Platooning in the U.S. still four to five years out
A “fail safe” condition would be cutting vehicle acceleration and bringing it to a controlled stop alongside the roadway, Gosbee said.
Another issue is that for every truck, there are six to eight trailers that don’t support autonomous hookups, Gosbee said. So an aging fleet of trailers would also have to be modernized over time.
There are also other complex problems to solve, such as controlling sudden movements of lead trucks. For example, imagine the lead truck in a platoon decides to swerve around an obstacle. The trailing trucks will also get the same message to swerve, but they may have obstacles around them at the time that prevent them from also swerving.
via A fleet of self-driving trucks rumbles across Europe | Computerworld.