Senior officials at self-driving car companies Waymo and Tesla address the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday as lawmakers consider the future of federal regulation in the growing industry.

“We believe Congress has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to ensure American leadership in this industry by creating a national AV legislative framework that sets a high standard of safety for this industry,” said Mauricio Peña, Waymo’s chief safety officer, in written testimony at the hearing. “Increased certainty will unlock even more investment and prevent bad actors from undermining public trust in this life-changing new technology.”

The hearing comes at a time when a growing number of cities and states are allowing self-driving technology like Waymo. But skepticism of autonomous vehicles remains amid some highly publicized recent incidents involving Waymos.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened an investigation into Waymo late last year after at least 19 Waymos incidents. driving past stopped school buses in Austin.

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Self-driving car companies like Waymo will be in the spotlight before the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday. (Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

And last week, a Waymo hit a student in Santa Monica, California.

“We do over 400,000 trips a week, so these are extreme cases,” Justin Kintz, Waymo’s head of global public policy, told FOX News in an interview. Regarding the Santa Monica incident specifically, Kintz said the outcome was probably better because a Waymo was involved, rather than a car driven by a person.

“We immediately identified the pedestrian, we immediately started braking. So traveling at 17 mph, the Waymo driver hit a hard break and slowed us down to less than six mph before contact occurred,” Kintz said. “In contrast, our model showed that an attentive human driver would have gone about 14 mph, which makes a big difference.”

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Kintz added that Waymo is cooperating with the National Transportation Safety Board and NHTSA as they investigate the crash.

Waymo and Tesla are likely to have a sympathetic ear from Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas. He touted the potential of autonomous vehicles to reduce traffic, reduce crashes and help people with disabilities gain independence in a statement ahead of Wednesday’s hearing. But, he said, “a confusing mix of federal and state laws makes it much more difficult to bring safer and more advanced autonomous vehicles to market.”

Cruz added, “This hearing will examine how outdated regulations hold back life-saving technology and what Congress can do to fix it.”

Senator Ted Cruz has praised autonomous vehicles in the past. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., also on the Commerce Committee, was more cautious in an interview with Fox News Monday night.

“I hear people at home and they want to understand security. They want to understand a lot of practical questions, understand the technology,” Schmitt said. “There are privacy issues, of course, that will be involved. So we’ll see. It’s an emerging issue.”

Kintz said national safety rules could help Americans who embrace self-driving technology feel safer when they get into one of the cars. He said it would also avoid “a crazy patchwork of regulations, which could really slow down the development of the technology.”

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Sen. Eric Schmitt, pictured when he was Missouri’s attorney general, expressed caution in an interview with Fox News Monday night. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty Images)

Peña, Waymo’s security chief, will also warn that “Chinese competitors are growing rapidly with heavy state support and, after Waymo, the largest AV fleets in the world are operated by Chinese AV companies.”

“In the absence of American leadership on a national AV legislative framework, Chinese AV competitors will fill the void and set the technical and safety standards for the rest of the world,” Peña will add in his prepared testimony.

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Peña will be joined by Tesla Vice President of Vehicle Engineering Lars Moravy and Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association CEO Jeff Farrah on the witness stand Wednesday.

Fox News Digital’s Bonny Chu contributed to this report.