Firefighters Want Feds to Force Steering Wheels on Robotaxis

Austin Fire Chief Matthew McElearney wants federal regulators to require a steering wheel on every deployed robotaxi. "We need the feds to step up to the plate on this," he told NBC, naming a specific failure mode: a first responder who needs to roll a disabled self-driving taxi out of the way, only to find the touchscreen manual control is de-powered, dusty, or demands a finesse no one has time to learn on scene.

Tesla's gold Cybercabs are already running on Austin streets with butterfly doors and no steering wheel. Manual controls are routed entirely through the on-board touchscreen, which requires power, enforces speed limits, and depends on a clean screen and bare hands. The conditions McElearney named are the ones firefighters actually bring to a wreck: gloves, sweat, dust, a damaged or de-powered vehicle.

McElearney extended the same critique to Zoox and Waymo, not just Tesla, and asked for a regulator-driven rule rather than a manufacturer-by-manufacturer patch. The Cybercab is the visible test case; the underlying mechanism, a touchscreen-only manual control with no mechanical fallback, is the design choice he wants weighed at the federal level.

NHTSA has not publicly responded to the chief's ask. Tesla has not publicly addressed the touchscreen concern. Futurism, re-reporting an NBC interview