The time when America's roads will be filled with self-driving vehicles might come sooner than expected, as Otto, a startup formed by a group of former Google engineers, recently unveiled its self-driving technology for full-sized trucks. What's even better is that the company's innovation allows practically any existing truck today to be fitted with the new technology.

Otto was founded by  Anthony Levandowski, Lior Ron, Don Burnette, and Claire Delaunay, former engineers of tech giant Google who wanted to rethink the commercial trucking industry. Part of this is the fact that America's trucking market is quite controversial, with the massive machines allegedly being responsible for 28 percent of road pollution despite making up only one percent of traffic nationwide.

Apart from the pollution factor, the trucking industry is also responsible for a pretty large portion of fatalities. According to data from the Department of Transportation, trucks are responsible for about 9.5 percent of highway fatalities. With these factors in mind, the market for autonomous trucks, which are programmed to drive defensively at all times, is indeed very open.

What makes Otto's technology very attractive is the fact that it could be outfitted to almost all the trucks in service today. Thus, instead of having trucking companies invest mounds of cash in order to completely replace their fleet, adding on Otto's technology in order to create a fleet of self-driving trucks makes a lot more sense.

Of course, with Otto's technology entering the market, there is a pretty large chance that the trucking industry would be adversely affected, at least employment-wise. According to Scott Santens, an independent researcher, a lot of people in the industry would be affected by the emergence of Otto's technology.

"The removal of truckers from freeways will have an effect on today's towns similar to the effects the freeways themselves had on towns decades ago that had sprung up around bypassed stretches of early highways," he said.

Nevertheless, with Otto's innovations being capable of making America's roads safer, there is very little doubt that the trucking industry in the U.S. would eventually change for the better. 

Tags: otto self-driving trucks autonomous trucks autonomous cars Google