Daimler Urges Caution In Rolling Out Self-Driving Highway Trucks

Daimler Trucks believes self-driving commercial trucks are at least five years away from even limited used on highways, the Financial Times reports.

CEO Martin Daum predicts it will take that long to commercialize relatively simple driverless “platooning” trucks that can automatically follow a human-driven lead vehicle. He cautions it will take longer to prepare fully robotic trucks that can drive themselves without a lead vehicle.

But Daum warns there is a big difference between demonstrating autonomous-driving technology and achieving an acceptable level of system safety and reliability in real-world use. That is especially true for commercial trucks because of the huge number of miles they cover.

He estimates that if all highway trucks were robotic, a crash rate of one per million miles driven would mean 100 collisions per day in the U.S. alone. “We wouldn’t survive that,” he says.

Daimler Truck’s short- and midterm aim is to develop automated technologies that assist rather than replace drivers, according to Daum. He asserts that human drivers will be needed in many situations for many years to come.