Semis without drivers in Kansas? Bill in state Senate would allow it. | Commentary

“A 25,000-pound truck and no one behind the wheel” sounds like the chorus of a country tune or the antagonist of a dystopian novel. Unfortunately, it’s neither in Kansas. Senate Bill 379, up for hearings in the Senate Transportation Committee this week, aims to haul driverless big rigs onto our Kansas highways and let them loose with no state-mandated testing, inspection, oversight or accountability — only the vague notion of federal oversight and verbal assurances of safety. The entire bill on the topic — the only bill — is a whopping two pages. Picturing a driverless semi next to your family on the highway going 80 miles per hour is daunting. But what if you knew the computer driving the semi had not been specially registered, tested or inspected in our state?

The concept of driverless passenger cars proved scary enough – particularly after Tesla’s prototypes began ramming walls and emergency vehicles. Rather than recall its dangerous vehicles, Tesla simply installed a software update, angering the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the process. The NHTSA declared that the manufacturer of the software is responsible for the vehicle’s operations and complained that Tesla should have recalled the vehicles instead. After a new failure in the autonomous rolling stop function of its prototypes, Tesla recalled 54,000 more cars. These failures happen when you replace humans with computers in a function as important as driving – and they will happen again. This is a primary purpose of testing, inspection, oversight and accountability: to promote safety. After all, auto accidents and other unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death in Americans ages 1 to 44.

Here in Kansas, Walmart and its partner from California, Gatik, are looking to push Senate Bill 379 into law, giving large businesses and their autonomous, 25,000+ pound trucks access to our highways. They claim safety is the number one goal while acknowledging there is no federal law occupying the autonomous vehicle landscape and lobbying for a state law which contains few standards. They say the driverless semis will only drive the “middle mile,” which are basically fixed and repeatable intrastate routes. They don’t mention that one of these routes could run from Liberal to Kansas City or Pittsburg to Colby if they wanted.

Their law does not require them to register their autonomous vehicles with the state of Kansas in advance or submit the driving hardware and software for testing. It does not hold them legally accountable for traffic violations unless they happen to be the titled owner of the vehicle — the company actually operating the vehicle with its software gets off free. The owner only must carry $25,000 in insurance in the event a driverless semi causes a fatality. The bill does not even require the vehicle to stop if it is in an accident or the company’s designee to speak with law enforcement before it leaves the scene.

Maybe these are just kinks to be worked out — but when? Once the bill is passed and the autonomous semis hit the road, all bets are off. No one running the show will come back to the Legislature and ask for more accountability or oversight. And one of the main points of the bill is to strip our towns and cities of the right to make their own rules and safety requirements.

Driverless commercial vehicles are coming to Kansas eventually. But what will the rules be, who will watch out for our safety, and who is accountable when safety fails? Our Legislature is behind the wheel, but we must let them know we’re watching.