newsworthy
Feds begin long and (hopefully not) strange trip to regulate
driverless trucks
In a hotel ballroom in Atlanta late last month, Danny
Hefner stood before a panel of the nation’s top motor car-
rier safety officials to express concern about the possible
deployment of highly automated commercial vehicles.
Last October’s 120-mile beer run by a self-driving Otto
truck for brewery titan Anheuser-Busch InBev “as a citizen,
put me off,” Hefner said. Noting that the driver was in
the sleeper cab for the entire trip, Hefner wondered what
would happen, in a similar scenario, if a self-driving truck
suffered equipment failure such as a blown tire. Would the
system be properly designed and programmed to adjust to
a crisis with no human available to take the wheel to make
a split-second decision? he asked.
Hefner also raised concerns about the possibility of
cyber-terrorists hacking into an interconnected network to
override the computer and telematics systems of 80,000-
pound trucks maneuvering through traffic at 60 mph.
Besides the obvious risk to life and limb, Hefner said a
single hack could wreak havoc with a large chunk of the
nation’s road infrastructure.
Hefner is no layperson. He is the safety director of MCO
Transport Inc., a truckload, drayage, and specialized carrier
based in Wilmington, N.C. He has also been a commercial
driver, logging 1. 3 million miles behind the wheel.
LONG JOURNEY AHEAD
Hefner’s comments underscore the daunting task facing
federal and state safety officials as they start down what
promises to be a long and winding road to balance technology, commercial, and safety issues stemming from
the development of driverless commercial vehicles. Panel
members, who included Jack Van Steenburg, assistant
administrator and chief safety officer of the Federal Motor
Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), and Larry W.
Minor, the agency’s associate administrator for policy, were
in listen-only mode, acknowledging they are climbing the
same learning curve as the operators they regulate.
“We are not here to impede progress, but to [proceed]
alongside the development as it moves forward,” said
Daphne Jefferson, deputy administrator of the FMCSA, at
the event.
For regulatory purposes, the government has created five
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