I can appreciate your sentiment. And yes, things never stay the same. One of the reasons they’re targeting trucking is due to the turnover and endless need for drivers - which also raises the pay (and therefore business expense). So it will, inevitably, be a target.
Self-driving trucks are an inevitability, it’s just a matter of when. While you raise a good point about an ethical responsibility to help during incidents, it’s not a primary or secondary function, it’s an outlier event that won’t change this direction - especially if the counter argument is that fewer trucking incidents will occur (due to fatigue, distractions, ILLEGALS BEING GIVEN CDL’S, etc.).
Most likely, trucking will be transformed into “last mile” drivers. Trucks automatically doing the long-haul, local drivers going to a local depot to drive loads to their final destination.
You are probably right, it is most likely inevitable, and their is a shortage of truckers, seems no one wants to do it anymore, which is a shame. It is probably due to the fact that I always want to be in control, and just dont trust “modern technology” all that much. How many times have drivers been thrown off course by GPS screwups?