Spending Bill Includes $100m for AV Research

Did you hear? The most recent spending bill includes $100m for research on autonomous vehicles. A good chunk of that money ($60m) will go towards grants that test the “feasibility and safety” of autonomous vehicles, and those funds will only be available to local governments and academic institutions. Congress has also earmarked $1.5m to look at the impacts that autonomous vehicles may have on employment, with a particular eye on truck, taxi, and other commercial drivers. Considering that the U.S. Dept. of Commerce published a report in August 2017 that suggested that as many as 15.5m people work in occupations that could be affected by the introduction of autonomous vehicles, this investment seems critical to getting out ahead of these changes before industries are upended. As we say over here at Urbanism Next, AVs are not a transportation issue, they are an everything issue…labor included.