As we have pointed out more than once, this fact can be denied, or on the contrary, we can be completely grateful, but unmanned freight is not even quite the future, but is already down to earth. Yes, according to According to the Russian Ministry of TransportAccording to statistics from the ERA-GLONASS system, driverless trucks have traveled more than 20 million kilometers on Russian roads since 2023.
Image source: Yandex.
The vast majority of drivers in Russia have never seen these self-driving trucks, and it’s simple: these hopes of transport company owners mainly travel in Russia along the M-11 Neva, M-12 Vostok, Central Ring Road and M4 Don highways. In fact, they traveled 20 million kilometers during this period, all thanks to them. A total of 121 self-driving trucks are currently operating on these roads; therefore, the average person has driven more than 165,000 kilometers in three years.
Currently, Russia’s driverless trucks require an operator to accompany them in order to respond to emergencies. It is planned to completely abandon the driver in a few years, and this is not mainly due to the technical aspect of the problem – it has been implemented a long time ago – but due to the legal aspect. In practice, as usual, most of the time is spent on preparing a set of documents and making changes to existing legislation.