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" Take a close look at the driver in that silver Mercedes big-rig. See where his hands are? Way up behind his head, in the classic pose of relaxation, clearly not concerned with the operation of the vehicle he&amp;#039;s sitting in. Welcome to our autonomous tractor-trailer future, as demonstrated by Daimler in a public-road test of self-driving big-rigs on the Autobahn this week. Daimler&amp;#039;s trio of autonomous big-rigs demonstrated the company&amp;#039;s plans for vehicle-to-vehicle communications. The three trucks use Wifi to talk to each other, staying in a tight convoy formation to minimize aerodynamic drag. Daimler says the convoy auto-maintains a gap of just 50 feet between rigs, as opposed to the 165-foot gap the automaker says is standard when humans are driving. We&amp;#039;re reasonably certain that we&amp;#039;ve seen human over-the-road truckers maintain a following gap that was just a minuscule fraction of that measurement for miles at a time, but they were probably flouting a few rules of the road by doing so.  Daimler&amp;#039;s real-world test, which took place on a stretch of the\u00A0A52 autobahn near D\u00FCsseldorf, Germany, announces the automaker&amp;#039;s pledge to commit\u00A0roughly $563 billion (500 billion euros) into self-driving trucks and commercial vehicles by 2020. Daimler claims the tight formation autonomous convoy cuts big-rig fuel consumption and emissions by seven percent, and halves the amount of road space required for a three-truck formation. &amp;quot;The smart, self-optimising truck has the highest priority for us. Using connected communication between the truck and other vehicles and the surroundings, we can improve traffic flow and lower fuel consumption and emissions. At the same time intelligent trucks help to lower the number of traffic accidents. This is an important step on our way towards accident-free driving,&amp;quot; said\u00A0Sven Ennerst, Head of Truck Product Engineering &amp;amp;amp; Global Procurement, in a Daimler press release.\u00A0 If this technology shakes out, maybe we could be sharing the road with self-driving convoys in the near future. Sort of takes all the fun out of those Smokey and the Bandit chase scenes, doesn&amp;#039;t it? via Trucks.com "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/car-technology/news/a28548/daimler-tests-autonomous-big-rig-convoy-on/>