The question of who will regulate cutting-edge driving technologies appears to be answered.

For years, the US government hasn’t regulated driver-assist systems like Tesla’s Autopilot and GM’s SuperCruise. Automakers can do as they please because there are no standards for these systems.

But President Joe Biden’s administration appears to want to change that, with the appointment of Missy Cummings, a Duke University engineering professor who studies autonomous systems and has been critical of Tesla and the federal government’s handling of driver-assist systems like Autopilot. Cummings will be a senior advisor for safety at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Government’s laissez faire approach to these increasingly common technologies has long led to calls for better safeguards and action in the wake of headline-grabbing deaths. Cummings’s appointment is the latest indication of the Biden administration’s desire to step in.

The government said in June that all automakers must report crashes involving driver-assist systems. It launched an investigation this August into Teslas using Autopilot that rear-ended emergency vehicles. NHTSA has called for proposing a rule for automatic emergency braking, a driver-assist feature.

Cummings’s new role triggered a backlash from diehard Tesla fans. A petition circulated by fans called for reviewing her appointment and received more than 21,000 signatures as of Friday morning. The attacks on Cummings have at times been vitriolic, personal and hyperbolic. Cummings has been described as “the hired gun for the Luddites of mediocrity” and as someone who wants to destroy Tesla. The automaker’s passionate fan base has been criticized in the past as being cultish and intolerant of criticism.

The petition from Tesla’s fanbase includes a critique of a 2019 tweet from Cummings that said that NHTSA should require Tesla to turn off Autopilot. Cummings’s Twitter account shifted to private in the wake of the backlash and then was deleted.

Tesla’s fanbase also criticized Cummings for her ties to the Swedish driver-assist company Veoneer. Cummings sits on the company’s board of directors.

NHTSA did not make Cummings available for an interview, but spokesperson Lucia Sanchez told CNN Business that any possible conflict of interest would be resolved before Cummings starts her work at NHTSA.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has joined in the criticism, calling Cummings’s track record “extremely biased” against Tesla. Cummings responded and said she was “happy to sit down and talk with you anytime.” Musk did not detail what he considered biased, and did not respond to a request for comment. (Tesla generally does not engage with the professional news media.) U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg reportedly said Wednesday that Musk should call him if he has any concerns.