September 12, 2023
The Honorable Rick Crawford
Chair
Subcommittee on Highways and Transit Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
U.S. House of Representatives
The Honorable Eleanor Holmes Norton
Ranking Member
Subcommittee on Highways and Transit Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
U.S. House of Representatives
Dear Chair Crawford and Ranking Member Norton,
On behalf of more than 155,000 members of the Transport Workers Union of America (TWU), I am writing to share our views as part of the record for your subcommittee’s hearing on The Future of Automated Commercial Motor Vehicles: Impacts on Society, the Supply Chain, and U.S. Economic Leadership. We appreciate your subcommittee’s efforts to highlight the effects this technology could have on our workforce and our economy.
As the TWU testified before your subcommittee in February 2022, our members strongly support the integration of pro-worker, pro-safety technology into our transportation systems – including proven autonomous features like automatic emergency braking which assists operators to more safely conduct their work. The TWU has publicly joined with other unions and the broader transportation community to call on Congress to take the necessary steps to oversee and regulate autonomous vehicles at the federal level. We believe that comprehensive legislation to establish a federal framework for these vehicles – one that prioritizes safety and the high-quality jobs in our transportation systems – is past due.
It is not possible to create good public policy on autonomous vehicles (AVs) without directly addressing the issues this technology poses in the commercial sector – including trucking, hazardous materials movement, and public transportation. In July 2023, in a letter to the Energy & Commerce Committee, the TWU strongly argued for more involved from the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee to ensure that any legislation on this topic include commercial motor vehicles and directly address workforce and public safety issues that are being created by increasingly autonomated vehicles. Absent a comprehensive framework to govern the development, testing, and deployment of AVs, we run the risk of undermining the existing level safety on our roads, as well as hundreds of thousands of high-quality jobs operating and maintaining the exisitnng commercial motor vehicle fleet.
TWU members in San Francisco, CA are seeing first hand the disruption unregulated, untested AVs can create for public transportation and public safety workers. Across that city, our members have seen accidents, injuries, traffic jams, emergency services delayed, law enforcement confusion, blocking access to crime scenes, recalls, and the death of one pet as these companies treat our streets and our people as their personal testing range. Scaling up this lackadaisical model of oversight to include commercial vehicles would not only upscale these problems, but would also threaten good jobs for the workers currently operating public transportation and other commercial vehicles.
It is our hope that Congress can pass bipartisan AV legislation in near future that establishes meaningful safety and worker protections for the industry. This legislation should recognize that humans are an essential, non-optional piece of vehicle safety; require that operators have the ability to take control of vehicles when automation fails; prioritize pro-worker, pro-safety technologies that advance jobs and safety over untested ones which threaten to undermine these goals; demand robust safety performance data collection and review for all AV manufacturers and operators; and ensure that workers have a strong voice in implementing these new technologies, both in public policy and on-the-ground decision-making.
The TWU appreciates your work to advance serious AV legislation which puts workers first in this technological transition.
Sincerely,
John Samuelsen International President