Will Missouri legalize driverless vehicles on its streets and highways?
A Missouri House committee has advanced two bills allowing the vehicles — HB 2069 and HB 2208. A Senate committee is considering a third — SB 1050.
Jerod Breit is Regional Director for Mothers Against Drunk Driving in Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.
“Autonomous vehicles, in our opinion, hold an exciting promise, preventing deaths and injuries caused by those behavioral factors, including impaired driving,” Breit said.
The proposal is being driven in Missouri by Waymo – a California-based rideshare company that uses autonomous cars. MADD supports the bills and hopes Waymo is allowed to expand to Missouri.
“They’ve been a longtime partner in the mission to end impaired driving throughout the United States,” Breit testified. “We believe that this tool is one more way for us to prevent the more than 12,000 lives that are lost every single year in the United States to impaired driving.”
But allowing driverless vehicles onto Missouri’s roadways won’t happen without a fight. Bruce Frakes is an over-the-road truck driver and Political Affairs Representative for the Teamsters union’s Kansas City office. The union opposes legalizing autonomous vehicles in Missouri.
“Anybody can look up the problems they’re having with the driverless vehicles,” Frakes testified. “Certain towns have them that have good days, but when they’re bad, they’re not good with some of the recalls they have.”
Frakes said that driverless taxis have sometimes failed to stop for school buses and emergency vehicles. He also said driverless freight trucks would be a “job killer” for his profession.
“You’re thinking of 40 tons of commodities headed down highways in the state of Missouri with nobody behind the wheel,” he said. “That’s a job killer, and it’s a massive safety issue for the commuting public in this state.”
Meanwhile, State Sen. Stephen Webber, D-Columbia, is demanding that Waymo retract testimony it gave during a public hearing January 27 that its vehicles have never struck a child – citing that a driverless Waymo car had hit a child in Santa Monica, California four days earlier.
Missourinet reached out to Waymo, which provided the following response:
“Waymo is committed to improving road safety and transparency in the communities we serve. During the testimony, our representative accurately responded to questions regarding our interactions with school buses – which have not resulted in any contact with pedestrians – and the associated NTSB investigation. We will continue to cooperate with the committee as appropriate in response to this letter.”
Copyright © 2026 · Missourinet