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WASHINGTON — The looming mainstream deployment of autonomous cars and trucks around the country has the potential to improve traffic safety while reducing congestion along key freight corridors and metropolitan regions, senators on a transportation committee said June 13.

Volkswagen AG will pay a $1.2 billion fine ($1 billion euro) imposed by German prosecutors for cheating to get around diesel-emissions regulations, closing one chapter in a three-year-old crisis even as new developments arise.

Iowa’s transportation commission has approved a $3.4 billion Transportation Improvement Program for fiscal years 2019-2023.

Despite the partial closure of an important interstate bridge in the Charleston area, South Carolina ports broke their May record for the volume of containers handled.

The U.S. trucking industry is continuing to adjust to the federal electronic logging device mandate that took effect late last year.

While senators wait for Republican leaders to schedule a vote on an autonomous vehicles bill, a Senate committee will examine the potential impact allowing such vehicles could have on the country’s surface infrastructure.

U.S. authorities are requiring airlines to give them more notice about certain types of cargo that officials believe may pose a security risk.

A three-year, $5.9 million study in central Ohio will use drones to monitor traffic on a 35-mile highway, and provide new information used to prevent crashes between manned and unmanned aircraft.

WEST GREENWICH, R.I. — Rhode Island began charging tractor-trailers to drive on Interstate 95 on the morning of June 11. But while opponents rallied against a tolling scheme they call unconstitutional, it is unclear when — or even if — a long-threatened legal challenge will come.

The economy and trucking are in good shape for the second half of this year despite issues including the driver shortage. But uncertain trade policy is having an impact on future expansion, according to three industry experts who spoke June 7 at American Trucking Associations’ 2018 National Accounting & Finance Council annual conference in Raleigh, N.C.