U.S. policy takes in self-driving rigs
Update included in push to ease rollout of the technology
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration on Thursday wrapped trucks into its updated driverless-vehicle policy, saying it will “no longer assume” that a commercial motor vehicle driver has to be a human or that a person necessarily needs to be in the cab.
The administration said it would work to ease the federal process for exempting trucks and other vehicles from existing safety standards that might inhibit the use of automation, as long as companies can make the case that their vehicles are likely to achieve “an equivalent level of safety.”
Federal officials also announced a joint research effort, by the departments of Transportation, Labor, Commerce and Health and Human Services, to study the “workforce impacts” of driverless vehicles. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said she remains “extremely concerned” about the impact increased automation will have on the nation’s workforce.
And transportation officials said they would seek ways to eliminate federal, state and local impediments to the deployment of driverless vehicles more broadly, which they said will bring economic and safety benefits.
The moves comes as Waymo, a leading self-driving company, has been working to open a driverless service to the public in Arizona by year’s end. The federal guide-
lines also come after a selfdriving Uber SUV misidentified and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Ariz., in March. Uber had turned off the Volvo’s automatic emergency braking system as part of its testing program, and the crash remains under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The updated federal “guidance” now covers buses, transit and trucks in addition to cars, and it remains voluntary, putting the onus for safety on the companies developing the technologies rather than government regulation.
Long-haul trucking, with its hours of cruising in relatively simple highway environments, is seen as a key opportunity to deploy automated driving technologies. Major truck manufacturers such as Daimler AG and Paccar Inc. are working on automated driving systems for commercial trucks. The field also has attracted several startups, such as Intel Corp.-backed Peloton Technology Inc., which has created technology to help automated trucks safely travel in tight platoons.
In a 2016 test by Uber Technologies Inc.’s Otto unit and Anheuser-Busch InBev Nv, an 18-wheeler with nobody behind the wheel cruised more than 120 miles to deliver a
load of beer. At the time, AB InBev said it could save $50 million a year in the U.S. if the beverage giant could deploy autonomous trucks across its distribution network.
The trucking industry’s main trade association praised the updated policy. “This is a sound and substantive framework that rightly recognizes commercial vehicles are essential to any serious [automated-vehicle] policy,” Chris Spear, president of the American Trucking Associations, said in a statement.
The policy would allow the department to overrule state or local requirements that interfere with federal trucking regulations, addressing a concern of the trucking industry: that state and local automated-vehicle rules may prohibit self-driving big-rigs from crossing state lines, a fact of life in long-haul trucking.
The latest federal guidance, dubbed Automated Vehicles 3.0, continues to call for companies to voluntarily describe why their vehicles are safe enough to be on public roads, though so far only four of the scores of companies active in the field have made those assessments public.
The Department of Transportation’s updated approach does make a nod to recent high-profile crashes and what officials acknowledged was skepticism about autonomous vehicles among a broad segment of the population.
The safety driver who was supposed to be closely monitoring the behavior of the selfdriving Uber in Tempe was streaming a television show just before the deadly crash, according to Tempe police investigators.
A top federal transportation official said the government hopes companies will give “consideration” to providing information on how they train and monitor their safety drivers.
The administration plans to start new pilot programs to work with states and industry, and federal officials said one such effort by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration eventually could lay the groundwork for possible new regulations.
Legislation on self-driving cars has been stalled in the Senate, and states have taken different tacks. Arizona has taken a more laissez-faire approach, and California has required tighter oversight of driverless testing and operations in the state.
A key holdup has been skepticism among some senators about whether states would be excluded from their traditional roles overseeing drivers, now that drivers don’t have to be human.
Information for this article was contributed by Michael Laris of The Washington Post and by Ryan Beene of Bloomberg News.