Driving Innovation

PlusAI, a tech company specializing in software that controls driverless freight trucks, is currently testing self-driving semis (with human safety monitors on board) on highways in Texas and in Spain. The company plans to roll out its first fully autonomous trucks in Texas in 2027, and it’s the job of Earl Adams Jr. JD’02, PlusAI’s vice president of policy and regulatory affairs, to make sure that the whole thing is done safely. Adams, who works with government regulators, software engineers, and vehicle manufacturers to get the technology in self-driving trucks up to every safety standard, believes we’re on the precipice of an important transformation in how we move goods around. “The autonomous trucking industry,” he said, “is in a great moment right now.”

Not everyone is as excited as Adams to see driverless eighteen-wheelers cruising down the road, and when he needs a reminder that there’s a lot of anxiety out there about autonomous vehicles, he need look no further than a recent conversation with his wife, Tamara Devieux-Adams JD’00. During one family trip, she declined to get into a robotaxi. “I trust you that you believe this is safe,” Devieux-Adams told her husband, “but I’m not there yet.”

Adams describes himself as an “evangelist” for self-driving technology. In his job, he meets with officials in the places where PlusAI is planning to deploy trucks—in Texas, for instance, he shares updates on software developments and safety tests with state lawmakers and chambers of commerce—and he regularly speaks about safety at industry conferences. And yet, he said, “If my own wife is unsure, that tells me I have a lot of convincing to do.”

Before joining PlusAI in 2025, Adams spent nearly a decade as the head of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, and he later became chief counsel, and eventually deputy administrator, at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Adams said that agency’s research suggests that autonomous trucking will result in fewer crashes and less serious injuries on our roadways.

At PlusAI, Adams, a former president of the BC Law Alumni Board, has to navigate a maze of regulations, many still emerging, to get trucks equipped with the company’s software on the road. “There are no federal rules specifically for autonomous trucks, so we are dealing with a patchwork of states who approach regulation differently,” he said. In an effort to change that, Adams is part of a lobbying effort to create a national framework of autonomous truck regulations. In the meanwhile, he helps to find solutions to meet existing safety requirements. For example, he said, when a driverless truck is pulled over on the side of the road, there is no one in the cab to get out and set up the mandated orange warning triangles. To get around this problem, the industry recently convinced the US Department of Transportation to allow autonomous freight trucks to use light beacons instead of the triangles.

At the same time, PlusAI is partnering with major truck manufacturers—including the Traton Group, one of the world’s largest commercial vehicle makers—to integrate its software into fleets of new trucks as they are built at the factory. “This isn’t Star Trek stuff,” Adams said, “the future is now.” ◽