Most of the attention paid to self-driving cars has been focused on Google's fleet of eye-catching self-driving buggies whose hoods almost look like faces. But like most gee-whiz technologies there's a business application that is much less cute but much more likely to be immediately useful: Long-distance trucking. Trucks are involved in more than 300,000 traffic accidents a year world-wide, many caused by driver fatigue after many hours behind the wheel.
Not only that, the trucking industry has a serious talent problem. According to some estimates there's a shortage of at least 35,000 truckers in the United States that will only get worse as Baby Boom-aged truck drivers retire. And then there are the problems of carbon emissions and climate change. 
An experiment completed last week in Europe points to a solution to all three problems. Six columns, or "platoons" of trucks, from different manufacturers and different countries all arrived in the Dutch port Maasvlakte, having come from Germany, Sweden, and Belgium and traveled, in some cases, more than 1,000 miles. They were only partially self-driving--every truck had a driver on board responsible for steering the truck, but not for braking and accelerating. Instead, the trucks used on-board WiFi to connect to each other and control their speeds automatically, travel along at closer distances to each than would be safe for human drivers, in a practice known as "platooning." 
Platooning may not seem like a big deal, but it is. Platooning has the potential to save at least 10 percent of fuel, with a resulting reduction in carbon emissions because the distance between trucks is calculated to take the greatest advantage of drag. Drag makes a difference to geese riding in a V or bicycle racers riding in a pack, so imagine how much more drag a two-ton semi truck might create to get a sense of why this matters. What about other motorists who need to use the lane between platooning trucks? The trucks sense their presence and make room for them as well. 

Now let's talk legalities.

The trip was intended as a proof of concept; European governments will have to complete the tedious process of rewriting and coordinating their traffic laws before platooning can be used for trucking. But the successful arrival of all test trucks at the finish line paves the way for those discussions to begin.
It also serves as proof of concept for the notion that there's a third option in between fully autonomous cars and fully human-driven ones: Vehicles that are steered by drivers but use automated systems to control their speed. Last month, MIT researchers proposed a concept called "slot-based intersections" that would eliminate stoplights and use existing technology to take over the speed, but not the steering, of cars approaching an intersection, grouping them into squadrons depending on their direction and allowing all to cross safely without having to stop. That innovation would also reduce fuel use and carbon emissions.
Fully self-driving cars are a great concept and I can't wait for my first ride in one. But in the meantime, these solutions that combine human steering with automated acceleration and braking can make a real difference.