A bipartisan group of lawmakers from both the House and Senate recently released a joint statement urging Department of Transportation to change the previous administration’s automated vehicle policy.
The group sent correspondence to Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao regarding the policy, which they said excludes Ohio’s Transportation Research Center (TRC), the largest and most sophisticated independent vehicle proving ground in North America, from certain partnership and funding opportunities critical to the development of safe and effective regulations for the technology.
“In the interest of creating the safest, most effective AV policies, the Department of Transportation should be able to determine its partners for testing this new technology based on merit, not favoritism,” Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), a signing member of the letter, said in a separate statement. “As events in the past year have made tragically clear, our policies for the development, testing and deployment of automated vehicle technology can have a direct impact on the health and security of our fellow Americans, both behind the wheel and on the street.”
Portman said he is confident there is no better place to find a partner in the mission than the Transportation Research Center.
“That is why my colleagues and I believe the Department of Transportation ought not to have its capacity to partner with organizations like TRC – whose decades of vehicle testing and wealth of relevant expertise are second-to-none – restricted for arbitrary or political reasons,” Portman said. “We should work together toward policies for automated vehicle technology that, in equal measure, promote American industry and protect human life.”