CAV Impacts on Freight within the Northeast

This session will include presentations and moderated discussions with representatives from the I-95 Corridor Coalition, Volvo Group North America and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration on current and future CAV freight technologies, systems and programs.

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Jeff Lotus – Federal Motor Carrier Safety Association
Skip Yeakel – Volvo Group North America

Moderator

Marygrace M. Parker serves as the Director for Freight for the I-95 Corridor Coalition. In this position, Mrs. Parker provides staff support to Coalition members and agencies participating in the Coalition’s Intermodal Freight and Passenger Movement Committee and program manager for the nationally recognized Freight Academy. She has extensive experience in early deployment technologies, from ITS elements to the early deployment of FMCSA CVISN programs (now Innovative Technology Deployment) in the corridor.

She previously provided project oversight for the Coalition funded introductory CAV work with NYSDOT and Volvo (formerly CVII –Commercial Vehicle Infrastructure Integration), one of the first CAV related commercial vehicle operational tests. This project successfully identified user needs and identified capabilities for adapting VII on-board communication equipment (OBEs) to a commercial vehicle including verification and authentication for driver identification and testing infrastructure to vehicle warnings for safety issues such as bridge height limitations.

Panelists

Mr. Jeff Loftus is the Chief of the Technology Division in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) Office of Analysis, Research, and Technology. He has over 27 years of experience at the U.S. Department of Transportation in research and technology testing to improve large truck and motorcoach safety. His division oversees the FMCSA’s Innovative Technology Deployment grant program that provides $20M per year to States to deploy Intelligent Transportation Systems for commercial vehicle operations.

He is currently leading a team of safety engineers and researchers focusing on various topics to enable the safe on-road testing and commercial deployment of automated trucking applications. These topics include truck driver human factors, sensor maintenance, vehicle component performance, AV roadside inspection procedures, and cybersecurity.

Skip Yeakel has been employed by Volvo Group North America and its predecessor companies, for more than 51 years. He is a Principal Engineer in its Greensboro, NC Headquarters, He has spent decades improving the technology and components behind commercial truck development. He has 56 years of truck engineering experience and has been a Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) member for the equivalent time, having served as Chairman of its Truck and Bus ITS Committee and Chairman of its Philadelphia Section. He was a two-term Chairman of the Board of the Truck Manufacturers Association and has served on the American Trucking Associations’ (ATA) Board of Directors, chaired its Technology and Engineering Policy Committee and remains active on its Automated Truck Sub-Committee Skip is an advocate for ATA, the USDOT Transportation Safety Advancement Group, and general commercial vehicle issues.

Skip holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Penn State University, is a Registered Professional Engineer in the Commonwealth of PA, and maintains his Commercial Driver’s License in the State of NC.