[Old Teufel Hunden]

"How will trucking companies respond when they learn they can run the trucks 24 hours / day rather than 8 hours on and then sleep and rest breaks?"

Seriously, if that happens how long do you think that will take? No one in America is going to want trucks carrying tons and tons of material driving our highways self controlled until it's completely safe. I would say if you are 20 years old and entering the truck driving industry, you are probably fairly safe in your career field. I would imagine before you have self driving trucks, you are going to have to have "drone" trucks like we have drone planes. And guess what? Someone's gotta drive those drone trucks.

[FateAmenableToChange]

I’m actually fairly involved in some of the issues surrounding this. 10 years tops. Too much money at stake. The only saving grace is that they might need human presence in the event of an emergency, but I doubt it. Your drone comment is probably accurate — much easier to have drone monitoring capabilities on the trucks rather than a single driver.

As for safety, it is pretty clear that the trucks only a few generations from current tech will actually be more safe than with human drivers. They will have fewer accidents but will have different causes than human driver based accidents. Congress will give an agency statutory authority to regulate the use of driverless trucks and vehicles, and the agency will make a safety evaluation that will clear the vehicles. Congress critters will have their hands clean because it was an agency that gave final permission.