The Missouri Department of Transportation is hoping to test driverless technology on some of its fleet as soon as next year.
June 28 was the deadline for companies to submit proposals to MoDOT on autonomous technology. Now, it is reviewing those proposals with hopes to have a vendor on board by late July.
"It's not like your autonomous car where you plug in an address and it just goes," said Chris Redline, Assistant District Engineer for MoDOT. "What this is going to do is follow the truck in front of it. We're talking low speeds. We're talking under 15 miles per hour. This would not be to get to the job site, this would be when we get to the job site."
It's part of an ongoing effort by the department to reduce work zone crashes and injuries involving TMAs, or Truck Mounted Attenuators. TMAs are a sort of crash cushion designed to crumple when hit.
"These crash cushions are designed to smash up," said Redline. "When they smash up, it reduces the energy, so the vehicle comes to a much slower stop than if they just crashed into the back of a dump truck. It saves countless lives every single year."
Since 2014, MoDOT has had 82 crashes involving TMAs.
"There's a person inside each of those 82 vehicles that has friends and family," said Redline. "We'd like to get our people out of those vehicles, and a driverless truck would make that happen."
Michael Suber is one of those drivers. His TMA was hit in January of this year.
"We were patching potholes on US-50 and I was following the pothole patcher," he remembers. "I noticed a truck coming close to me so I hit my panic lights to try and get him to get over in the passing lane. He did not and he his the TMA I was in. Pushed me over 100 feet. We were both taken to the hospital."
Suber had whiplash and other back issues, both caused by the crash.
"I couldn't pick up my kids, couldn't play with them, all because of someone's negligence," he said. "This is serious. This is our lives in danger."
Redline said MoDOT will be getting all of the equipment up to speed this year, with the hope to start testing the driverless technology in 2018.
"During the testing, we are always going to have a driver in that vehicle," he said. "That's part of the testing, and that driver will always have the ability to take over. It's a statute that a driver has to be present, and if we ever want to remove the driver, we need a statute change to allow it to be driverless."
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