Inter-city mail should be by rail, which is far more environmental and much less costly. The only reason highways appear to be "cheaper" is the real costs are paid by other people (passenger cars).
Self-driving trucks begin mail delivery test for U.S. Postal Service
101–110 of 169 posts
Re: Self-driving trucks begin mail delivery test for U.S. Postal Service
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I have no idea why people think the USPS is this giant wasteful pit of money in the federal budget A concentrated disinformation campaign funded by people who stand to benefit from privatizing mail delivery. It started with the mandate to pre-fund pension and healthcare benefits for the next 75 years, funding pensions for retired employees who aren't even born yet. That means by federal mandate, the USPS is sitting…
Is a pay-as-you-go pension really a smart option if your #1 product/mandate (first class mail) is at total risk of becoming irrelevant in the near-term?
Those aren't the only options. It's hard to argue that the goal isn't the complete destruction of the USPS when you mandate they pre-pay pensions 75 years in advance and then forbid them from raising prices to fulfill that mandate.
If the USPS is going to become irrelevant in the near-term, does stockpiling 75 years worth of pensions really make sense?
Re: Self-driving trucks begin mail delivery test for U.S. Postal Service
#103>TuSimple and the USPS declined to disclose the cost of the program, but Frum said no tax dollars were used and the agency relies on revenue from sales of postage and other products. Really? This is exactly the kind of thing we should be spending tax dollars on. I have no idea why people think the USPS is this giant wasteful pit of money in the federal budget but they provide a lot of valuable services in addition to…
The purpose of the mail (or any business) is not employing people.
Re: Self-driving trucks begin mail delivery test for U.S. Postal Service
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
What drivers are paid for a given load reflects market conditions like e.g., weather, truck availability, and load availability, more than anything else. Automating large parts of the driving process would make the job easier and more desirable. More people would be willing to work as monitors, which would increase truck availability and lower rates. There’s also the possibility that a monitor could do other work whi…
How can the monitor do other things if he is expected to have full situational awareness at a moment's notice in case something goes wrong, when you have no idea if or when that might happen? All the studies say this is actually more dangerous, which is why Waymo abandoned L3 development years ago when they discovered their safety drivers were falling asleep at the wheel. And there's the infamous Uber death which is…
That's the difference. In an autonomous urban driving environment a monitor is expected to have full situational awareness at all times because driving in cities is a hugely complex process. A truck driving 1,100 miles on I-80 would not need to be monitored as closely, if at all, because that driving process is far simpler. This kind of highway driving accounts for the majority of over-the-road freight.
"Monitor" might be a misnomer, here, in that the monitor isn't expected to be actively watching what the truck is doing; rather the monitor would be expected to respond to infrequent issues and maybe handle off-highway driving to and from shipping and receiving facilities.
Re: Self-driving trucks begin mail delivery test for U.S. Postal Service
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its a common misconception, and it is driven by political interests that want to dismantle public services and replace them with more expensive services that have a profit margin for themselves attached.
For me it's not a misconception. 99.99% of things delivered by USPS are spam at my house. I don't even get paper statements for any of my bills. 100% of things delivered by UPS/FedEx/etc are useful things I want to get. Every time I go to the mailbox is an encouragement to get rid of the USPS. My life would literally be better if USPS didn't exist.
Cool, we'll destroy a public service that hundreds of millions of people rely on just so we don't inconvenience you any further.
Re: Self-driving trucks begin mail delivery test for U.S. Postal Service
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can the monitor do other things if he is expected to have full situational awareness at a moment's notice in case something goes wrong, when you have no idea if or when that might happen? All the studies say this is actually more dangerous, which is why Waymo abandoned L3 development years ago when they discovered their safety drivers were falling asleep at the wheel. And there's the infamous Uber death which is…
That's the difference. In an autonomous urban driving environment a monitor is expected to have full situational awareness at all times because driving in cities is a hugely complex process. A truck driving 1,100 miles on I-80 would not need to be monitored as closely, if at all, because that driving process is far simpler. This kind of highway driving accounts for the majority of over-the-road freight. "Monitor" mig…
I understand the idea of having drivers take over in dense urban areas, and letting the truck drive itself along the highway between cities. But this assumes the truck is capable of safely navigating along the highway with zero human intervention. An inattentive driver/monitor is no better than no driver when something unexpected happens and requires a sub-second reaction. If they can do that then they're in business, but I am skeptical.
