Last night, on the Hoover Dam, Freightliner (which is owned by automotive giant Daimler) unveiled the first road-legal self-driving truck. At the event last night, the Inspiration Truck (yes really) was awarded an official autonomous vehicle license plate by the governor of Nevada. Sadly, there was no mention of pricing or commercial availability—but it won't be particularly soon. The license plate is a step towards lots more testing on the roads of Nevada... and then we'll see what federal regulators think about fleets of self-driving trucks.

The lorry has the same "NHTSA Level 3" rating as Google's self-driving car, which means that it's fully autonomous, but that the driver still has to be able to take over "with sufficiently comfortable transition time" if the need arises. In this case, while the Inspiration Truck could drive itself for hundreds of miles without driver intervention, Daimler is framing this as a conversation around driver fatigue. According to Daimler, 90 percent of truck crashes are due to driver error, and driver fatigue plays a role in 1/8th of those crashes.

Wolfgang Bernhard, head of Daimler's truck company, said at the event last night that the company tested driver brain activity with and without the autonomous driving system enabled. With the system turned on, "driver drowsiness decreases by about 25 percent."

Daimler

Daimler

Daimler

Daimler

Daimler

Daimler

Daimler

The Inspiration Truck uses Daimler's "Highway Pilot" autonomous driving technology, which uses a combination of radar, stereo computer vision, and other sensors to keep the vehicle on the road. Highway Pilot was first unveiled last year alongside the Mercedes Future Truck 2025 (Mercedes and Freightliner both roll up under the larger Daimler AG company). According to the CEO of Freightliner, Martin Daum, the only thing that the truck needs for its self-driving circuits to kick in is "nice white stripes."

Moving forward, Daimler and Freightliner will face the same hurdles as Google, Audi, and other big car makers that are developing their first autonomous vehicles. NHTSA Level 3 is all well and good, but it dictates that the driver always has to be able to take over—if the software bugs out, or there aren't any road markings, for example. With NHTSA Level 3, liability still lies with the driver. Stepping up to Level 4, where the driver is "not expected to be available for control at any time during the trip," liability becomes a much thornier issue.