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Self-driving trucks begin mail delivery test for U.S. Postal Service

reuters.com

151–160 of 169 posts

Re: Self-driving trucks begin mail delivery test for U.S. Postal Service

#151
post #149

This is exactly the kind of job suited for automated driving. I wonder if there will be automatic-only highways soon spanning these stretches of the countryside, or whether such a thing would even help.

Mandatory computer-control will happen when a critical threshold of traffic is already operating that way, and risk/liability will make the restriction inevitable.

Re: Self-driving trucks begin mail delivery test for U.S. Postal Service

#152
post #63

How is the package actually delivered if there's no driver?

Read the article. It's about delivering packages from one USPS facility to another not residential delivery.

yeah this could have been made clear in the title but they chose the clickbait approach

Re: Self-driving trucks begin mail delivery test for U.S. Postal Service

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a meme with no basis in reality. > Because republicans have spent decades trying to kill it. Before the post office was forced to pay pensions fund up front by republicans [1] it was self sustainable. The PAEA was passed unanimously in both chambers of Congress and with the support of two of the employee unions. source: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/109/hr6407 The pre-funding period ended in 2017 --…

Where does your first source list the votes or state the support of employee unions?

The first source has a history section that details the Senate and House votes. There is no record of the votes because it was passed by unanimous consent in the Senate and without challenge in the House.

The NALC actually deleted their page in support of the legislation but luckily it's archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20130805121847/https://www.nalc....

> Thanks to NALC and a coalition of other unions (the Rural Letter Carriers and the Mail Handlers), management associations, vendors and mailers, Congress rejected almost all the negative recommendations of President Bush’s blue-ribbon Commission on the Postal Service. Instead it crafted a balanced compromise that emphasized pragmatism over ideology.

> Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) were instrumental in negotiating the final details with Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), the bill’s chief sponsor in the Senate. In an e-Activist message sent on December 9, NALC President Bill Young thanked Waxman and Carper for advocating NALC’s interests in the legislation. He also thanked Sens. Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and Daniel Akaka (D-HI), and Reps. Tom Davis (R-VA), Danny Davis (D-IL) and John McHugh (R-NY) for their roles over the years.

Re: Self-driving trucks begin mail delivery test for U.S. Postal Service

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm required to facilitate the USPS's delivery of this spam by maintaining a box in my yard if I want to ever get anything from them at all. If UPS/FedEx start leaving garbage in my yard I can sue them for littering on my private property.

Re: Self-driving trucks begin mail delivery test for U.S. Postal Service

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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Re: Self-driving trucks begin mail delivery test for U.S. Postal Service

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

USPS delivers packages too. You're either not looking closely enough at the shipping labels or you don't order from a variety of merchants. In general, USPS seems to make sense for smaller businesses that ship small packages. There is also MailInnovations/SmartPost where UPS/Fedex dumps packages at the local "inefficient" post office for last mile delivery. Raising the lowest price for sending junk mail to the prices…

You advocate for regulating the USPS to reduce the delivery of SPAM if you want. I'm happy to just see them disappear. Why should I care to have government regulate a service provider into providing a better service when a better service already exists?

In practical terms I cannot stop having a mailbox, because a few times a year a check or something comes in the mail. That means I would have to go get my mail from the post office every so often and go through it all. So all that's accomplished is I have to drive a few miles down the road to pick up my USPS garbage instead of having the garbage delivered into my front yard. If the USPS didn't exist at all, everyone (businesses, official government notifications, etc) would switch to the better service providers like UPS/FedEx.

Re: Self-driving trucks begin mail delivery test for U.S. Postal Service

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hundreds of millions of people are forced to rely on it. I can't be the only person who sees the primary role of the USPS is to deliver garbage to my front yard.

The benefit of UPS/FedEx is if they start leaving garbage in my front yard, I can sue them for littering.

If the USPS goes away there will be a very short adjustment period when private organizations and official government changes its mailing practices, but it will all be fine. I'm willing to make a compromise where the federal government can require that regular (weekly?) mail delivery be available everywhere in the country, and if it's not available from private sources the government can create one. So if you're in the boonies of the northern most territory of Alaska, you'll get weekly mail or something delivered by government subsidized mail service.

Re: Self-driving trucks begin mail delivery test for U.S. Postal Service

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? $17/hour is 230% of the Federal minimum wage, and 148% more than the highest state-level minimum in the country (Washington).

That's because kingnothing assumed a 40-hour week, while bluedino said "he's home every 2 weeks" If you assume he's driving the FMCSA limit of 60 hours in 7 consecutive days, the hourly wage is lower. And if you count all the time he's away from home, it's lower still. And he's paying for truck stop food and sleeping in his cab to boot. And a far cry from the reports of $73,000 reported in some sources [1] [1] https:…

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Re: Self-driving trucks begin mail delivery test for U.S. Postal Service

#159

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).

Is it really cheaper? I would expect rail to be somewhat cheaper but an order of magnitude or more slower.

Rail is cheaper in just about every dimension - fuel, track, track maintenance, labor, etc. The downside is it's slower.

Re: Self-driving trucks begin mail delivery test for U.S. Postal Service

#160
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we’re talking about basically AEB (automatic emergency braking) for trains How far ahead does AEB look? Because trains take miles to stop. The system is different to account for that.

Yeah, in a 2D problem space, with every vehicle already reporting position back to the network! The two dimensions being track offset (distance from start of line), and time. This isn’t even obstacle detection. This is a) obeying the speed limit, and b) not asking two known entities to occupy the same length of track at the same time. It does not, for example, detect a car stuck on the tracks at the next railroad cro…

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