WASHINGTON – A congressional hearing Wednesday implied broad changes are coming soon for Colorado’s highway transportation industry from self-driving truck technologies.

Driverless trucks are part of the automated vehicle technology being developed by government agencies and private companies. They use computerized sensors to steer, throttle and brake vehicles, usually without human intervention.

Senators at the hearing of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee described the potential impact of the technology on the transportation industry as similar to the emergence of the Internet.

Sen. John Thune, chairman of the committee, said “this transformative technology” could reduce fuel consumption by as much as 18 percent per automated truck and significantly lower U.S. traffic fatalities from the current level of nearly 34,000 a year.

About 94 percent of fatal traffic accidents are blamed on human error, according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration.

Witnesses at the hearing included Col. Scott G. Hernandez, chief of the Colorado State Patrol, who participated in a test of self-driving trucks along Interstate 25 last October.

A self-driving semi-trailer delivered beer from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs. The truck driver observed most of the 120-mile trip from the sleeping berth, intervening only to steer the truck onto the highway in Fort Collins and off the highway to its final destination at Colorado Springs.

The Colorado State Patrol provided a motorcade to monitor the safety of the test, which was coordinated by beer company Anheuser-Busch and a subsidiary of car-sharing company Uber Technologies Inc.

The test demonstrated the likelihood automated vehicles “could reduce crash risk and traffic congestion,” Hernandez said. “Clearly technology will continue to save lives in the future.”

The trucks use lasers, digital maps, cameras and global positioning satellites to sense their location on highways. The same technologies can steer the trucks around corners, accelerate them within legal speed limits and brake them to avoid hitting objects or people.

Colorado Republican Sen. Cory Gardner asked Hernandez whether automated vehicle technology might have saved the life of Colorado State Patrol Trooper Cody Donahue, who was killed by a semi-trailer last November.

He was standing alongside Interstate 25 near Castle Rock as he responded to a separate vehicle accident when he was hit by the oncoming truck.

“I think through this technology it absolutely could have been avoided,” Hernandez responded.

Gardner and other senators raised concerns with witnesses on whether self-driving trucks would force layoffs of drivers. There are more than 3 million commercial drivers in the United States, according to the trucking industry.

“One out of every 20 jobs in Colorado is a truck driver job,” Gardner said.

Chris Spear, president of the American Trucking Association, said the trucking industry currently suffers a shortage of about 50,000 drivers. Industry estimates predict a need for another 960,000 jobs within a few years, he said.

In addition, drivers still would be needed to navigate through unforeseen or difficult road conditions, according to witnesses.

“We’re not worried about displacement at this time,” Spear said. “We think the driver is still going to be in the seat.”

A greater concern for truckers is the risk of “a patchwork of conflicting rules” among different states that could interfere with interstate truck shipments, he said.

“The rules of the road must be the same across the country in order to maintain the free flow of goods,” Spear said.

He would like for the Federal Communications Commission to set aside radio bandwidth for wireless communications of self-driving trucks.

Another danger for self-driving trucks is hackers, who could electronically tap into control systems to take them over for criminal pursuits, he said. Among the hackers could be terrorists ramming trucks into pedestrians, similar to attacks in the past two years in France and Germany that killed dozens of people.

“I don’t think you want a tank truck that is driverless in an ISIS world,” Spear said. ISIS refers to the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

He recommended regulatory protocols and equipment to prevent hacking. He also warned against invasions of privacy from electronic intrusions into trucks’ computerized records and control systems.

In the last legislative session, lawmakers made it clear that self-driving vehicles are legal in Colorado and even tinkered with texting and driving laws that could come into play as vehicles that are more automated become commonplace.

In the latest development for automated vehicles, technology company Tesla, Inc. said it would unveil a prototype for its planned self-driving trucks later this month.

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk has been negotiating with the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles to run road tests of what he described as electric semi-trailers that could drive themselves in “platoons.” The trucks would move in convoys in which the first truck leads and others follow remotely.

A subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., which owns Internet giant Google, also is developing self-driving truck technology.