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Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s new director said Aug. 23 the lab is considering testing in Chattanooga related to autonomous driving and long-haul trucking.

It could be years before drivers on U.S. highways catch a glimpse of a tractor-trailer rig cruising down the highway with another truck trailing a perilous 20 or 30 feet behind.

Florida’s best hope to develop self-driving vehicles might lie with an iconic-looking campus and a $90 million test track being built 40 miles southwest of Orlando.

When Robert Roy was helping to create the world’s first self-driving construction truck, he traveled across the country and talked to people in the construction industry. One of the people he spoke with, the president of a company in Louisiana, told him the story of how one of his employees almost died while working on a highway.

A U.S. House committee July 27 approved legislation to give the federal government final say over the performance of self-driving vehicles, a measure that would preempt states from trying to set their own standards.