Not quietly, no, but it's no less inevitable. History is full of jobs that have been automated away, and few of those historical examples offered a more obvious and large payoff.
I do notice you are avoiding my central point: With railroads, there is not an economic incentive for automation. One commentator suggested that driverless trucks would have to be separated from human drivers. Railroads have this thing called "tracks" Another suggested the wonderful advantage of a driverless truck not getting into accidents. Railroads have an excellent safety record. Driverless trucks as a way to red…
What is the economic model to use driverless trucks?
The same as for trucks with drivers (only cheaper) and those already control much of the transportation business.
> Dealing with gear changes, airbrakes, load shifting, other vehicles that will inevitably cut you off, and much more. Awhile back there was a post about the early experience of a young and enthusiastic programmer. The take away phrase, in response to someone sending nonsense input, was "Some people just want to watch the world burn." I can see assholes trying to make sure that an automated truck can't change lanes,…
>or get to the exit it needs to reach
Often while driving i get the feeling im the only one who realizes if you miss an exit, you can just get off at the next exit...
Going your preferred route is never more important than driving safely. People never seem to consider this when they cross several lanes of traffic to make a turn or get off at an exit.
The demonstration in Europe shows that driverless trucking is right around the corner. The primary remaining barriers are regulatory. What about the roads themselves? I'm curious how an autonomous truck will handle a snow-covered highway, fog, potholes, and tight corners caused by narrow roads, bad parking, snow banks, etc. This is a way of life where I live (Boston area). The article about the Russian driverless van…
One accident might set back consumer driving for 50 years, but not commercial. The safety record simply needs to be much better than human drivers, which shouldn't be too hard, because one driver is already taken out of the equation. And there are billions upon billions to be saved, in our corporatocracy of the USA, it WILL happen. Bad roads shouldn't be too much of a problem, they can just use humans on the bad roads, the bulk of our highways are in good shape. Snow is an issue, yes, but remember that they will have the highways perfectly GPS mapped, great reaction time, and commercial vehicles can have big ugly shrouds to keep cameras clean. There is also the possibility of hiring temporary human drivers for the worst snow days, but I don't see that happening because I honestly think the robots can have a much better safety record in snow. The plastic bag/rock thing could be a problem, that could be partially solved by just assuming it's a rock, pulling over to the side and waiting for a remote human to identify it, and clearly mark the truck as autonomous so the humans on the road know to expect different behavior from it. That's not a perfect solution, but we have thousands of the smartest people working on it - there is enough money at stake, it will be solved.
The demonstration in Europe shows that driverless trucking is right around the corner. The primary remaining barriers are regulatory. What about the roads themselves? I'm curious how an autonomous truck will handle a snow-covered highway, fog, potholes, and tight corners caused by narrow roads, bad parking, snow banks, etc. This is a way of life where I live (Boston area). The article about the Russian driverless van…
One accident might set back consumer driving for 50 years, but not commercial. The safety record simply needs to be much better than human drivers, which shouldn't be too hard, because one driver is already taken out of the equation. And there are billions upon billions to be saved, in our corporatocracy of the USA, it WILL happen. Bad roads shouldn't be too much of a problem, they can just use humans on the bad road…
Public and political perception need to consider autonomous commercial trucking to be safe, rather than safer.
"Safer than human drivers" all too easily becomes "we can't control when these robot trucks my crash into a mother driving her kids to school," when you put it into the political regulation arena.
I wonder what the accident rate of professional truck drivers is compared to other passenger class drivers. Certainly the outcome of an accident is potentially a much higher level of mayhem.
Not exactly what you're asking for, but related. In accidents where both a large commercial truck, and a car were involved: "the car was the encroaching vehicle in 89% of headon crashes, 88% of the opposite-direction sideswipes, 80% of the rear-end crashes, and 72% of the same-direction sideswipes." http://www.trucking.org/ATA%20Docs/News%20and%20Information/...
Now you need to take into account how many cars vs how many trucks were on the road in the period that yielded those numbers. Only then you can obtain the propensity of car drivers vs truck drivers to get into accidents.
I keep saying this over and over and over to my more "the market will figure it out" co-workers and I just can't seem to get through to them. This is literally more than 20% unemployment in less than 5 years. Society will either crumble or completely change how it views unemployment.
> This is literally more than 20% unemployment in less than 5 years First of all - what? It's not 20%, nor is it happening in 5 years... Neither of those numbers make any sense. Secondly, accuracy aside, the same arguments were made all through the 70s, 80s, and 90s about manufacturing automation. And guess what, those jobs are gone now, but society didn't crumble. It's not like his is all brand new people - it's hap…
>And guess what, those jobs are gone now, but society didn't crumble.
I wouldn't say the loss of manufacturing jobs has been particularly well absorbed, in fact i would argue that we are still trying to deal with the effect this loss has had on our economy.
Not exactly what you're asking for, but related. In accidents where both a large commercial truck, and a car were involved: "the car was the encroaching vehicle in 89% of headon crashes, 88% of the opposite-direction sideswipes, 80% of the rear-end crashes, and 72% of the same-direction sideswipes." http://www.trucking.org/ATA%20Docs/News%20and%20Information/...
Now you need to take into account how many cars vs how many trucks were on the road in the period that yielded those numbers. Only then you can obtain the propensity of car drivers vs truck drivers to get into accidents.
Not sure I understand...these are only accidents in which both a car and truck were involved.
The definitive thing you would want, I assume, is "at-fault accidents per xxx miles driven" for all accidents, segmented by vehicle type.
Definitely can't remotely operate a 40 ton truck. Wireless network latency is a bit high even under ideal conditions, and latency spikes could easily cause disastrous accidents.
If you can pilot flying killing machines half the world away, you can definitely control a slow moving truck remotely.
The demonstration in Europe shows that driverless trucking is right around the corner. The primary remaining barriers are regulatory. What about the roads themselves? I'm curious how an autonomous truck will handle a snow-covered highway, fog, potholes, and tight corners caused by narrow roads, bad parking, snow banks, etc. This is a way of life where I live (Boston area). The article about the Russian driverless van…
> Industry players are aware that just one serious accident on the roads involving a driverless car could set back their development by decades. It'd be awfully "convenient" for the truckers & taxi drivers if this were to happen... I predict a dirty tricks campaign with one or two engineered "accidents" to safeguard their industries. Vehicles, autonomous and current ones, will need incredibly reliable security to pre…
Yes, because computers and software aren't buggy by themselves without human intervention.