We are heading, slowly and surely, toward fully automated driving industry. Driverless trucks with no humans on board will soon travel along Texas highways. The plan is met with skepticism.
Aurora Innovation Inc., Kodiak Robotics Inc., and Gatik AI Inc. have been working on the technology for years and are accelerating on the road to full automation with no humans on board. Critics claim that the timetable is set by financial pressure, not safety considerations.
The three entities have already hauled cargo for companies such as Walmart, FedEx, and Kroger. Now, they are trying to get approval to remove safety drivers from the trucks that are exclusively controlled by software, with the drive being based on radar and LiDAR sensors and cameras.
Autonomous driving in the trucking sector is one step ahead of the robotaxi sector, with zero incidents on public roads. Meanwhile, a Cruise robotaxi ran into a pedestrian in California, throwing a shadow on the sector and leading to the suspension of Cruise's license. GM's division might also face a $1.5 million penalty over accusations of misleading regulators on the severity of the accident.
All this while, autonomous trucks are marching ahead and might end up on the road by themselves, with no safety operators on board in late 2024, according to Chris Urmson, co-founder and CEO of Aurora Inc., who unveiled the information in a conversation with Bloomberg.
Photo: Aurora Inc.
This means that each truck will depend entirely on the software it is equipped with. All three companies have already announced that they are ready for the deployment of their autonomous trucks without safety drivers in the cabin.
The expected decision is already facing backlash from critics. For instance, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, as well as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, underline the fact that there is no regulatory basis for autonomous trucks with no drivers on board.
That means that, if the array of sensors crashes, an accident may occur. In such a case, lawmakers would have trouble investigating the cause of the crash. Furthermore, a human on board, ready to interfere whenever the system fails, would be able to avoid unwanted incidents.
The trucks would operate on fixed routes, which would be mostly highways. Thus, developing a specific infrastructure for them would be easy. Also, developing autonomous driving software for trucks that always cover the exact same route would be less complicated than doing it for robotaxis, which have various alternatives to drive along. Robotaxis also have to deal with cross traffic, pedestrians, and cyclists. None of these are present on highways.
The deployment of autonomous trucks may not entirely eliminate accidents. There were 168,320 truck accidents in 2022. 4,766 of them were fatal for one or more persons involved, according to TruckInfo. None of the trucks involved was autonomous.
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