Trucks Are Killing Us • Hacker News Board

Re: Trucks Are Killing Us

#81

Post by TeMPOraL » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 6:53 PM UTC

robbrown451 wrote: post #45

notNow wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the trucking industry is one of the biggest employers in the US. Are you OK with devastating these people's lives for extra efficiency promised safety? Before we push for more automation and job losses, we need to revamp the whole political/economic/social system to ensure a more egalitarian income distribution since the vast majority of the Earth's population are proletariat who exchange their labor in…

If everything was going to be automated all at once, this "devastation" might be the case. But it won't happen all at once, it happens over the course of a decade or two. In almost every case in history, automation has increased jobs and increased the quality of life. Your post reminds me of this story: "Prof. Friedman visited China in the early 1960s and was taken by a government official to see a public works proje…

Any job that is created by automation will later be automated anyway. That's the whole point of automation. It's a recursive function, and in the past it was so that the jobs were created faster that they were automated away. But I don't think it's reasonable to assume this will continue. There's a great qualitative difference between automating muscle power (what we did in past centuries) and brain power (what we're doing now).

Even now more and more jobs that are created are jobs that are harmful to society and shouldn't exist in the first place. Imagine a slight modification of your story - that there are two public works projects; one is digging a canal, the other is filling it up. More and more fuel, material and man hours are being used up as both sides gain access to additional workers and better technologies, and yet the canal stays half-built, as one group cancels out the work of the other.

Now replace canal building with advertising industry, and it's exactly what we have today in the real world. Hell, I'd argue that half of the web industry is also such useless waste of time and resources. This is what we get because we still keep the meme that you need to work to be a decent human being. A lot of unsustainable make-believe work. The so-called "bullshit jobs".

It's high time for the world to embrace that jobs are going away, as they should.

Re: Trucks Are Killing Us

#82

Post by TeMPOraL » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 6:55 PM UTC

nulagrithom wrote: post #38

> It has pushed to allow truck drivers to work 82 hours a week, up from the current 70 hours over eight days, by eliminating the requirement that drivers take a two-day rest break each week; There was a different problem with the two-day rest break: > Must include two periods from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. home terminal time. Because obviously the trucking industry shouldn't be working graveyard. That's the part that was susp…

Shouldn't the trucking industry be working mostly graveyard? I mean, what's the better time for trucks to drive fast and safe if not night, when everyone else is not on the road?

Re: Trucks Are Killing Us

#83

Post by rcarrigan87 » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 6:56 PM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #64

rcarrigan87 wrote: post #48

I'm all for the safety arguments being made by the author but he does paint the trucking industry as this huge money making business when that really isn't the case. Trucking is a very low margin business. These guys live and die based on controlling costs. It's an industry where innovation is very hard because you really need to justify every dollar spent on R&D. Quoting $700B total industry revenue and saying there…

Uh, there is money to spend on safety. It is the money that the customers of the trucking companies pay. When every company's costs increase, they will all pass those costs on to their customers. Of course, the truck manufacturers would be the ones who would have to spend beforehand on research to satisfy the various requirement. Moreover, the article mentions that much of the technology already exists. Edit: As the…

There are pretty massive economic implications when you're talking about raising freight rates across the board. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, just that it's a decision that isn't to be made lightly.

Re: Trucks Are Killing Us

#84

Post by TeMPOraL » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 6:58 PM UTC

notNow wrote: post #71

robbrown451 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everything was going to be automated all at once, this "devastation" might be the case. But it won't happen all at once, it happens over the course of a decade or two. In almost every case in history, automation has increased jobs and increased the quality of life. Your post reminds me of this story: "Prof. Friedman visited China in the early 1960s and was taken by a government official to see a public works proje…

Since you quoted that super villain Friedman, it's a futile exercise to discuss this issue with you but touching on the silly analogy cited by Dr. Evil: Abandoning spoons to shovels ==> 1000X efficiency gain and net positive mass-scale job opportunities Abandoning shovels to heavy equipment ===> 100X efficiency gain and net positive of mass-scale specialized job opportunities. Abandoning manual trucks to fully auto =…

Look at this the other way - humans shouldn't even be doing this task, the only reason we have truck drivers is because we didn't know how to make trucks drive themselves. Now we do, so there's no point in keeping humans doing what machines could do better.

Yes, this generalizes to all jobs and the entire economy. It's about time we accepted it.

