Congresswoman Schrier Introduces the Know Before You Drive Act to Improve Road Safety

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Congresswoman Kim Schrier, M.D. (WA-08), introduced the Know Before You Drive Act, a bill aimed at improving road safety and saving lives by ensuring that car manufacturers accurately explain and represent the Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) limitations in their vehicles.

"Advanced Driver Assistance Systems features such as collision warnings, driving control assistance, and blind-spot monitoring are becoming very common in new vehicles and can be incredible safety tools if used appropriately. However, these tools that are meant to keep us safe can actually cause significant danger when manufacturers misrepresent their capabilities, and drivers don't clearly understand their limitations," said Congresswoman Schrier, M.D. "My bill will improve safety on our roadways by preventing manufacturers from making false and misleading claims about a car's driver assistance systems and will require them to provide understandable explanations of what these systems are capable of and what responsibilities drivers need to maintain."

The Know Before You Drive Act prohibits car manufacturers from making any representations that a partial driving automation system can function as an automated driving system or has capabilities beyond what the system or feature can perform. This legislation also requires manufacturers and dealers to provide a notice to customers at the time of sale, detailing the partial driving automation system, its capabilities and limitations, and the subtasks the driver is still expected to perform. Subtasks include object event detection and response, supervising a partial driving automation system, and responding to the system's request to intervene or performance-relevant system failures.

Congresswoman Schrier recently spoke on this legislation during a Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade subcommittee hearing last month. To view Congresswoman Schrier's remarks, click here.