Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out whats clicking on Foxnews.com. Self-driving trucks are moving closer to reality. PlusAI released its first half 2025 performance results, showing how far the company has come toward its goal of launching factory-built autonomous trucks in 2027. Safety case readiness reached 86 percent, with a goal of 100 percent by launch.

Driverless semitrucks raise questions about safety, reliability and the future of the trucking industry. Aurora, a leader in autonomous vehicles, has officially deployed its driverless trucks on Texas roads, marking a key milestone in the evolution of transportation. This development raises important questions about safety, reliability and the future of the trucking industry. Aurora's autonomous trucks now operate on routes between Dallas and Houston, hauling commercial loads. Join the FREE "CyberGuy Report": Get my expert tech tips, critical security alerts and exclusive deals, plus instant access to my free "Ultimate Scam Survival Guide" when you sign up!

California governor Gavin Newsom worked late last night, vetoing a law that would have banned self-driving trucks without a human aboard from state roads until the early 2030s. State lawmakers had voted through the law with wide margins, backed by unions that argued autonomous trucks are a safety risk and threaten jobs. The bill would have seen California, which in 2012 became the first state to clear a regulatory path for autonomous vehicles, turn against self-driving technology just as driverless taxis are starting to serve the public. Autonomous truck developers now hope the freight-heavy state--home to two of the largest US ports--will one day become a critical link in an autonomous trucking network spanning the US. Companies developing the technology say it will save freight shippers money by enabling trucks to run loads on highways 24 hours a day, and by eliminating the dangers of distracted human driving, which could bring down insurance costs.

When Teslas are in self-driving mode, they've been recorded crossing into oncoming traffic and hitting parked cars. But what would happen if an 80,000-pound, 18-wheel driverless truck suddenly went off the rails? That's an experiment some California legislators aren't ready to run. They argue that the state Department of Motor Vehicles has so badly mishandled the driverless car industry that it can't be trusted to oversee big rigs barreling down the highways autonomously. AB 316 -- which would wrest control of driverless truck testing and deployment from the DMV and require human drivers in the cab for at least five years while a safety record is collected -- passed in the Assembly on Wednesday.

But the drive also showed that the technology is not yet ready to realize its potential. Each day, Kodiak rotated a new team of specialists into the cab of its truck, so that someone could take control of the vehicle if anything went wrong. These "safety drivers" grabbed the wheel multiple times. Tech start-ups like Kodiak have spent years building and testing self-driving trucks, and companies across the trucking industry are keen to reap the benefits. At a time when the global supply chain is struggling to deliver goods as efficiently as businesses and consumers now demand, autonomous trucks could alleviate bottlenecks and reduce costs.

Did you miss a session at the Data Summit? This article was contributed by Andrey Bolshakov, founder and CEO of Evocargo. Autonomous vehicles are subject to far more stringent requirements than long-haul truck drivers and their vehicles. After all, there is no margin of error for robots. That is why self-driving cars are tested more thoroughly, even on public roads, and why the media and the public react so strongly when they fail.

A giant 18-wheel transport truck is barreling down a multi-lane Texas highway, and there is no one behind the wheel. The futuristic idea may seem surreal, but it is being tested in this vast southern US state, which has become the epicenter of a rapidly developing self-driving vehicle industry. Before driverless trucks are allowed onto roads and highways, however, multiple tests must still be conducted to ensure they are safe. Self-driving lorries are operated using radars, laser scanners, cameras and GPS antennas that communicate with piloting software. "Each time we drive a mile or a kilometer in real life, we re-simulate a thousand more times on the computer by changing hundreds of parameters," explains Pierre-François Le Faou, trucking partner development manager at Waymo, the self-driving unit at Google's parent company Alphabet.

Walmart said Monday it has started using fully driverless trucking in its online grocery business, aiming to increase capacity and reduce inefficiencies. Walmart and Silicon Valley start-up Gatik said that, since August, they've operated two autonomous box trucks -- without a safety driver -- on a 7-mile loop daily for 12 hours. The Gatik trucks are loaded with online grocery orders from a Walmart fulfillment center called a "dark store." The orders are then taken to a nearby Walmart Neighborhood Market grocery store in Bentonville, Arkansas, where Walmart is headquartered. The program began in December 2020 after getting approval from the Arkansas State Highway Commission.

As promised, Walmart has started doing fully driverless box truck deliveries in partnership with startup Gatik between its own locations on a fixed 7-mile loop, the companies announced. Despite those limitations, the route in Bentonville, Arkansas involves "intersections, traffic lights and merging on dense urban roads," the companies said. It's another shot of good news for the progress of self-driving vehicles after GM's cruise launched its self-driving taxis into testing last week. The Gatik trucks are bringing grocery orders from a Walmart fulfilment center (dark store) to a nearby Walmart Neighborhood Market grocery store in Bentonville, the host city of the company's headquarters. The route covers the "middle mile" transportation of goods between warehouses and stores. The program effectively got launched following the December 2020 approval by the Arkansas State Highway Commission, and has been driverless since this summer.

The humble CAPTCHA is a good way to keep bots honest. CAPTCHA -- created in 1997 -- is a contrived acronym for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. "It's a type of challenge/response test used in computing to determine whether or not the user is human," says Wikipedia. In the past, they were simple: a string of letters and numbers in different sizes and fonts. Nowadays, they often present as a grid of nine thumbnails, with instructions to check off all images of cars, bicycles, or crosswalks. No one is overly fond of this task -- we squint at our laptop screens, trying to figure out if a grainy image contains a traffic light or not. We complete the task, only to face another screen of thumbnails. What we're doing is essential, though. Computers are run by algorithms, while humans have real-world training. When we scan a street for motorcycles or crosswalks, we're not thinking of sun interference or how much of the image our retinas capture.