Re: Trucks Are Killing Us

#85

Post by hyperpape » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 6:59 PM UTC

jbeales wrote: post #77

hyperpape wrote: post #26

I'm not able to comment on all parts of the article, but one thing stuck out at me: deaths were up from 2009-2013, but so was the volume of freight being shipped: http://www.transtats.bts.gov/osea/seasonaladjustment/?PageVa... . That makes that particular statistic quite dubious. Disclosure: I work for a SAAS company serving the logistics industry, which is why I knew that. I don't really have an opinion about how re…

That's the kind of data I was looking for too! I'm also on the software fringes of trucking, and that was my reaction to the 2009-2013 statistic. Pretty much anything driven by economic activity is up over that period, we should be looking at accidents per kiloton or something like that.

Yeah, that would be more informative. But we still need to know about the baseline rates. Trucks are very big, so dangerous to other drivers, and there's a lot of miles driven. On the other hand, there's industry capital to potentially finance safety upgrades, and they're driven by professionals. I'd like to see a more nuanced discussion of what the acceptable risk is, given all those factors.

Re: Trucks Are Killing Us

#86

Post by Aloha » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 7:00 PM UTC

rcthompson wrote: post #75

Aloha wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article bothered me because of the presumption that the author made about hours of service, and as a former driver, in my opinion the issue is not the HOS (hours of service) rules, its the way companies, especially many smaller ones dispatch their drivers - you can be expected to go from working days, to working nights instantly, and it can really fuck hardcore with your sleep schedule - so while you can be compl…

What would you think of a rule that said you could only continue driving if you have slept for at least 6 of the past 24 hours? (I'm not sure what the exact numbers should be, but you get the idea.)

It would be resoundingly ignored, and its utterly unenforceable.

Right now, if you're a driver and you decline a load, it may be days to get another one at times, especially if you're stuck in a city with a ton of inbound freight, but not too much outbound freight - so you take what you can, push your endurance, and hope you can get far enough out of town that they wont try to swap it on you.

Re: Trucks Are Killing Us

#87

Post by Aloha » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 7:00 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #78

rcthompson wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you think of a rule that said you could only continue driving if you have slept for at least 6 of the past 24 hours? (I'm not sure what the exact numbers should be, but you get the idea.)

Sounds like a sensible rule that is impossible to enforce.

Agreed.

Re: Trucks Are Killing Us

#88

Post by apendleton » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 7:06 PM UTC

thedogeye wrote: post #25

It's rather disingenuous to compare truck crash fatalities to plane crash fatalities. Almost everything kills people more often than plane crashes.

Yes, so why is air travel so much more heavily regulated for safety than all the other things? The perception is skewed, and people just don't think about motor vehicle collisions as being a big problem, even though they kill tons of people every year (more than firearm homicides, too, for what it's worth). Pointing that out is reasonable.

Re: Trucks Are Killing Us

#89

Post by jowiar » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 7:07 PM UTC

notNow wrote: post #35

macNchz wrote: post #3

Self-driving trucks seem to have such great promise to improve the safety and efficiency of the trucking industry and our highways in general. Even if they're only self-driving during the long haul sections and human drivers take over for local deliveries it would make a huge difference. Hopefully the various interested lobbies don't try to put too many artificial barriers in the way of self driving trucks becoming a…

I think that the trucking industry is one of the biggest employers in the US. Are you OK with devastating these people's lives for extra efficiency promised safety? Before we push for more automation and job losses, we need to revamp the whole political/economic/social system to ensure a more egalitarian income distribution since the vast majority of the Earth's population are proletariat who exchange their labor in…

One of the things we need to do, as a society, is to stop yapping about "creating jobs" and start caring more about "ensuring that if your job goes away, you're fine". For most of us, our job will go away at some point.

As a whole, making work less dependent on manpower is progress. And it's a critical failure that societal progress comes with the effect of "devastating lives". And that's because of crappy laws, not because of the technology.

Place the blame where blame is due.

Re: Trucks Are Killing Us

#90

Post by animefan » Sat, Aug 22, 2015, 7:12 PM UTC

rcarrigan87 wrote: post #48

I'm all for the safety arguments being made by the author but he does paint the trucking industry as this huge money making business when that really isn't the case. Trucking is a very low margin business. These guys live and die based on controlling costs. It's an industry where innovation is very hard because you really need to justify every dollar spent on R&D. Quoting $700B total industry revenue and saying there…

I guess there are two possibilities.

1. Profit margins are so tight because truck businesses compete with each other. In this case, increasing safety standards in a uniform way, will not change profits since the costs can be passed on to consumers.

2. Profit margins are so tight because truck businesses are competing with other forms of transport. In that case, imposing more safety standards will result in less business being done by truck, and more by other means. As long as these don't have worse safety issues, this would be a good thing.

You are right the revenue is a meaningless figure in both cases.