Self-driving trucks are about controlling the roads — not making them safer

Americans have become strangely accustomed to driverless cars. In cities like San Francisco and Austin, people casually summon Waymo robo-taxis the way they once called Uber.

Now imagine the same technology attached to an 80,000-pound tractor-trailer moving at highway speed.

My fellow truckers already know the problem. Modern collision-avoidance systems have been triggered by shadows, weather conditions, lighting changes, and animals.

It’s happening; large carriers are already purchasing hundreds of robotically operated highway trucks as they prepare to eliminate one of the country’s most common occupations: the truck driver.

Supermarket swindle

Those pimping the technology tell us it is the necessary solution to a catastrophic shortage of truckers, with the additional benefit of making the roads safer. As I explain in my new book, “End of the Road: Inside the