On with Kara Swisher Driverless Semi-Trucks Are Here & Coming to a Highway Near You
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Dec 29, 2025 
In a fascinating discussion, Chris Urmson, CEO of Aurora and a pioneer of self-driving cars, teams up with Johnathon Ehsani, a road safety researcher from Johns Hopkins. They explore the rapid evolution of driverless semi-trucks and their implications for road safety and the economy. Urmson shares insights on current deployments and the challenges of public perception, while Ehsani emphasizes the importance of demonstrating safety benefits. Together, they navigate the future of autonomous trucking, addressing job impacts and the need for effective regulations.
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Don't Learn Bad Habits From Humans
- Learning from human driving can teach undesirable behaviors like running stop signs.
- Systems must explicitly encode safe constraints rather than mimic common human shortcuts.
Autonomy Targets A Public-Health Crisis
- Road crashes are a public health crisis with ~39,345 U.S. deaths in 2024.
- Autonomy can reduce crashes by learning from mistakes humans often repeat.
Make A Comprehensive Safety Case
- Build a formal safety case with performance, fail-safe, continuous improvement, resilience, and cybersecurity pillars.
- Test extensively and plan for systematic failures to ensure safe on-road behavior.