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Planning cities to better accommodate trucks is one area of study the American Transportation Research Institute will delve into further this year, according to a press release issued by the organization April 2. ATRI’s board of directors recently approved the 2018 top research priorities identified by the institute’s Research Advisory Committee.

California began accepting applications April 2 for permits to deploy self-driving cars on public roads without a human backup driver at the wheel.

How will technology and innovation change the way freight is transported? Tell us what you think the future will be like and we could feature your ideas in an upcoming edition of Transport Topics.

U.S. lawmakers have applied a light touch in regulating robot cars. At the national level, the Trump administration has proclaimed that driverless-car guidelines should be “entirely voluntary” for automakers, and bills pending in Congress would clear the way to putting tens of thousands of autonomous cars on the road — orders of magnitude more than the few hundred in the country today — before federal safety regulations are set.

The only engineering facility built expressly to test self-driving vehicles will officially open April 4 at the historic 335-acre Willow Run site just west of Detroit.

Jarrett Cos. has purchased a 53-acre property in Seville, Ohio, that it expects eventually will be used by driverless, autonomous trucks.

Uber Technologies Inc. has found itself isolated a little more than a week after one of its self-driving SUVs hit and killed a pedestrian in Arizona.

Lior Ron, a central figure in Uber Technologies Inc.’s self-driving-truck project, left the company, said people familiar with the matter.

As the global auto industry vies to deploy driverless cars, some contenders may be cutting corners in a bid to get ahead, warned Jack Hollis, group vice president of U.S. sales for the Toyota brand.