As advanced safety technologies reach new stages of development across the transportation sector, Congress has been grappling with how to legislate such innovations, trying to balance industry needs against calls to prevent tragic accidents.
A subcommittee hearing of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee took up the issue of transportation safety technology Tuesday as Congress works on vehicle, rail and aviation safety bills.
“Over the past decade, we’ve seen a rise in innovative technologies that require us to reimagine how our transportation networks operate,” Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., the chairman of the Surface Transportation, Freight, Pipelines and Safety Subcommittee, said in his opening remarks.
He noted examples of recent innovations, including autonomous vehicles, train inspection portals that analyze images of trains for defects and repair needs and “vehicle to everything”, or V2X, technology that allows vehicles to receive data from and adjust for their surroundings. These technologies and others, which Young said “were only a pipedream a short time ago,” offer the potential to increase transportation safety.
Ranking member Gary Peters, D-Mich., agreed, saying, “Every year, 40,000 Americans die on our highways and nearly 1,000 die on our railways, and these aren’t just numbers — they’re families that will never be whole again. We must take action, and we know that technology is certainly part of that solution.”
