The short answer from the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Josh Bray, R-Mt. Vernon, is no. However, Bray said this type of legislation is providing a framework for the future.
“Kentucky’s law had kind of been silent on whether they’re allowed or not,” he said. “So what the bill did was allow the Department of Transportation to regulate the autonomous vehicle industry. The idea behind the bill is, ‘Hey, treat these vehicles like you would treat other driver vehicles.’”
How it works
Kentucky will become the 25th state to allow autonomous vehicles to operate on public roads. Bray said Kentucky’s bill will ensure monitoring of the testing, implementation and enforcement of autonomous vehicles throughout the Commonwealth.
With the bill, any owner of a fully autonomous vehicle would need to submit a plan to the Transportation Cabinet and Kentucky State Police on how an officer would be able to interact with the vehicle and a process for cases where the vehicle needed to be stopped and removed from the road.
Autonomous vehicles are federally regulated by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which governs all significant modes of transportation. Because of Kentucky’s location as a national logistics hub, and its vast interstate system, Bray said “it makes sense to roll them out here.”
Specialized situations
Bray said he imagines such vehicles as automated long-haul trucks not hitting the road for the next 5-10 years, with most cases of automated vehicles only in specialized situations.
For example, he highlighted Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport as a situation where automated vehicles are already being utilized to move baggage from one place to another. But because there was no legislation, they couldn’t cross any state roads.
“It’s not something you’ll see in Rockcastle, Kentucky, where I’m from,” he said. “I don’t know that your average Kentuckian will run across it over the next couple of years until it’s more widely adopted.”
Bray explained this technology will require a lot of infrastructure work before being widely used. Each company utilizing automated vehicles will need to map all of the streets for the vehicles, monitor the vehicles for some time and “geo-fencing” the vehicles to only operate in a certain area.
What do opponents say?
For critics of the driverless movement, safety dominates their list of concerns.
“Our major concern when this bill first hit the table was safety,” said Krystal McLeod, a package car driver and political coordinator for Teamsters Local 651 in Lexington. “They claim that it’s going to be safer but, as far as I know, their mapping systems are not even complete yet.”
McLeod highlighted the hoops that will need to be jumped through with Kentucky State Police to make sure trucks are able to drive on roads and the differing rules for trucks across different states than cars.
“Every state has different tandem (axel) rules (how they are configured on the truck), so truckers usually have to get out whenever they cross state lines (to) change the tandems on the truck,” she said. “There are so many questions, so many things that a driver does that are not going to be able to be done without a driver in the truck.”
With automated trucks specifically, there is a plan in place to answer some of those questions. For example, the bill requires that a driver be present in any fully autonomous vehicle that has a declared gross weight of 62,000 pounds or more until July 31, 2026.
“If we feel like there needs to be a driver in longer, we can mandate that,” Bray said. “It gives us the flexibility to study the issue with the driver in the vehicle for those two years.”
McLeod also predicts the job market is going to take a hit as new legislation for this technology rolls out.
“There is a large percentage of jobs in Kentucky that are transportation jobs, and it is one of the more better-paid jobs,” she said. “Once those jobs start getting taken away, I’m just not sure where these guys are going to go.”
McLeod said companies like UPS will begin to cut into jobs with the development of automated vehicles.
UPS spokesperson Mechelle Stanchfield said UPS has “not announced plans for automated delivery vehicles.”
Bray cited an October 2022 report from the American Trucking Association (ATA) that highlighted a shortage of drivers as to why legislation is needed on automated vehicles.
“At current trends, the shortage could surpass 160,000 in 2031,” the report said. “This forecast is based on driver demographic trends, including gender and age, as well as expected freight growth. As part of this study, ATA estimates that over the next 10 years, the industry will have to recruit nearly 1.2 million new drivers into the industry to replace retiring drivers, drivers that leave voluntarily (e.g., lifestyle) or involuntarily (e.g., driving records or failed drug test), as well as additional drivers needed for industry growth.”
While focusing on the vehicles that travel across the state and country, Bray said the work delivery drivers are doing will never be able to be replaced by a machine.
“When we look at the mass transit driving, the long haul stuff, I do think within 10 years we’re probably going to see an uptick in the utilization for that,” he said.
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