Safety

WASHINGTON — The transportation committee in the U.S. House of Representatives is likely to consider a long-awaited highway bill early next year, Rep. Peter DeFazio, the chamber’s top transportation policymaker, said in an exclusive interview with Transport Topics.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration announced more than $77 million in grants to states and training institutions to improve commercial motor vehicle safety.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed into law a bill that directs the California Air Resources Board and other state agencies to develop and implement a new smog inspection program for heavy-duty diesel on-road trucks.

Truckers Against Trafficking, a group that educates members of the trucking industry about combating human trafficking, has formed a partnership to expand its work into Canada.

The Environmental Protection Agency notified California in a letter Sept. 24 that it has failed to file complete plans for fighting conventional air pollution and may lose highway funding as punishment.

LISLE, Ill. — Navistar International Corp. announced it is pushing into 2020 with plans for a new truck plant, electric trucks and a Class 8 with a Level 2 option, and it will place greater reliance on a single vehicle platform to optimize R&D, parts and tooling.

Ten percent of New York state’s bridges are structurally deficient and continue to bear millions of vehicles per day, according to a recent report from The Road Information Program.

What do the 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447 and a seminal 2012 study by Google on how people interact with self-driving cars have in common?

After several years of fanfare and debate over when and how self-driving commercial vehicles would reach the market, early forms of this technology are beginning to become an option in new trucks.