Re: Self-driving trucks begin mail delivery test for U.S. Postal Service
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wrong. Driving a commercial vehicle requires a license that is more difficult to maintain, and for good reason: It's much harder to safely operate than a standard passenger vehicle. Tesla and other 'Autonomous Driving solutions' are missing parity in the 'contextual awareness' space IMO. Safely operating a commercial vehicle is very much about 'contextual awareness'. Car cuts you off unexpectedly? Easy, slam the brak…
>Wrong. How petulant. > Car cuts you off unexpectedly? Easy, slam the brakes in a Tesla. Truck? Crash and kill the people in front of you. Again, how is this different between a computer and a human driver? As far as I can tell, the hardest part of self-driving is accurately seeing the world. Once you see a car, it's fairly easy to make the algorithm pessimistically assume that any car that can cut it off is likely t…
> Once you see a car, it's fairly easy to make the algorithm pessimistically assume that any car that can cut it off is likely to do so.
Well, this just doesn't match reality. Uber showed us that these algorithms are full of false positives and have to be disregarded to make the vehicle actually drive itself (Remember when they killed that pedestrian?).
What a computer would need is 'awareness,' and that awareness is even more critical in a larger body vehicle. There's always going to be 'emergency stop in case of unknown situation.' The difference is, the human is not in an unknown situation, they're able to anticipate and plan.
Given the current landscape, I'd say with enough data you could more or less brute-force an AI driven car and be somewhere on the spectrum of safer than the worst human drivers. I say it's practically impossible for a semi truck to brute-force with sensors and pessimistic algorithms alone.
Re: Self-driving trucks begin mail delivery test for U.S. Postal Service
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its a common misconception, and it is driven by political interests that want to dismantle public services and replace them with more expensive services that have a profit margin for themselves attached.
For me it's not a misconception. 99.99% of things delivered by USPS are spam at my house. I don't even get paper statements for any of my bills. 100% of things delivered by UPS/FedEx/etc are useful things I want to get. Every time I go to the mailbox is an encouragement to get rid of the USPS. My life would literally be better if USPS didn't exist.
> 99.99% of things delivered by USPS are spam at my house.
How is that the fault of the USPS? Mail "spam" wouldn't go away if UPS/FedEx took over the postal service via privatization.
Re: Self-driving trucks begin mail delivery test for U.S. Postal Service
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note: Unemployment is measured through participation in various workfinding government programs or receipt of unemployment benefits. It doesn't really paint an accurate picture of how many are out of work, but getting by through alternative or illegal-quasi-legal means. It also in no way measures the number of jobs a defined unit of work can supply, or whether the job itself creates enough of a return to be economica…
The US federal government uses a monthly survey to compute unemployment statistics; it doesn't just tally up people receiving unemployment benefits.
It also ignores people that have not been working for more than a year, so basically if you're chronically unemployed (and are likely the type of person that need the most help) you're conveniently ignored for the sake of bureaucracy.
Re: Self-driving trucks begin mail delivery test for U.S. Postal Service
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its a common misconception, and it is driven by political interests that want to dismantle public services and replace them with more expensive services that have a profit margin for themselves attached.
For me it's not a misconception. 99.99% of things delivered by USPS are spam at my house. I don't even get paper statements for any of my bills. 100% of things delivered by UPS/FedEx/etc are useful things I want to get. Every time I go to the mailbox is an encouragement to get rid of the USPS. My life would literally be better if USPS didn't exist.
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