The US Department of Transportation (DOT) appears in AI policy both as a deployer of AI within its own rulemaking and operations and as the federal regulator overseeing autonomous-vehicle deployment and airline pricing practices. Reported uses span regulation drafting, air-traffic-control tooling, automated traffic enforcement, and oversight of robotaxi operators and algorithmic ticket pricing.
AI uses and deployments
Regulation drafting via Gemini
ProPublica reported on January 26, 2026 that the Trump DOT planned to use Google's Gemini model to help draft regulations, in a piece titled "Trump DOT Plans to Use Google Gemini AI to Write Regulations." The report framed the plan as using an AI model to draft the rules governing an industry, and raised questions about regulatory capture, accuracy, and democratic accountability.
Air-traffic-control tooling
On April 27, 2026, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced plans for air-traffic controllers to begin leaning on AI tools. The announcement drew skepticism with reference to the FAA's prior reliability and staffing issues, and raised the question of how the FAA's fail-safe-redundancy posture would interact with AI decision tooling. The deployment moves a federal agency's AI use into a safety-critical domain, comparable in that respect to the FDA's 2025 AI-assisted review pilot (Source: futurism.com).
Automated bike-lane enforcement
Beginning May 2025, Sacramento adopted an AI-enabled approach using computer vision to detect and enforce against cars parked or stopped in bike lanes, in a planned partnership with Hayden AI.
Public transit
A September 19, 2024 account, "How this transportation tech startup is using AI to improve public transit," documented a startup applying AI to public-transit operations.
Oversight of regulated actors
Autonomous-vehicle oversight
DOT is the federal regulator overseeing autonomous-vehicle deployment. Operators and programs under its oversight include Waymo robotaxis (operating in San Francisco, Phoenix, Austin, and Los Angeles), with a January 29, 2026 incident in which a robotaxi hit a child near a Santa Monica elementary school; Zoox/Amazon AV testing; GM/Cruise, suspended after an October 2024 pedestrian-dragging incident; and a planned Mercedes-Benz and Nvidia robotaxi program (January 29, 2026).
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on September 4, 2026 that it had opened an audit into about 1,000 Tesla Cybercab vehicles, examining the process and technical data Tesla relied on to claim compliance with the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, and noting that the Cybercab lacks a permanently attached steering wheel, brake pedal, accelerator pedal and mirrors. Tesla began commercial deployment of the two-seater in Austin, Texas on September 3, 2026; state records showed 420 registered autonomous vehicles in Texas as of the morning of September 4, including 45 Cybercabs (Source: reuters.com).
The audit tests self-certification rather than conduct. Federal motor-vehicle safety standards operate by manufacturer self-certification, and several of the standards presuppose the controls the Cybercab omits, so the question NHTSA has opened is whether a vehicle built without them can be certified compliant at all — distinct from the crash-triggered investigations that have followed Tesla's driver-assist deployments.
Algorithmic pricing oversight
In August 2025, DOT signaled it would investigate Delta Air Lines' AI-based ticket-personalization plans, after which Delta walked back the program.
Relationships
- deployed-by: Google (Gemini for regulation writing), Hayden AI, Waymo, Zoox.
- regulated-by: Congressional oversight.
- related: AI Robotics (AV oversight), Retail — AI Deployment (Delta pricing overlap), Federal AI Adoption — Patterns and Tensions, Government AI Procurement.