If Sen. Josh Hawley has his way, you may never get to ride in a car without a driver.
“I think we ought to ban autonomous vehicles,” the Missouri Republican told Business Insider at the Capitol on Tuesday, saying that the spread of driverless cars is “not safe” and “would be terrible, terrible for working people.”
Hawley said he planned to introduce a bill on the topic “soon,” but declined to offer further details.
After this story was first published, BI obtained the draft text of a bill written by Hawley called the “Autonomous Vehicle Safety Act.”
The bill, as drafted, would effectively ban driverless cars nationwide by requiring the presence of “human safety operators” in any autonomous vehicles driving on a public road.
A spokesperson for Hawley did not provide comment. It’s not clear whether that’s the final version of the bill.
A self-styled populist, Hawley staked out his stance against autonomous vehicles in a speech at the National Conservatism conference last week, where he cast AI as part of a transhumanist project and called for a series of restrictions on the technology.
“Only humans should drive cars and trucks,” Hawley said at the time.
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Fully autonomous vehicles have been steadily rolling out across American cities in recent years, most prominently in San Francisco and Austin.
On Tuesday, Hawley told BI that he was motivated in large part by the impact that self-driving cars could have on professions like truck drivers, taxi drivers, and Uber drivers, which account for millions of jobs.
“If AVs become the norm, the Teamsters won’t exist anymore,” Hawley said, referring to the labor union that’s best known for representing commercial truck drivers.
In calling for the nationwide banning of autonomous vehicles, Hawley is going much further than other AI critics on Capitol Hill.
Progressive Democrats, another cohort generally skeptical of AI, have at times sought tighter regulations on autonomous vehicles, but none have called for an outright ban.
Hawley also clarified that he didn’t have a problem with AI-driven driver-assistance technology in vehicles, but that “we should require a driver in the seat.”
“My sister’s got a new truck, she drives a GMC Sierra. It’s got all this autonomous driving stuff,” Hawley said. “That’s fine.”
