could this have a positive effect for the introduction (technical, legal, societal) of autonomous trucks? I'd imagine that at least on the political side, there will be less pressure to protect soon-to-be-obsolete jobs when there are too few people wanting to do the work in the first place.

BTW, I don't buy the "we want to make highways safer, not cut the truck driver out of the equation" speak. If I just need personnel on site to handle on-/offloading and paperwork, maybe maneuvering into the loading bay, there is no justification to carry that personnel on the truck.

>If I just need personnel on site to handle on-/offloading and paperwork, maybe maneuvering into the loading bay, there is no justification to carry that personnel on the truck

Or you put them on the truck like the train operators in Singapore - they're there in case something goes wrong, not to actually run the trains

This is why it's logistics companies that are investing the most (and the longest) in fully-autonomous and augmented-assistance trucks (http://mashable.com/2016/04/05/mercedes-actros-platoon-europ...)

I remember seeing self-driving trucks being tested 15+ years ago on an episode of History Channel's Modern Marvels

What does this do to Amazon's business model?

Since they're moving towards their own logistics subsystems (everything from drones to cars a la Lyft to trucks to planes) ... I imagine not much