The U.S. Department of Transportation (“DOT”) issued a proposed rule on Tuesday, December 13, 2016, that would advance the deployment of connected vehicle technologies throughout the U.S. light vehicle fleet.  The aim of the new rule is to enable vehicle-to-vehicle (“V2V”) communication in an attempt to reduce the number of car crashes per year by allowing the vehicles to “talk” to one another while in operation

This proposed rule is in line with the goals to advance V2V technologies espoused by U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx in an announcement he made in February 2014.  After directing the DOT’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (“NHTSA”) to advance rulemaking to that effect in that announcement, the NHTSA in turn issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in August 2014 which assessed the safety benefits of V2V communications.  In part due to the safety benefits discovered in that report, the rule proposed on Tuesday would require automakers to include V2V technologies in all new light-duty vehicles.  The rule also proposes requiring V2V devices to adhere to a standardized “language” that the DOT would develop with auto industry.

Automobiles equipped with V2V technologies would use short range communications to transmit data, such as location, direction, and speed, to nearby vehicles.  That data would be updated and transmitted to nearby vehicles and, using that information, vehicles can identify risks and provide warnings to drivers to avoid imminent crashes.  Privacy would also be innately protected in V2V transmissions.  Due to the nature of the data being communicated, V2V transmissions do not involve the transfer of information linked to or, as a practical matter, linkable to an individual.  In addition, the proposed rule would require robust privacy and security protocols in any V2V equipment.  And since the period for public comment on the proposed rulemaking is open for the next 90 days, this provides a possible avenue of redress for any latent privacy concerns lurking within the rule as proposed.