FMCSA Approves Exemption for Driverless Trucks
At the start of the year, we wrote about how the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) denied an exemption for driverless trucks so that they would not have to place safety triangles on the road in case of an emergency. With that happening in early January, it was still under the authority of the Biden Administration. With a new policy, it seems the FMCSA has done a one-eighty, and are allowing Aurora Operations, Inc. and other driverless truck companies an exemption.
Details
Naturally, a truck that would be 100% autonomous would not have a person at the wheel who could get out during an emergency and place warning devices (“triangles”). Now, the second Trump Administration finds that in lieu of placing the triangles, an autonomous truck can use cab-mounted warning beacon lights, in an exemption that will last for five years.
With autonomous trucking still in its infancy, there is a human at the wheel in every truck to help mitigate disaster, however, this is a tiny step towards replacing the human driver.
Part of the reason the FMCSA changed its mind was because Aurora Operations, Inc. was able to prove through a prior exemption from October 10, 2025 through January 9, 2026 that cab warning beacons had potential to fully replace triangles.
Conclusion
So does this mean that the career of the truck driver is going the way of the chimney sweeper? Not quite, at least for the next handful of decades. The placing of triangles is but a single piece of the puzzle to fully replacing the human. There are still countless problems that technological trucking firms need to overcome before they can replace drivers. Just a few:
- Replacing a tire due to a blowout.
- Refueling.
- Securing cargo and checking to ensure it is secured.
- Final-mile travel which includes significantly more hazards than freeway driving.
- Being able to understand road signs with 99.9% accuracy (of which trucks are still fooled by stickers).
Because of these things, we are still confident that fully autonomous trucks are still many, many years from becoming reality. As a point of reference, one industry expert, in an article that has since been deleted, said in 2017 that autonomous trucks would become a powerful force by 2021. We are five years past that estimation and self-driving trucks are still far away from becoming reality, so drivers have little to fear.
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