Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 278 posts

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#221

Post by darpa_escapee »

jMyles wrote: post #105
lonelyw0lf wrote: post #42

The video ad is so crazy -- we still need a human to lock/unlock the cargo?? and its good for the truckers because they can go home early to their family?? The first part can be trivially automated and the second is just stupid. Truckers get paid per hour of work, less work == less money. AI-self-driving has arrived but to make the transition look "humane" as in the AD is crazy. Almost insults the intelligence of the…

> Truckers get paid per hour of work, less work == less money. Such a trivial and stupid reason to guide the future of technology and the human conditions. Of course people want to be home with their families instead of driving for weeks on end. I find it dizzying that we think we can automate all of the matter around us to do what pleases us, but the matter of changing the socioeconomic configuration to match it see…

The people who are doing the automation, or own what is automated, don't want to change the socioeconomic configuration, it's working out very well for them.

> The economy (and society) will change, and this dude can stay with his family. Sounds great.

Given the productivity increases we've seen in the past few decades, this really hasn't been the case.

It is hard to stay home with family, when "home" and "family" means having many low-paying jobs to support both.

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#222

Post by stale2002 »

notatoad wrote: post #130
cgb223 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having grown up in an area where becoming a trucker is a common enough career path, I can tell you that the hours of work thing (which is really miles per work, but they correlate) lands some truckers in some sketchy situations Many of my friends have told me they take those gas station "energy supplements" so they can stay up for 2-3 straight days to log more hours and make the trip. Thats probably not healthy for t…

>trucks could drive themselves with a passenger trucker to intervene in tricky situations this scenario has been mentioned a couple times in this thread, but if the automation isn't good enough to handle 100% of the journey 100% of the time, then it's really not good enough to allow the trucker to simply be a passenger. If the operator might have to take control in tricky situations, they can't be sleeping the rest o…

Well, but what if it can handle 50% of the journey 100% of the time, and that 50% is known?

IE, for the 100 mile stretch of road in the desert, when it is sunny, it works great, and then when it gets to the city it tells the driver to take over.

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#223

Post by derefr »

dahart wrote: post #158
lawguy wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hell one of the reasons passenger trains is shit in the US is that passenger rail does not get priority over freight They do have priority: > (c) Preference over freight transportation. -- Except in an emergency, intercity and commuter rail passenger transportation provided by or for Amtrak has preference over freight transportation in using a rail line, junction, or crossing... http://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-49…

Passenger rail is supposed to have priority by law, but in practice they don't always get it. Freight carriers don't always yield, enough so that there are ongoing legal battles. You can check Amtrak's historical On-Time Performance and causes of delay here: https://www.amtrak.com/about-amtrak/on-time-performance/ My quick sampling of ~10 trains came up with an average around 65% on-time during the last year. The onl…

Sounds like something that could be enforced by giving the passenger trains the ability to lock out switches further ahead of them. Like, say, an hour ahead of them. (Though, without signalling the particular switches that lower at-grade crossing guards. It’d be a rather fraught thing to engineer, all-told.)

Sure, you couldn’t run densely-packed passenger trains very well on such a system... but they’re not densely-packed. If they were, the system would have been a success and could then be turned off. ;)

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#224

Post by DoubleCribble »

EggsOnToast wrote: post #211
DoubleCribble wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>much need for humans to take care of the maintenance of the trucks Is that really true? It seems electric trucks[0] quickly follow from autonomous trucks and from what I understand, electric vehicles are mechanically much simpler. That leaves truck operators with not much need for a greasemonkey wrenching on a transmission when there is a) little/no grease[1] and b) no transmission[2]. Tire & body shops are about th…

Slight tangent, how's the Tesla semi-truck been doing? When I was looking over the specs the range seemed low compared to a regular semi but I wasn't clear on if that was acceptable because they're targeting a particular subset of the semi-truck market.

It seems like a strange time to buy a nationwide chain of truck stops[0] with the oncoming electrification of vehicles. Unless... there's an opportunity to provide Supercharger access every few hundred miles.

[0]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-03/buffett-s...

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#225

Post by orthecreedence »

antihero wrote: post #212
LethargicStud wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally, the idea of stifling innovation to "preserve jobs" is harmful to society. Upon choosing a career, you should consider the longevity of that career. Some people will still pick wrong for a multitude of reasons. Hopefully, those people can pivot. It is unreasonable to hold the entire population back to continue employing those in a specific field. If we consistently did that, we'd be in the stone age and our…

Despite being a coder, I almost desire tech work to become replaced by machines at some point, with the only options of retraining to be prohibitively hard and leaving us in the dreadful position of these workers, just so I can watch people with attitudes like this get it handed to them. The attitudes we have towards the unskilled, low-skilled, or those who are being replaced and made redundant by the systems we deve…

JUST PREDICT 40+ YEARS INTO THE FUTURE AND PICK THE RIGHT CAREER GOSH IT'S NOT HARD DERR.

