The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) filed a proposed amendment to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 108 on Friday 23 October 2026, for publication in the Federal Register on 26 October. The standard covers lamps and related equipment, and was written for vehicles with human drivers.
What the proposal would change
For vehicles without manual driving controls, the draft would:
- remove the requirement for turn signals to cancel when the steering wheel turns, and for a hand-operated control to cancel them;
- drop the rule that the high-beam switch be worked by the driver's hand or foot;
- limit some dashboard warning light requirements to vehicles with manual controls; and
- allow optional cyan "ADS marker lamps" that light only when nobody on board is expected to watch the road.
The marker lamps could not be used on cars with supervised driver assistance. NHTSA says it expects the changes to add no costs and wants them to take effect immediately once final. Comments are open for 30 days after publication.
Why Tesla is watching
The notice names no company, but it touches one of the questions in NHTSA's review of how Tesla self-certified its Cybercab, which has no steering wheel or pedals. Tesla's sworn answers to that special order are due on 30 October. On 21 October, Tesla's vice-president of vehicle engineering, Lars Moravy, told analysts the company was trying to get Cybercabs to customers by the end of 2026, and Tesla said it plans to expand the service to Dallas next month.
Until the proposals are final, the existing standards apply, including to vehicles already on the road. Zoox took the exemption route instead, which is capped at 2,500 vehicles a year.
Why it matters financially
The 2,500-vehicle annual cap on exemptions is the commercial bottleneck for driverless designs in the US. Each standard NHTSA rewrites for vehicles without manual controls reduces the need for exemptions and opens the way to volume production. For Tesla, the outcome of the 30 October certification response could decide whether its Cybercab sales plan goes ahead on schedule.