Secretary Pete Buttigieg Keynote Urges Agencies to Tap Silicon Valley to Improve Safety and Equity

“We shouldn’t be acquiring or deploying technology for its own sake, but always using innovation as a powerful tool to advance the goals that I have been discussing in this address- safety, equity, climate, economic strength, and preparing our Country for the future.”

USDOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg

USDOT Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg addressed the attendees of TRB’s 2022 Annual Meeting in Washington DC last month, reflecting on his office’s Innovation Principles and how he expects agencies to engage with private companies, to prepare the country for the future. Sec. Buttigieg’s insightful keynote covered areas including climate change, funding, road traffic safety, infrastructure and the importance of evidence-based science – topics at the heart of the NoTraffic vision, to improve the quality of life in urban areas.

Secretary Buttigieg’s keynote followed the publication of an update to the USDOT Innovation Principles at the start of the new year. Policy priorities such as creating high quality jobs, achieving racial equity, and increasing opportunity for all Americans sat alongside tackling the climate crisis. Driving innovation in the U.S. Department of Transportation that will reduce road death and serious injury remains an overarching priority. This aligns very closely to the NoTraffic mission and to the work we’re doing with agencies in terms of safety, traffic equity and emissions.

The commitment to allow for experimentation and learn from failure offers an important and hopeful message supporting public sector experimentation. Elevating lessons learned from both successful deployments and those considered less so will very much be part of the process, offering a good motivator to take a pursued risk by agencies.

The department also plans to play an important role in the future of infrastructure and helping communities and public sectors embrace the digital age by bringing their systems up to date, as part of the Biden Administration’s $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Bill.

Watch Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s full keynote below:

Road traffic safety is at the heart of what we do at NoTraffic. We believe that digitizing and investing in our infrastructure is an essential first step and plays an important role in supporting traffic safety services. By leveraging the NoTraffic Hardware Enabled SaaS Platform, our sophisticated detection sensors and algorithms, real-time optimization, and signature safety analytics, we can increase traffic safety for vulnerable road users.