Several states put the brakes on autonomous vehicles; Teamsters back bill that would require a safety driver

Tractor-trailers stacked up on the shoulder of Interstate 70 near
Aurora, Colo. (Photo by David Zalubowski, The Associated Press)

Get ready for a bumpy ride. Several states are looking at entirely driverless autonomous vehicles "to consider legislation backed by the Teamsters union to require that a safety driver always is on board," reports Austin Jenkins of Pluribus News. "Amid the prevailing trend of nearly two dozen states explicitly allowing the testing and deployment of driverless vehicles. So-called driver-in legislation has been introduced in California, Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska, New Mexico and Texas."

California may have the most contentious battle. "Teamsters are backing a bill that would prohibit medium- and heavy-duty vehicles weighing 10,000 pounds or more from operating on public roads without a human safety driver. The bipartisan bill, which boasts more than 20 coauthors, cleared its first committee this week with strong support," Jenkins reports. "If approved, the law would preempt the California Department of Motor Vehicles from issuing rules allowing heavier autonomous vehicles to ply the roads without a driver. California currently allows driverless light-duty vehicles under certain circumstances."

Jenkins reports, "In January, the DMV held a workshop with their Highway Patrol that signaled what the agency calls a 'starting point for the potential development of heavy-duty autonomous vehicle regulations.'" Teamster Jason Rabinowitz told Jenkins, "We don't want the DMV to make this decision. A decision of this magnitude should be made by the legislature." Commenting on the Teamsters efforts, Jeff Farrah, executive director of the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association, told Jenkins, "Trying to wedge these driver-only bills into these state capitols is something that we think is not the right way to do it."

On the one hand, "Backers say the bill is about protecting public safety and jobs," Jenkins writes. "The prime author of the bill, Assembly-member Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, cited experience with light-duty driverless vehicles. . . . She pointed to incidents where the vehicles have blocked intersections and impeded emergency vehicles, among other issues. She argued that trucks, because of their size and weight, pose an 'exponentially greater threat to the public.'"

One the other hand, "The bill has drawn the opposition of more than 40 companies and business organizations who say autonomous trucks offer the promise of safer roads, more reliable supply chain efficiency and new career opportunities," Jenkins writes. "Farrah countered that the AV industry has a 'remarkable safety record' and said the industry offers a path to dramatically reducing the nearly 40,000 motor vehicle fatalities each year in the U.S., including those involving trucks."

While California lawmakers remain positive "about the future of AVs and their ability to ultimately make the roads safer, but they also expressed concern about moving too quickly to deploy the technology without adequate safeguards," Jenkins reports. Transportation Committee Chair Laura Friedman told Jenkins, "Putting 80,000-pound vehicles on the road without a driver would happen sometime after we all feel really, really good about the state of single-passenger autonomous vehicles."

Quick hits: Apply by March 31 for business journalism fellowship; Americans cut back on pricey meat analogues

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

An anonymous donor has given Washington State University its largest gift ever for an initiative aimed at bringing more pharmacists to rural Washington. Read more here.

A journalism professor has a list of 21 types of political spin journalists should know about, and how to spot them. Notable entries include the "dead cat bounce." Read more here.

One columnist shares how her sons' experiences in growing up on the farm will serve them well as adults. Read more here.

Got an idea for an investigative or enterprise journalism project involving business, finance or economics. Apply by March 31 for a fellowship of up to $15,000 from The Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Center for Business Journalism at the City University of New York. Past fellows have produced rural-centric stories, including a recent one from the Center for Public Integrity on Black farmer debt. Read more here.

The National Press Foundation and the Society of Professional Journalists are seeking journalists to fill out a short survey to help the nonprofits design journalism training that serves newsrooms best. Take the quiz here.

The Agriculture Department has named new Farm Service Agency and Rural Development state directors for North Dakota and South Dakota. Read more here.

As inflation rises, consumers are cutting back on purchases of expensive plant-based meat alternatives, and 54% said in a recent survey that such products are too expensive. Read more here.

Amid a severe truck driver shortage, a new study says 90% of long-haul trucking could be done by self-driving trucks. There are some logistical hang-ups and the trucks would have to get better at bad-weather driving, though. Read more here.

Report: Driverless cars can't solve rural transportation woes without broadband and better-marked roads

Scanty public transportation means rural residents already have a harder time getting around without a car than people in urban areas. That gap is likely to stay the same or widen once self-driving cars become more common, according to a recent report by the Berkshire County Selectmen's Association, which represents 30 towns in far western Massachusetts. The issues there are much the same as those facing rural areas across the nation.

