DOVER – The next generation of driver is headed to Delaware and some leaders are speaking out to ensure its future travel is a safe one in the First State.
It’s a sci-fi story waiting to happen right here on the East Coast as technology expands around the concept of vehicles that could seemingly drive themselves with no driver in sight. Autonomous vehicles are being tested right now across the country with operators that can take over the vehicle from a virtual platform or from a physical spot inside the vehicle itself.
Back in 2017, former Governor John Carney signed an executive order which established the Advisory Council on Connected and Autonomous Vehicles. The group was ultimately tasked with developing recommendations for innovative tools and strategies moving forward. Final recommendations made a year later outlined safety components as drivers considers the possibility of seeing “self-driving” cars.
“We are moving forward when it comes to autonomous vehicles,” Senator Spiros Mantzavinos (D-Newport) said of the technology that is now sprawling across the United States. “You’ve seen cars and taxis, and unfortunately, you’ve seen some accidents when you’re dealing with those vehicles.”
He hopes to maintain the safety of Delaware roads, at least when it comes to autonomous technology in tractor trailers, through Senate Bill 46. The bill prohibits any autonomous vehicle that requires a Class A commercial driver license “without an O restriction” from being operated on a Delaware highway without a human safety operator being physically present within the autonomous vehicle.
He said it’s a necessary step considering all of the unknowns regarding autonomous vehicles.
“It basically is a safety measure that requires a human safety operator inside any autonomous tractor trailer,” he told the Delaware Business Times. He added that the bill also provides for a sunset review after three years to re-analyze technology and trends to see if anything more, or less, needs to be done on the safety front.
“Look, I’m not looking to stop progress,” he said. “With trailers, mishaps could be a little more serious and until we make sure that we’re comfortable with the technology, and the techno is getting there, it’s just not there yet, we want to make sure that there’s a human in there that can take control that has the proper licensing.”
He said, to date, he’s heard of a logistics-related company that has already planned to go live with autonomous tractor trailer routes between Dallas and Houston, as well as a taxi company around the Washington, D.C. area.
“Their road conditions are a lot different than here in Delaware and there’s different levels of testing that’s occurring in different states,” he said. “At this point, in the northeast and in Delaware, we haven’t heard a lot of that. . .”
But he said the goal behind his bill is to simply be ready when the time comes.
Delaware Farm Bureau President Bill Powers says autonomous vehicles and similar technology has already been present in Delaware – in its agricultural fields – providing an interesting shift in one of the First State’s top industries.
“It’s more for the use of precision farming; the technology helps us with planting and GPS. In the fields, nowadays, we know the tractor is going to take you there. There’s no way we could plant all that corn if it wasn’t for that,” Powers told DBT.
He also has decades of experience in the automotive industry working on automated lines and said he is concerned about autonomous vehicles, including tractors and farming equipment, that might stop working for a variety of reasons.
“We do have to make sure this is safe. I remember when we were first putting in robots, automation is great until it messes up and then you have to have someone reprogram it,” he said, adding that it will also work to shift the workforce needs for Delaware.
“Safety really is key here,” Mantzavinos added.
