AV companies refuse to disclose remote human intervention frequency

In February, U.S. Senator Ed Markey launched an investigation into seven U.S. companies working on autonomous vehicle technology, sending letters containing 14 questions to Aurora, May Mobility, Motional, Nuro, Tesla, Waymo, and Zoox. On Tuesday, the results of the investigation were released, revealing that all seven companies refused to disclose how often their vehicles rely on remote human input. Markey’s office strongly criticized the findings, writing: “This report has revealed a stunning lack of transparency from the AV companies around their use of [remote assistance operators] to help guide their AVs. The investigation exposed a patchwork of safety practices across the industry, with significant variation in operator qualifications, response times, and overseas staffing, all without any federal standards governing these operations” The refusal of these seven U.S. companies to share this data highlights the ongoing tension between autonomous vehicle developers and federal oversight.

The investigation uncovered varied operational and technical metrics among the North American companies:

• Waymo: According to Mauricio Peña, Waymo uses overseas remote assistance workers.
• Tesla: Tesla stated that its remote assistance workers are authorized to temporarily assume direct vehicle control as the final escalation maneuver after all other available intervention actions have been exhausted. This direct control is authorized only when a vehicle is moving at 2 miles per hour or less, and the remote operator cannot exceed a maximum speed of 10 miles per hour.
• May Mobility: The company reported a worst-case latency of 500 milliseconds for its remote assistance interactions, representing the longest worst-case latency reported among the surveyed companies.

In response to these findings, Senator Markey is calling on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration—the U.S. federal regulator for vehicle safety—to investigate the use of remote assistance workers by autonomous vehicle companies. Markey is also developing legislation to implement strict guardrails on the use of remote operators by these companies, stating that he is working on legislation to impose strict guardrails on AV companies’ use of remote operators. This legislative push represents an effort to establish federal oversight for remote vehicle operations as the technology continues to deploy on public roads.

Why it matters

The investigation highlights a critical transparency gap in the autonomous vehicle industry as commercial deployments scale. This gap is forcing a debate on whether remote operators require federal safety standards to ensure public safety on North American roads.