"Hundreds of country roads in Berkshire County will be off-limits to autonomous vehicles, unless telecommunications gaps are plugged and roads themselves improved," Larry Parnass reports for The Berkshire Eagle.

Rural residents' difficulty in getting around hampers economic development, limits access to health care, and forces schools to spend too much money on transportation, according to BCSA president Andrew Hogeland. He served on the statewide Commission on the Future of Transportation, which issued a report in December with recommendations for improving rural transportation, Parnass reports.

Both the BCSA and CFT reports say school transportation needs a makeover. School buses are a huge expense for rural school districts and sit idle for most of the day, Hogeland said. The reports also agree that the lack of public transportation in rural areas makes aging in place more difficult for seniors and makes residents more vulnerable to food deserts, Parnass reports.

MIT project helps self-driving cars navigate rural roads

How MIT's car sees the world with a LiDar sensor (MIT illustration)

Self-driving cars are already on the streets in a few urban areas, but they face a significant barrier to driving rural roads: there may not be detailed three-dimensional maps available (think Google Street View maps), and the roads can be twisty with few or no buildings nearby to help the car assess landmarks or road edges. But researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have come up with a way to help autonomous cars navigate rural roads, and "their strategy involves teaching cars to drive like humans," Rob Verger reports for Popular Science.

Though self-driving cars rely on detailed maps to help them figure out where they are in a city, many have a LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) sensor that helps it see curbs and other obstacles. The MIT team juiced up their test vehicle's LiDar sensor to help it detect the difference between the asphalt and the grass. The LiDAR's 64 lasers each spun around 10 times per second, providing constant feedback on what the car's surroundings look like and where it was on the road.

That’s how the car perceived where the road was in front of it, but it still had to know how to drive to its destination without a great 3D map in its silicon brain (although it did have GPS)," Verger reports. "To do that, it picked a 'local goal'—a point in the road up ahead that the car could see, and drove towards it. But it didn’t just drive to that point and stop. The vehicle constantly refreshed that goal as it approached it, like paddling towards a point on the horizon on a big, flat lake."

Christoph Mertz, a scientist at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute, admires the project because he says rural areas are sometimes neglected by scientists, and this project could help rural residents: "If these autonomous vehicles don’t drive in rural areas, then the elderly there might be stuck in their houses because nobody can drive them."

Research looks at rural attitudes about self-driving vehicles

Self-driving vehicles will mean big changes for America, including rural areas, but most research has focused on their impact in urban areas, Kali Katerberg reports for The Daily Mining Gazette in Houghton, Mich. A team of Michigan Technological University students studied possible impacts in rural areas as well as knowledge and attitudes of rural citizens about self-driving cars, using Houghton for a case study.

"The class was tasked with determining environmental, social and economic impacts of Level 4 autonomous vehicles, part of a competition known as the AutoDrive Challenge," Katerberg reports. "Level 4 refers to vehicles that are self-diving but unable to deal with every scenario."

Houghton was a desirable test subject because it has one dominant employer, and a median income and poverty rates that are about average for rural areas. Students asked parents and the elderly about what the environmental, economic and social impacts they believed self-driving vehicles would bring.

The results found a high number of neutral responses, between 20 and 30 percent. Participants also raised questions about unexpected topics such as land use and parking. Elderly participants were most excited about the idea of autonomous vehicles, but only 36 percent of young adults were comfortable with the idea of riding in one. Many were concerned about the high initial cost of the vehicles, and 60 percent said they wouldn't buy one. "After their research, the team felt a shared-use system would be the most feasible for a community like Houghton and help autonomous vehicle companies restore lost trust among consumers," Katerberg reports. The team also determined "there would need to be significant changes to infrastructure" to accommodate the vehicles.

Transportation Secretary Chao tells automakers not to forget about rural areas as they develop self-driving vehicles

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao
(Detroit Free Press photo by Kathleen Galligan)

As it develops self-driving vehicles, the automobile industry must keep rural communities in mind, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao told industry leaders Sunday at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

Chao said autonomous vehicles have "tremendous potential" to improve safety and drive economic growth, "but she also said that automakers need to ensure that self-driving cars are accessible to people who live outside big cities," Nathan Bomey reports for USA Today.

"We want to be inclusive as well and consider how this technology can benefit rural America," Chao told Bomey in an interview. Self-driving cars are likely to be first available in ride-sharing fleets in metropolitan areas in 2019, "but not everyone lives downtown," Chao said in her speech. "And it is worth noting that rural America accounts for a disproportionately large share of highway fatalities. So, automated technology (has) an important role to play in rural mobility and safety."

Chao is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, one of the more rural states.