Autonomous Transportation Committee Stalls Under Trump
A federal committee created to work on autonomous transportation hasn’t moved an inch under President Donald Trump.
And now is the wrong time to stand still, a committee member and prominent researcher into autonomous technologies told the Tribune-Review.
The tech website Recode reported that the Federal Committee on Automation has fallen entirely inactive since its first meeting in January.
I would have thought Trump would have loved this committee because it’s heavy on industry.
Missy Cummings, director of the Humans and Autonomy Lab at Duke University
“If they are going to move forward with infrastructure investment across the Department of Transportation, they have never needed a committee like this more,” said Missy Cummings, director of the Humans and Autonomy Lab at Duke University and a member of the committee.
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President Barack Obama formed the committee in the waning days of his administration. Cummings said the group’s task was work on automating all types of transportation, from cars to trains to boats to planes.
The task force met on Jan. 16 for what Cummings described as a “meet and greet” session but has not met since. Cummings believes the inaction is a political statement by the Trump administration but is unsure why.
“It’s really hard to say. Is this a statement because somehow Obama touched the issue?” Cummings said. “I would have thought Trump would have loved this committee because it’s heavy on industry.”
Trump promised $1 trillion investment in infrastructure but progress has stalled. Members of Trump’s National Infrastructure Advisory Council resigned this week over the president’s response to the violence in Charlottesville and other issues, the Huffington Post reported.
Cummings said any infrastructure improvements must plan for autonomous transportation.
“If any plans are put forward for upgrading and they do not consider the future of transportation, that is going to be a very poor investment on our part, and it means the rest of the world is going to get ahead of us.”
Cummings noted that much of Europe is already ahead of the United States when it comes to automating travel by rail.
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Lyft told Recode its president, John Zimmer, an initial member, resigned a while ago. Waymo, Google’s self-driving car arm, said it believed the Obama-created group is not active under Trump.
Uber, which headquartered its self-driving operations in Pittsburgh and brought the first public test of autonomous vehicles to the city’s streets, had a representative on the initial task force. So did Delphi, an automotive supplier that is testing autonomous vehicles in Pittsburgh. Neither company commented on the committee’s inaction.
The Obama administration praised autonomous technology as a way to save lives.
“During my time at the Department (of Transportation), we have fostered some of the most significant technological changes to ever take place in transportation, and we did so while keeping our focus on the safety of the American people,” then-U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said when the group was announced in January. ”This new automation committee will work to advance life-saving innovations while boosting our economy and making our transportation network more fair, reliable, and efficient.”
Elaine Chao, Trump’s transportation secretary, has said self-driving cars could make roads safer but started a review of Obama-era guidance soon after taking office and urged companies working on autonomous vehicles to explain the benefits to a skeptical public, Reuters reported in February.