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#226

Post by orthecreedence »

iak8god wrote: post #214
LethargicStud wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some people will still pick wrong for a multitude of reasons. Hopefully, those people can pivot. We are lucky as software engineers, but I was also making the point that if your line of work gets automated, hopefully you can pivot. This applies to everyone, and is similar to when you are no longer enjoying your field of work. Changing careers is not always an option, but let's not forget that it usually is when we…

I'm hoping for a future where the machines do all the work required to provide everything human beings need to survive, AND where we've figured out a reasonable way to distribute resources in a world where not everyone will be able to "contribute to society" by spending huge amounts of their waking time doing something they'd not otherwise do, in exchange for tokens that can be redeemed for food and shelter.

Yes, but that would be communism, so let's just let people who were born into or stumbled into their wealth amass more of it. I think in general we need to start being more thoughtful about how the things we do can sometimes be hurtful to billionaires.

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#227

Post by 1812Overture »

jcranmer wrote: post #192
lawguy wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hell one of the reasons passenger trains is shit in the US is that passenger rail does not get priority over freight They do have priority: > (c) Preference over freight transportation. -- Except in an emergency, intercity and commuter rail passenger transportation provided by or for Amtrak has preference over freight transportation in using a rail line, junction, or crossing... http://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-49…

What happens is that the freight trains gives Amtrak a window for its timetable. In that window, Amtrak gets priority. Miss the window, and Amtrak has to wait for freight trains. There's a separate issue that some freight operators will decide to screw Amtrak over (even within their nominal window) and just eat the fines instead.

In Tucson AZ it was a constant problem that freight trains would either blow through town at full speed or crawl through level crossings blocking traffic rather than obeying speed laws. It was always cheaper for them to pay the fines than to comply.

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#228

Post by icelancer »

EggsOnToast wrote: post #142
knz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the issue a lack of jobs or a lack of jobs that pay enough to prosper in our society? BLS has the mean annual income for a truck driver at $43,000 ( https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes533032.htm ) versus ~ $22,000 for a personal care assistant ( https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/home-health-aides-and-per... ). That's a huge difference, especially in a country with the health care system we have.

Those numbers make sense at a glance. A truck driver, despite the popular image, more closely resembles specialized work than un-specialized. There are specific skill and documentation requirements to become a Truck driver. The healthcare work you linked to just requires a high-school diploma and no certs, if it's a job like caring for the elderly then the main factor driving up the wage is a shortage of people willi…

Trucking is absolutely skilled work. It's crazy that people think it isn't.

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#229

Post by SomewhatLikely »

masklinn wrote: post #115
ktpsns wrote: post #92

The funny thing in this US-centric view is that we have such a cargo since a century where trains play the role of "self-driving cargo". In europe, the decline of cargo on tracks (trains) is also partially owed to subsidiation of automobile traffic and highway expansions. It is a pity, because from the raw numbers trains are much less expensive then tracks.

I think that's misplaced, freight is the one area where NA in general and US in particular absolutely blows every other region out the water. Circa 2010 Rail was ~40% of US freight by ton-mile, whereas for the EU it was ~17%, and the US had 10x more tonne-kilometer freight rail than the EU (beyond China and Russia, with India a very distant third) (nb: China carried more tonnes total but shorter distances) Of course…

I'd be curious to know if freight travels shorter distances on average in Europe though.

Re: Uber self-driving trucks are now moving cargo for Uber Freight customers

#230

Post by makmanalp »

derefr wrote: post #223
dahart wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passenger rail is supposed to have priority by law, but in practice they don't always get it. Freight carriers don't always yield, enough so that there are ongoing legal battles. You can check Amtrak's historical On-Time Performance and causes of delay here: https://www.amtrak.com/about-amtrak/on-time-performance/ My quick sampling of ~10 trains came up with an average around 65% on-time during the last year. The onl…

Sounds like something that could be enforced by giving the passenger trains the ability to lock out switches further ahead of them. Like, say, an hour ahead of them. (Though, without signalling the particular switches that lower at-grade crossing guards. It’d be a rather fraught thing to engineer, all-told.) Sure, you couldn’t run densely-packed passenger trains very well on such a system... but they’re not densely-p…

This is starting to sound like distributed systems ... how do you prevent deadlock? https://wiki.openttd.org/Deadlock :-)
Post reply on HN