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Are your children in their 70s or 80s? Because it’s coming. And it will be much safer than all the impaired, distracted and stupid people on the road today. I work for a company that is developing autonomous driving solutions. Things are moving very quickly as the developmental process is being fine tuned.
Our company, unlike Tesla, is focused on making the technology as safe as is possible. Not mitigating crashes, but avoiding them entirely. The trick is solving that last 1% of safety risk. Doing it any other way is negligent. See Tela’s many crashes with people actually being killed. My company won’t do that.

“Are your children in their 70s or 80s? Because it’s coming. And it will be much safer than all the impaired, distracted and stupid people on the road today. I work for a company that is developing autonomous driving solutions”

I posted here the other day that with luck by the time I lose my Driver’s License because of age ( I’m early 70’s). I will be able to have a car that drives for me. Get in car say “grocery store” and off we go.
Funny, in some ways we have not progressed that much. My father grew up riding horses to get around, cars were there but even Model T was to expensive. Anyway when he was a teen he had a habit of drinking a bit too much, no problem, get on horse and say “home” and horse new where to go.

On a darker note I can also see pushes towards no personal transport for various reasons.

Are your children in their 70s or 80s? Because it’s coming. And it will be much safer than all the impaired, distracted and stupid people on the road today. I work for a company that is developing autonomous driving solutions. Things are moving very quickly as the developmental process is being fine tuned. Our company, unlike Tesla, is focused on making the technology as safe as is possible. Not mitigating crashes, but avoiding them entirely. The trick is solving that last 1% of safety risk. Doing it any other way is negligent. See Tela’s many crashes with people actually being killed. My company won’t do that.

My children are 25 and 29. And I stand by my statement.

There will not be driverless trucks plying the interstates within the next 40 years.

Thanks to the efforts of companies like yours, there will be trucks on the interstate with hands-free assisted driving, and that alone will make trucking much safer for both the truckers and the other drivers on the roads.

I am sorry, but you must know the challenges in simply navigating a construction zone for autonomous software. You know the challenges in navigating roads during snow storms before the roads are fully cleared. You know the challenges in knowing how to successfully navigate a small detour. You know the challenges in simply avoiding a pothole in the road.

Assisted driving, perhaps with the driver able to leave the driver's seat and microwave a sandwich in the sleeper while on the road, YES.

Waiving goodbye to a truck leaving a loading dock without anyone onboard, and arriving again at a loading dock across the country? NEVER IN MY or perhaps MY CHILDREN'S LIFETIMES. The challenges in just navigating the last mile to the receiving loading dock successfully FULLY AUTONOMOUSLY is a huge challenge. Like most projects, the last 1% takes 99% of the time to solve.

There's not even a means for a driverless truck to refuel. That alone limits the range of autonomous driverless trucks for decades to come, until the truck designs and autonomous refueling infrastructure is in place.

Trust me when I say that although I don't work in the autonomous driving research field, I do work at a major midwestern university and we do have a robust autonomous driving research program that i am familiar with. And we can't even get a driverless bus to navigate our campus at 15 mph yet.

“Doing it any other way is negligent. See Tela’s many crashes with people actually being killed. My company won’t do that.”

Are you taking into account the human factor?
You know, those drivers that zip along in the far left lane until JUST BEFORE their exit then cross 4-5 lanes of traffic at high speed, zipping in front of the truck with only a foot to spare and they then hit the brakes because they have to slow down from 80mph to 45mph.
And don’t talk about following distances. Might as well put that auto-truck in reverse!
No, automated trucks will only work when there are only automated vehicles on the road.