Trump administration pushes to ease rollout of driverless vehicles
WASHINGTON — The Trump 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 trucker — or anyone else — 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 selfdriving firm, has been working to open a driverless service to the public in Arizona by year's end. The federal guidelines also come after a self-driving Uber SUV misidentified and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona. 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.
The guidance, dubbed Automated Vehicles 3.0, continues to call for companies to describe voluntarily 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 is skepticism about autonomous vehicles among a broad swath of the population.
The safety driver who was supposed to be closely monitoring the behavior of the self-driving Uber in Tempe was streaming NBC's "The Voice" in the run-up to 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 launch new pilot programs to work with states and industry, and federal officials said one such effort by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration could eventually lay the groundwork for possible new regulations.