Aurora Operations, an autonomous technology company, will have until April 9 to present its arguments in a lawsuit against the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
Earlier this year, Aurora filed a lawsuit with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia after FMCSA denied exempting autonomous trucks from a regulation that requires drivers to place warning devices when a vehicle is stopped.
Aurora plans to deploy driverless trucks in Texas next month. According to a recent blog post by Aurora President Ossa Fisher, the exemption denial and pending lawsuit will not prevent the company from complying with existing regulations when the company releases its autonomous fleet in April. However, the company has not provided the details on how it plans to do that without a driver on board.
On Friday, Feb. 28, The D.C. Circuit outlined the briefing schedule in the case, with Aurora’s opening brief due on April 9. FMCSA then will have until May 9 to respond. Final briefs are due June 20.
Current regulations require truck drivers to place warning devices in a specific manner whenever a commercial motor vehicle is stopped on the shoulder of a highway.
Drivers are required to place the warning devices:
- One on the traffic side and four paces – approximately 10 feet – from the stopped commercial motor vehicle in the direction of approaching traffic
- One at 40 paces – approximately 100 feet – from the stopped commercial motor vehicle in the center of the traffic lane or shoulder occupied by the commercial motor vehicle and in the direction of approaching traffic
- One at 40 paces from the stopped commercial motor vehicle in the center of the traffic lane or shoulder occupied by the commercial motor vehicle and in the direction away from approaching traffic
FMCSA published an exemption request from Aurora and Waymo in 2023 that would have allowed autonomous trucks that are equipped with warning beacons mounted on the truck cab instead of traditional warning devices. In December 2024, FMCSA denied the request, saying it was too broad and that it lacked the “necessary monitoring controls to ensure highway safety.”
Aurora has called the denial “unreasonable.”
“FMCSA’s decision stifles safety innovation and would impede the development of the autonomous trucking industry for no valid or lawful reason,” Aurora wrote when it initially filed the lawsuit.
Only days before the Aurora lawsuit was filed, FMCSA published a notice in the Federal Register that announced plans to study whether the warning devices prevent crashes.
“It is an experimental study that requires data collection for evaluating whether warning devices meaningfully influence crash-relevant aspects of human performance in the presence of a parked or disabled commercial motor vehicle, and if so, how and to what extent,” FMCSA wrote in the notice. LL
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