NHTSA proposes cyan lights for robotaxis, following Mercedes/China

The NHTSA has proposed using cyan-colored lights to identify vehicles operating autonomously, along with other additions to get ready for autonomous vehicles.

📌 The Core Development

As the autonomous vehicles start to spread on US roads, questions have come up about how to deal with these new driverless vehicles.

One question involves emergency response – not only do the vehicles need to be prepared to respond to emergency personnel, those personnel need to recognize when a car is operating autonomously. A police officer needs to know that nobody’s in the driver seat, or an emergency responder needs to know that if there’s nobody in the driver’s seat, that’s not necessarily because there’s a missing driver somewhere who needs rescue.

🔍 Background & Sector Context

These are just some of the reasons one might want to know whether a car is operating autonomously, but as of yet, there is no standardized messaging to suggest that a vehicle is doing so.

This week, NHTSA proposed an answer. In a draft proposal released Friday , it suggested a whole new color for vehicle lamps, cyan, to signal autonomous operation.

📊 Industry & Real-World Impact

The proposal was actually first put forward by Mercedes, alongside its DRIVE PILOT level 3 driver assist system. This is the first true hands-free system offered in the US, which allows drivers to forgo responsibility for the car under certain conditions, and let the car truly drive itself. This differs from systems like Tesla’s Full Self-Driving, which is actually only a “level 2” system, where the driver is still responsible when the system is on.

🔮 Strategic Outlook & What Lies Ahead

We tried Mercedes’ system out in Santa Monica traffic , and were impressed at how quickly we adjusted to our temporary robotic chauffer.

When we saw that system, we also saw Mercedes’ proposal for lighting: cyan lights around the exterior of the vehicle, denoting autonomous operation.