Why driverless vehicles just can't quit humans

Regulators need to ask more questions about the people in the shadows.

- Sarah O'Connor

"There's nobody in the truck," Mr Sterling Anderson, co-founder of autonomous truck company Aurora, said in a podcast interview in 2024. "We're not Wizard of Oz-ing this thing."

Mr Anderson was referring to the company's plans to begin a commercial delivery service using driverless trucks between Dallas and Houston in Texas. What he meant, I think, was this: Our technology is not a parlor trick. Unlike in The Wizard of Oz, there won't be a human hidden behind the curtain.

In May 2025, Aurora announced its commercial driverless trucking service had officially begun.

But a few weeks later, the company made another announcement: Its truck manufacturing partner Paccar "requested we have a person in the driver's seat, because of certain prototype parts in their base vehicle platform" and "after much consideration, we respected their request and are moving the observer, who had been riding in the back of some of our trips, from the back seat to the front seat".

Aurora insisted this wasn't necessary to operate the truck safely, and that the observer would not operate the vehicle.

Still, it was clearly a blow to its ambition to have "nobody in the truck". Aside from the fear that it might look like they are "Wizard of Oz-ing this thing", the investment case for driverless trucks doesn't look so good if you need to pay someone to sit in each one.