Driverless Trucks Seem on a Roll
May 13, 2025
In Texas recently, the first fully driverless trucking service—using one semitrailer—started running a regular commercial long-haul route. Soon after, a trade group petitioned the Trump administration to “streamline federal regulations to spark deployment of driverless trucks on the nation’s highways.” But in Issues, Steve Viscelli cautions that before autonomous trucking gains full traction, government and industry should look beyond “how technology can increase productivity and reduce shipping costs and time.” Key policy questions, he writes, should focus on “the lives and compensation of human truckers, road infrastructure, and trucking’s environmental impacts.”