DENVER — Colorado’s transportation agency began using a driverless truck on Friday that is designed to protect highway work crews from oncoming traffic.

The truck is officially known as an Autonomous Impact Protection Vehicle, but it is not really autonomous like the self-driving cars being tested around the country. Instead, the truck is electronically controlled by a driver in another truck ahead of it.

If the protection vehicle loses its electronic “tether” to the lead vehicle, it is programmed to pull over and stop.

Like other trucks that follow highway crews and display messages or arrows telling drivers to shift lanes, it has a large cushion to absorb the impact of vehicles that may crash into it. In Colorado, that happens an average of six times a year, making driving such vehicles one of the most dangerous highway jobs, state officials said.

“It just didn’t make any sense to me to have a human being in a truck designed to be hit,” Shailen Bhatt, executive director of the Colorado Department of Transportation, said in an interview Friday.

With a growing population and too many unfunded road projects, Colorado has embraced technology to help it make the best use of the roads it already has.

The state hopes to eventually add more driverless escort trucks, freeing up workers for other duties, but Bhatt said safety, not money, is the main motivation. He said he believes Colorado is the first to use the driverless trucks for road work.