WASHINGTON — Alongside its quarterly earnings, autonomous trucking company Aurora Innovation Inc. provided some of its first formal public comments on a legal battle the company is in with the U.S. Department of Transportation.
When a truck has to pull over, the operator of the vehicle is required to put out safety triangles or flares. Should the company complete its commercial launch in April deploying a vehicle with no operator, a driverless truck is unable to complete this task. The company sought an exemption from this, which was rejected by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration in December after two years of silent review. Aurora has since sued to overturn this decision but has been relatively quiet about public comments. Its quarterly shareholder letter and earnings call provided some additional perspective.
“We believe that the decision to reject this application was wrong, and we’re petitioning the federal government to reassess this,” CEO Chris Urmson said in response to an investor question on the call. “We’re optimistic that with the new administration that there’s a really good opportunity and good possibility that that will get changed. That said, that rejection has no impact on our ability to launch commercially; we see both operational opportunities to mitigate this and technical approaches that allow us to operate in compliance with the law.”
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