After autonomous cars, company launches self-driving trucks

Formerly Google’s driverless car program and now Alphabet’s autonomous car company, Waymo is on its way to explore self-driving trucks and how it can change the trucking industry.

Confirming the news, Waymo’s spokesperson informed BuzzFeed, “Self-driving technology can transport people and things much more safely than we do today and reduce the thousands of trucking-related deaths each year. We’re taking our eight years of experience in building self-driving hardware and software and conducting a technical exploration into how our technology can integrate into a truck.”

Since there is already a shortage of truck drivers, American Trucking Associations predict that by 2024, the industry would be left with very few truck drivers. However, the computers might be able to handle that along with reducing truck accidents that lead to time and monetary loss. According to facts reported by Forbes, almost 4,000 people die and around 116,000 are injured every year because of truck accidents.

After eight years of information upon building self-driving vehicles, Waymo is now trying to figure out how the technology works on trucks. The company has started to test on its private tracks in California and it’s supposed to initiate its road testing in Arizona by the end of this year with a test driver behind wheels every time.

However, the company spokesperson, Johnny Luu refused to tell the location and timings of California and Arizona road tests.

Initially the news was discovered by BuzzFeed through a photograph of the company’s self-driving trucking efforts. Using a Peterbilt truck, Waymo is currently working on details such as how hard a truck can brake and accelerate safely and where to position sensors on the 53-foot trailers.