It’s not 100% clear in the article, but it reads like this change is scoped to crash safety. The scope of those regs is the physical protection of the passenger

It’s not 100% clear in the article, but it reads like this change is scoped to crash safety. The scope of those regs is the physical protection of the passengers in a crash, not all aspects of safety related to self-driving cars. So, not a big deal. Actually, removing the steering wheel is probably a crash safety gain. Manufacturers had to invent a way to retract the steering wheel in crashes since it caused so many torso injuries. Steering wheel injuries were also the spur to invent and deploy the first airbags.