On July 20, 1969, at 10:56 pm EDT, Neil Armstrong was stepping down from the Lunar Eagle onto the moon and with 500 million people watching shared with the world from Tranquility Base: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Those 12 words were the culmination of a great triumph in technological achievement and American ingenuity.
Today, technological achievement and American ingenuity are at the forefront of bold predictions for more terrestrial forms of transportation, such as trucking, in that we will have “driverless” trucks within 10 years. Brilliant engineers are fueling this discussion with new safety innovations that hold tremendous promise for our industry.
My challenge to the industry for this year is not to focus just on a driverless industry, but instead to embrace the incremental safety advancements this infusion of technology is bringing to our drivers. Automatic emergency braking, lane departure warning, and video camera devices all are here now and are the initial steps in this safety journey.
Wherever this era of safety technology and innovation takes us, I am not willing to discount the value of having a driver in the cab as the captain of the ship. Whether he or she is manually operating the vehicle or monitoring systems, having a set of eyes on the road ahead is something that is ingrained in our industry’s safety DNA. It’s also part of transportation’s regulatory environment. While commercial airliners have autopilot features, thankfully, pilots are still required to be in the cockpit, and while railroads operate on a designated track system designed for their sole use, engineers are still required to be in the locomotive.
In-cab technology is helping truck drivers deal with a record amount of traffic and increasingly distracted automobile drivers. For the year ahead and the near term, we need to be focused on safety technology that is driver assist, not just driverless.