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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The effects of truck platooning on the nation’s infrastructure continues to be studied, federal officials told the American Society of Civil Engineers’ International Conference on Transportation and Development here.

Truck platooning — also known by the more precise but less compelling term “cooperative adaptive cruise control” — will soon become available to trucking fleets interested in testing the latest in fuel-saving technology.

Autonomous vehicles are the wave of a rapidly approaching future that is already bringing increasing amounts of “smart” technology to cars and trucks, and could eventually make passengers of everyone in a vehicle.

Britain is set to conduct road trials of self-driving trucks, involving a “platoon” of vehicles controlled by a driver in the front.

It could be years before drivers on U.S. highways catch a glimpse of a tractor-trailer rig cruising down the highway with another truck trailing a perilous 20 or 30 feet behind.

Scania said Europe’s truck manufacturers have presented a detailed timeline of steps leading up to the introduction of convoys of semi-automated trucks on Europe’s motorways before 2025.

Peloton Technology will roll out platooning tech on the Ohio Turnpike this spring as the state begins a new phase in its autonomous vehicle exploration.

Federal, state and local governments and private companies demonstrated a partially automated truck platoon with cooperative adaptive cruise control on March 8 near the Port of Los Angeles.

Drivers could begin seeing “connected platoons” of trucks operating on Highway 20 across Iowa as early as this year if legislation allowing the use of adaptive cruise control is approved by the Legislature.

Fleet telematics provider Omnitracs has forged a partnership with Peloton Technology to bring truck platooning opportunities to its customers, a development that could accelerate the trucking industry’s adoption of the emerging technology.