Two giant tractor-trailer trucks, both traveling at freeway speed, one right behind the other, just 20 feet separating the two: Recipe for disaster? Or for improved safety and better fuel economy?

It’s the latter, claims Joshua Switkes, CEO of Peloton Technology, a Silicon Valley company whose technology makes possible such “platooning” of tractor-trailers.

Switkes tells ABC News the term describes a communications and data link between big rigs that allows them to synchronize braking and acceleration, so that the two can enter into a kind of symbiosis.