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The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

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Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#351

Post by peterwwillis »

mschuster91 wrote: post #179
peterwwillis wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2) freight trains don't get priority over passenger trains Freight trains get priority here and it still doesn't make sense to ship by train. Rail is pretty limited by the huge size of our country, and they need to be able to ship to tiny random stores all over the place. It makes more sense to send one truck that can stop anywhere there's a road than send it out via train and then transfer to a local truck, which…

> Rail is pretty limited by the huge size of our country Quite the contrary, the US is better suited for rail than the rest of the world, at least for cross-country moving of goods (one single area of law, no customs crap to deal with, the only thing I'm not sure is signalling and interoperability of locomotives on rail systems in different states). Trains are perfect for inter-city travel, the first/last mile should…

How long do you imagine it takes to unload a single car or two cars in a given city and move on to the next city? Once that "last mile" is handled, what else is that truck going to do until the next train shipment arrives? It'll sit doing nothing. If it moved on to another city, it could have just been loaded somewhere else and didn't need to be loaded at last mile.

Trains have several single points of failure for a larger load. When there is a problem, all of the load is affected, it takes longer to repair, and problems with both the rails and the trains happen regularly. And trains have more complex maneuvering than trucks; switching lines is a non-trivial time-consuming matter and operators have a tough job just on the existing lines.

The fact remains we don't have enough rail to service most of the country, and nobody is paying for new rail, not to mention the issue of fitting more track on the existing land and bridges used for rail. Demand has been increasing steadily on rail, and only so much traffic can possibly run on the rails - which are shared with passenger trains, btw. To switch to trains you'd be adding 230% more traffic to the rails.

Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#352

Post by chrisseaton »

jmspring wrote: post #41
ctvo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trucks are way more complicated to drive. Once they're up to cruising speed, they're easy. But it's everything leading up to that point which is hard. Dealing with gear changes, airbrakes, load shifting, other vehicles that will inevitably cut you off, and much more. The mechanical aspects of controlling a large truck and accounting for the variables is probably the easiest part of the problem. Things involving hum…

Mechanical aspects, may be easy. Modeling human behavior and reacting to it, not so much. I suspect it will still be years before much of trucking is automated. Why? It's not just the take crap from point A to point B, it's also being responsible for making sure what was ordered is actually loaded. It will be years before, say, the laborers at Earth Bound Farms south of Salinas (supplies large quantities of "organic"…

> the laborers at Earth Bound Farms south of Salinas (supplies large quantities of "organic" produce all up and down the west coast)

Why on earth did you pick them out so incredibly specifically and put scare quotes around organic? Doesn't seem relevant.

Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#354

Post by [deleted] »

FussyZeus wrote: post #321
TheLogothete wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, people will just slack because they can buy bread. We already saw this in the soviet block. The human brain works on incentives. Remove the incentive the human is in free fall.

The simple fact is that a tiny fraction of our population can create a lot more wealth than the rest of them doing all the busywork they could possibly do, and this is only going to get worse as automation continues to increase. We need to rethink the idea that you need to contribute to eat because it simply isn't true anymore. Now, we can either start giving people what they need to live because they're humans and s…

[deleted]

Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#355

Post by ben-en »

madeofpalk wrote: post #302
massysett wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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." It won't; at least, it won't need to handle narrow roads, bad parking, snow banks, etc. The autonomous truck need not drive the whole route that a human driver does now. Drive down the Ohio Turnpike and you will see numerous p…

Would it still be an advanced net if you had humans in the trucks as a 'backup', with the autonomous driving doing 90% of the 'boring' driving down the highways? Humans would still drive the last mile (ha!). Would that be significant safer and more efficient to make it worthwhile? If you limit autonomous driving to the main freight routes on the highway, I can see self driving vehicles happening a lot sooner than I p…

There is a lot of intercity driving that could be rendered unnecessary with an automated intercity system.

This may also make the shift easier on the current labor pool, as they could migrate to local delivery work.

Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#356

Post by FussyZeus »

TheLogothete wrote: post #349
zanny wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a hard time believing under any economic system Americans would be content with bread when their neighbor is eating steak. That is the whole basis of the consumerist culture that powers a good portion of American capitalism. And the Soviets are a terrible example. Centrally planned economies of course destroy all individual incentives to accel or improve. But if you seriously think the only way economic system…

>And the Soviets are a terrible example. Centrally planned economies of course destroy all individual incentives to accel or improve. Which economy is not centrally planned? We have more and more central planning every year. The Soviet Union did not collapse because of central planning. It collapsed because everyone was lazy and stole shit from the factories. No productivity, no quality. People were drinking at work…

The Soviet Union collapsed because they distributed everything to everyone, the problem was it was all terrible and the supply was insufficient due to any one of many things such as problems in distribution, corruption in the suppliers, etc. People who were stealing were by and large doing so out of desperation, which is already happening now in multiple areas around the US and elsewhere.

The vast majority of people when given access to a basic amount of money (not benefits, not stamps, just money) will spend it in such a way as to NOT cause them additional misery via drugs, alcohol or by starving their children. Yes, some will but the "welfare queen" is a myth perpetuated by people who stand to benefit from the social systems being cut back. They exist but it's such a vanishingly small percentage that they might as well not exist, in comparison to the total welfare budget it's a rounding error.

I've never heard of one person protesting against the rich saying that we should all be equal. I used to think that's what they were saying, but in actuality people who want equality want equality of opportunity, not equality of result, and to say that a kid growing up in rural Kentucky with the best of circumstances available there has the same opportunity as a kid in the suburbs of San Fransisco is laughable on it's face.

Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#359

Post by mavhc »

"A convoy of self-driving trucks recently drove across Europe and arrived at the Port of Rotterdam"

Except it didn't. They were driven by drivers, only difference was software controlled the speed so they could drive closer together.

https://www.eutruckplatooning.com/News/495554.aspx

Re: The driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs

#360

Post by _pmf_ »

aidenn0 wrote: post #142
patrickg_zill wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually you can't, for a lot of goods. Reason is that the railroad won't give you the same guarantees and trackability a truck will. Example: you have refrigerated items (let's say a shipment of fresh fruit) that has to be maintained at a constant temperature and you want it delivered to your customer on Thursday when you ship Sunday night. Truck: not a problem, and you can easily get updates all the time from dispa…

> If the railroad puts a refrigerator unit on your boxcar and it breaks down, too bad - they won't reimburse you. A trucking company will. Insurance?

> Insurance?

If the thing you insure against actually happens, premiums go up to the point of it being uneconomic.

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