Last week I sat through a presentation by the American Trucking Association. The presenter said there won't be truly autonomous vehicles (with no driver at all)

Last week I sat through a presentation by the American Trucking Association. The presenter said there won't be truly autonomous vehicles (with no driver at all) for 20 years. He pointed out that airplanes have been able to take off, fly and land without human intervention for a long time, and there are still pilots in the seat. But then most trucks don't carry passengers. In the current environment, any wreck involving a truck costs at least a million dollars. A drunk driver that runs into a truck? The family will sue and win lots of money, because that's how it works. The real test of autonomous will be in how liability is dealt with. A fully autonomous truck will be the responsibility of the company that supplies the software, not the carrier. Moving liability away from the carrier will open up some interesting possibilities. It would become less costly to own and operate trucks, so I suppose smaller businesses would be able to compete more easily. It also means that carriers will become commoditized, long haul carriers at first then eventually the short haul carriers. In 30 years a carrier will be little more than an API that accepts a load, orders a truck to drive somewhere then sends an electronic bill. There's little incentive at that point for manufacturers to even sell trucks - why not just operate them too? The real money will be in maintenance and fuel.