The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said Monday that it ordered a transit service to stop transporting children to school in Florida using a driverless shuttle, calling it “unlawful.”
NHTSA said in a statement that Transdev North America’s use of its EZ10 Generation II driverless shuttle to take children to school “is unlawful and in violation of the company’s temporary importation authorization.”
According to NHTSA, regulators granted the company permission to use the driverless shuttle for “testing and demonstration purposes,” not as a school bus. The company “failed to disclose or receive approval for this use,” NHTSA added.
Heidi King, NHTSA’s deputy administrator, said in a statement that “innovation must not come at the risk of public safety.”
“Using a non-compliant test vehicle to transport children is irresponsible, inappropriate, and in direct violation of the terms of Transdev’s approved test project,” King said.
Transdev told NHTSA that it would stop the “unapproved operations,” according to NHTSA.