Editorial: Future Trucks May Battle Old Issues

It’s been a busy and exciting couple of weeks in the trucking industry, which keeps moving ahead on several fronts.

At the IAA Commercial Vehicles show in Hanover, Germany, last week, truck makers displayed a wide range of new trucks, led by Daimler’s show-stealing autonomous driving tractor. Employing enhancements and refinements of technologies that are in many cases now in use, Daimler’s Future Truck can run on auto-pilot, taking from drivers the tedious task of keeping the truck between the lines, but alerting them when action is needed.

Other companies are also working on various aspects of autonomous-vehicle development — most notably Google, which has been running “self-driving” cars on regular streets and highways for a few years now. With the ability to make huge improvements in highway safety and potentially relieve the perennial driver shortage, the main problems are public acceptance and governmental approval, both of which seem to be a long way down the road.

But perhaps not as far away as recognition by Congress that modern trucks and a viable economy in today’s uber-competitive world need expensive maintenance and updating.

Taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel, last raised in 1993, just don’t yield enough revenue, and with improvements in vehicle fuel economy, that problem will get worse. The simplest, least-expensive way to raise that revenue would be to raise fuel taxes, something that Congress is afraid to do.

A wide range of businesses, including American Trucking Associations, agrees that increasing the tax on diesel to help pay for safer, more productive highways is necessary, but the great fear in Congress is that the public will punish incumbent representatives and senators if they vote to raise gasoline taxes.

In fact, while trucking is moving ahead, it looks like many in Congress want to move backward, by taking the federal government out of the business of planning and funding roadways. In a process called “devolution” that about 50 members support, the responsibility of paying for highways would fall on the 50 states.

The thought is that states could issue bonds, set up privatization partnerships, or devise tolling systems to pay for highways. They could even raise state fuel taxes, which would make voters just as unhappy as raising federal fuel taxes, but at least members of Congress could duck the blame. Unless political leaders find the courage to put their own careers on the line, it looks like we’ll be driving Future Trucks on highways of the past.