Safety

The status of automatic braking technology implementation will headline a Feb. 15 hearing of the Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee in the House, the panel’s chairman announced.

Much of the transportation community — freight and business executives, the construction sector, local leaders and experts — said President Donald Trump’s call for a $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill that also would streamline project permitting to two years during his State of the Union address left them with more questions than answers, particularly on the matter of funding.

The robot cars test-driving on California roads seem to need their human overseers less and less.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is seeking public comment on ways the agency can improve its online National Consumer Complaint Database. The database allows the public and drivers to file complaints against unsafe and unscrupulous motor carriers and their employees.

Federal trucking regulators are considering granting a one-year exemption from certain technical requirements of the electronic logging device mandate for carriers having difficulty integrating ELD software updates with their fleet managment systems.

At some point this year, Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo plans to roll out a ride-hailing service using driverless cars. It just bought more vehicles to make that happen.

One-fifth of Iowa’s bridges are structurally deficient, as are more than 4,100 bridges in Pennsylvania. Twenty-three percent of bridges in Rhode Island are in that category. And, Washington, D.C., has eight of them. What's Congress going to do about them? Here's a look at the week ahead for trucking on Capitol Hill.

The issue involving something as simple as choice of paint color underscores the sweeping effects of self-driving cars for automotive engineering, said Samit Ghosh, CEO of automotive consulting and engineering firm P3 North America.

Iowa is home to the most structurally deficient bridges, while the District of Columbia contains the fewest, according to a recent report from the American Road and Transportation Builders Association.

As automakers push aggressive time frames for introducing driverless vehicles, the outreach needed to convince the public that the technology represents a positive development appears still to be wanting.