- Washington wants AI to sniff out companies using illegal foreign drivers.
- Officials say fraud hurts American truckers and pushes pay downward.
- Plan ties into wider industry deregulation and autonomous vehicle push.
Artificial intelligence will revolutionize the haulage industry in the next coming years, turning trucks into self-driving machines, but long before that, the technology is being drafted for a different kind of job behind the scenes. Instead of replacing drivers outright, clever computers will be used to get rid of human drivers for an entirely different reason.
More: California Flips On Immigrant Truckers, And Now Washington Wants Payback
The US government wants to use artificial intelligence and heavy duty data analysis to hunt down companies that hire illegal foreign drivers.
At the Transportation Research Board’s annual meeting in Washington, US Department of Transportation Deputy Secretary Steven Bradbury laid out the plan. He said the department and its agencies are leaning into AI to improve enforcement and spot bad actors faster than any human inspector ever could.
Hiring Practices Blamed for Falling Pay
Bradbury claimed illegal foreign drivers are a widespread problem and that they undercut wages for legitimate American truckers. In his words the practice is “eating the lunch of local drivers” by driving down pay to unreasonable levels.
He told the audience, “That’s happening very extensively in the country, unfortunately.” Bradbury also suggested researchers at the Transportation Research Board could play a supporting role in advancing the initiative.
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The idea is that smart algorithms can comb through mountains of licensing and employment data to find patterns of fraud that normally slip by unnoticed.
States Under Pressure
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has already been turning up the heat on states that issued questionable commercial driver licenses.
Some states have been threatened with the loss of licensing authority and even millions of dollars in transportation funding if they don’t clean up their act, Freight Waves reports. Roughly 200,000 trucking jobs could be affected by an emergency rule aimed at cancelling non-domiciled licenses. The FMCSA estimated that figure when the interim rule was introduced in September.
That rule is currently paused in federal court while officials sift through thousands of public comments. Many of those comments strongly oppose the crackdown, arguing it could disrupt truck supply chains and punish workers who followed the rules. Expect plenty more legal fireworks before anything is fully settled.
Cutting Down on Red Tape
The AI enforcement plan fits into a larger political picture. Bradbury used his speech to highlight the administration’s aggressive deregulation agenda. Under the so called “10 for 1” policy, agencies must eliminate 10 rules for every major new one they create. The DOT’s current scorecard shows 78 deregulatory actions and zero new significant rules.
“Zero doesn’t mean we don’t intend to promulgate some significant regulatory rules,” Bradbury noted. “We have two or three in the pipeline, but we also have another 50 deregulatory actions.” He pointed to the rollback of fuel economy standards as the biggest, claiming it will deliver over $100 billion in cost savings to the U.S. economy.
Also: Feds Say 54% Of Immigrant Truck Driver Licenses In NC Are Illegal
Bradbury also used the moment to reaffirm DOT’s renewed focus on autonomous vehicle regulation. He said the agency is resuming work that stalled over the past four years, with plans to speed up exemptions and provide clearer guidance going forward.
For trucking companies the message is clear. Smarter computers are coming and they will be watching very closely. Whether that leads to safer highways or just more bureaucratic headaches remains to be seen, but the age of digital traffic cops has officially arrived for truck operators and drivers.
