Focus on Drones, Self-Driving Cars Show Trump Emphasis on Technology, Chao Says

“You cannot go through the hallways of this place without feeling the tremendous energy and also the creativity and innovation that’s occurring not only in America, but all over the world,” Chao said. “Transformative technologies are poised to revolutionize transportation and mass integration of self-driving cars, trucks and drones would be an exponential leap in the way we travel and the way we transport goods.” Chao announced that the department is seeking comment on eliminating barriers to innovation throughout the transportation sector. “Right now there are too many outdated transportation rules, terms and concepts that no longer apply to an automated world,” she said.

Autonomous vehicles will mean less danger on the roads from human error, but there are other risks, Chao said. The risk shifts to the computer programmers who write the software that will operate the vehicles, she said. Like other computer programming, the systems will also be vulnerable to hackers, she said. “The public will need to have confidence that all of their concerns have been adequately addressed by policymakers and manufacturers in order for this technology to be successfully deployed,” she said. DOT must establish rules to make certain autonomous vehicles are safe, Chao said. “Our approach will be flexible, not top-down, command and control,” she said.

Chao also said DOT is clearing the way for drones, and this week the one millionth drone is expected to be registered. There are now about 50,000 registered drone operators, a job category that until recently didn’t exist, she said. In October, DOT announced a drone pilot program to allow interested communities to experiment, she said. Interest has been “overwhelming” with more than 150 applications filed, she said. DOT will select about 10 “lead participants” in the first round, she said.

Under Trump the “official policy” is to promote emerging technologies, said Ethan Klein, policy adviser to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “We see this as a tremendous benefit to the American public,” he said of autonomous vehicles. “We see this as something that can increase the safety of the American public … in terms of reducing traffic deaths every year. We see this as something that can increase the safety and productivity of American workers.” On the drone front, companies are already using drones to inspect cell towers and pipelines and otherwise promote workplace safety, Klein said.

“We’re on the cusp of something special,” said Derek Kan, DOT undersecretary for policy and a former Lyft executive. “Research and science fiction are becoming products and business models,” he said. Kan predicted the U.S. will see deployments of automated vehicles over the next five years, but there are core questions on such issues as safety, privacy, cybersecurity and data sharing. “These are big questions that if we don’t get right then technology will not be deployed as quickly and the impact of not deploying technology quickly is safety,” he said. There were 37,461 U.S. deaths in traffic accidents 2016, he said. Autonomous vehicles can “fundamentally change that number,” he said.

The transition to autonomous vehicles and drones will be difficult, Kan predicted. A world where all vehicles are self-driving is easy because computers talk to computers, he said, but “what’s hard is when 10 percent of the cars are self-driving and 90 percent are human driven or when two percent of aircraft in space are drones and 98 percent are [standard] aircraft,” he said. “The safe integration of emerging technologies is the biggest policy question.”

Autonomous vehicles are safer than the vehicles on the road today, said Marjorie Dickman, Intel global director-IoT and automated driving policy. Self-driving vehicles “can never be tired, they’re never distracted” and can cut up to 93 percent of annual traffic deaths, she said.

Nevada is onboard with emerging transportation technologies, said Cory Hunt, deputy director of the Nevada Governor's Office of Economic Development. “We want this to be a place where autonomous vehicles and advanced modes of transportation and drones are tested, developed and deployed,” he said. Cherilyn Pascoe, a Senate Commerce Committee staffer, said consumer acceptance is probably the biggest challenge to self-driving vehicles. “Americans love to drive,” she said. With autonomous vehicles “you remove steering wheels and pedals and you turn the seats around.”

Finch Fulton, DOT deputy assistant secretary for transportation policy, said during a drone panel he used to go to shows like CES and angrily tweet about what the FAA was doing wrong. When Trump won, he said he brought his tweets to Chao who offered him a job. Fulton said he learned humility once he got to talk to the FAA administrator. “Their job is immensely complex,” he said of the FAA. “There are so many different rulemakings and moving pieces and industry partners and regulatory partners that they have to deal with.”

Fulton said Trump himself has taken an interest in drones and decided to move forward on the drone integration pilot program. “There is leadership at the highest levels,” he said. “Maybe it’s better to get drone deliveries at night and maybe it’s better to get them on our doorstep instead of the end of the neighborhood. We have to figure out those things” to get the regulations right. The FAA is working on many other rulemakings on such issues as the drones-over-people rule, counter-drone technologies, what to do with drones beyond the line of sight, he said. “These panels are important. These conversations are important.”

The FAA has a safety culture built “around what we’ve known,” said Earl Lawrence, executive director of the FAA Unmanned Aircraft Systems. “Aviation is very complex.” Now the FAA has the challenge of the introduction of drones, Lawrence said. How does the FAA “turn a very large ship around to figure out what are the right policies, procedures and mechanisms?” The FAA is working with different people and a lot more people than it ever had to work with before, he said. “The aviation community is rather small,” he said. “Now we’re dealing with all of society.”

“We really want to help the focus on the policy generation within Canada,” said Trevor Bergmann, CEO of drone company AeroVision Canada. “It’s so critical to our ability to evolve as an industry.” Bergmann said his company has customers who need to look at infrastructure in difficult-to-reach areas and regulations on beyond-the-line-of sight use of drones are absolutely critical. Taylor Mitcham, chief drone ninja at Florida-based SkyNinja, said in her state it takes about four months to get authorization to fly outside of standard air space. “Telling a client you have to wait four months is a little unreasonable,” she said. “The FAA is aware of that and they’re actively working on it.”