They've been doing this for several years now. And they're getting close to saying, hey, we're ready. In the case of Aurora, they've came out and made a pretty bold statement that said that our software is ready. It can handle any of the events that come up on the road. The truck can handle all the circumstances that it's going to phase. They've said that case is closed. Now we're going to present our safety case. Kodiak hasn't made that statement. They say that they're there, but they're doing things a little bit differently. That's kind of the progression. I think we're going to see they're testing them on the road right now. They still have the safety drivers. At some point, they're going to have to take the safety drivers out. I think the people are going to want to see more information about how many times these safety drivers actually grab the wheel. They don't publish those. They say they give that information to authorities. But I think at some point, they're going to have to bring a lot of information to the public to say, this is why we know these things are safe.

This question of safety, you report, is really the big one that trying to persuade both regulators and to normal people driving on the road that these things are safe.

I think I can make as bold a statement to say that if they don't make the roadways safer, the industry will fail.

And why is that?

It's almost a taboo thing. We do not want machines that can hurt people. I think most people would agree with me on that. But that's a pretty low bar because on our roadways, 40,000 people die every year. That includes everything passenger vehicles. That is an alarmingly high number. And people have absorbed that information. They've decided they can take the risk and they get their vehicles every day and they drive. And as far as large trucks, 5,000 people die in accidents that involve large trucks. And most of those people are the passenger car drivers just because the truck is much bigger. And the vast majority of the time, the truck driver is not at fault. It's usually a motorist that has done something silly or something stupid and causes accidents. These autonomous vehicles are going to have to be safer. I think that's clear or it's just not going to be accepted by the public. Aurora, Kodiak, Gautique, all these companies know that they have to be almost flawless, if not perfect, on the technology as far as safety goes. There are going to be accidents. It's inevitable that there will be accidents. But the truck, the system has to be able to show that it either wasn't our fault or it was some kind of mechanical failure that does happen, but it wasn't because of the autonomous driving technology. That is important for these companies to maintain almost a spotless record where they can say, you know what, our autonomous technology has never caused an accident.

So how has the safety record of these test trucks been so far?

So far so good. They haven't caused an accident. That's for sure. They have been in accidents. There is a reporting system, a federal reporting system where they report any incident that has happened, no matter how minor. The cool thing is that they attach part of the police report to it in a section so you can see what happened. There was one case where a vehicle crossed over two lanes and hit the truck in the back and it turned out that the driver admitted that he fell asleep and his car crossed over two lanes, but he wasn't hurt. It crumpled up his hood. He had to be towed, but the truck was able to carry on. I didn't see any of the accident reports where you would say, oh, the truck was that fault here. It was the human, essentially that made a mistake.

Right now these trucks are being tested in Texas, but can they leave Texas and go into other states?

They can. Right now the regulations have really been left up to the states for autonomous trucking. The federal government is likely to weigh in on this, but for right now it's really up to the states to allow this. And there's a wide swath along the Sunbelt, if you will, of states that are allowing this from Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, on out and even up into Oklahoma. So yes, it is happening.

Time you said that safety concerns have to be satisfied before they can get final approval. How long until that happens? How long do you think before we start seeing autonomous 18 wheelers all over the place in Texas and other states?