Texas from its Lancaster facility since 2019. The company said it has delivered more than 20,600 customer loads and driven more than 3.5 million miles with a safety driver behind the wheel. Calvert called DFW the “epicenter of autonomous trucking, not just in the United States, but in the world.” Waabi also told lawmakers it is currently running commercial loads under supervised autonomy from a facility in Lancaster, serving multiple carriers and shippers, including Fortune 50 retailers. A City of Lancaster economic development official told the committee that both Waabi and Kodiak have research and development operations in the city and said the companies have worked with local first responders as their operations have grown. “Lancaster is the home of the research and development operations for two of the companies that have talked today, Waabi and Kodiak Robotics,” said Karl Stundins with the city of Lancaster. North Texas operations extend beyond Lancaster. Avride told lawmakers it has a Dallas depot supporting active robotaxi and delivery robot operations. Autonomous trucking companies are also operating along major Texas freight corridors, including between Dallas and Houston. Questions about safety and oversight Lawmakers also questioned how the safety of autonomous vehicles should ultimately be measured. DPS said roughly 3,760 people died in crashes on Texas roads in 2025, even as fatal crashes fell nearly 10% from the previous year. Texas Sen. Brent Hagenbuch, R-Denton, suggested that the state eventually compare autonomous and human-driven vehicles using crashes and fatalities per million miles, arguing that the question is not whether autonomous vehicles will ever crash, but how their safety record compares with that of human drivers. Industry representatives also presented their own safety data. Waymo Policy Manager Chandler Ludwick said Waymo drives four million miles a week and said publicly available company data shows its system is more than 16 times safer than the average human driver under its comparison methodology. Jeremiah Kuntz with Aurora said Aurora vehicles had logged more than six million commercial miles, including more than 440,000 fully driverless miles on public highways, with zero “Aurora Driver-attributed accidents,” according to Kuntz. Renee Gibson with the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association said human drivers should be the benchmark when evaluating autonomous vehicle safety. She pointed to existing federal requirements for companies to report certain crashes to NHTSA, while supporting efforts to standardize that reporting and make the data available to states. Gibson also urged lawmakers to give Texas’ new regulatory framework time to mature before making additional changes. Lawmakers also pressed regulators and industry representatives on what happens when autonomous technology fails. DPS and industry witnesses said the vehicles are designed with redundant systems and, when a failure prevents normal operation, to reach what is known as a “minimal risk condition,” such as safely pulling over or stopping. Aurora’s Jeremiah Kuntz said its trucks have redundant sensors, braking systems, computers and power systems, allowing the vehicle to steer and brake to a safe stop even if it loses engine power. How do police ticket a car with no driver? Austin Police also raised a practical enforcement problem: how to efficiently issue a traffic citation when there is no driver behind the wheel. Lt. William White told lawmakers the department’s current process for issuing a moving violation to an autonomous vehicle is cumbersome because Texas’ traditional citation process requires a driver’s signature. “We believe AVs should be accountable for their driving behavior the same way Texans are,” said White. White said Austin Police have issued eight such citations since implementing their policy around November 2024. White also said Austin’s autonomous vehicle dashboard has recorded more than 300 reported incidents, which he believes represent only a fraction of those involving the technology. A look at the upcoming legislative session The committee is examining the issue ahead of the next Texas legislative session. The Tuesday hearing indicated that state lawmakers are interested in further exploring crash reporting and how that data is shared, mileage-based safety measurements, ease of public complaints, streamlining citations, and ongoing work with first responders and state agencies. This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. ...read more read less