Driverless trucks on a road near you?
At first blush, the Times Free Press headline Thursday was a heart-stopper.
“Area eyed as testbed for driverless trucking,” it read, giving way to a vision of runaway trucks careening over the Missionary Ridge section of Interstate 24 that most Chattanoogans know as “the Ridge cut.”
The story explained that Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director Thomas Zacharia told a crowd at the city’s Edney Innovation Center that ORNL is seeking funds for a project to explore “autonomous driving and long-haul trucking” here because Chattanooga already is a trucking and logistics hub. We have two of the nation’s biggest long-haul trucking companies – Covenant Transportation Group and U.S. Xpress Enterprises. We also are home to logistics innovators: Domestic freight scheduling business Access America grew quickly here before merging first with Coyote Logistics and then United Parcel Service, and Inc. magazine recently ranked Chattanooga one of the top growth cities for the country’s promising logistics companies.
Still – driverless trucks?