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

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331–340 of 471 posts

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

#331

"Last mile" delivery may perhaps be done with much smaller, mostly-autonomous vehicles (with remote operators getting involved only when needed). See related article and thread in [1] - article also discusses some startup ideas for mostly-autonomous systems. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11565601

See also [2] for a description of the verification challenges of a fictitious (but informative) Amazon last-mile autonomous delivery vehicle.

[2] https://www.cs.york.ac.uk/ftpdir/reports/2015/YCS/496/YCS-20...

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

#332
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, that one makes sense. Because if 1 truck has 30 cars around it, chances are that a car will screw up before a truck.

Sure, but unless the car running into the truck _prevents_ the truck from being at-fault in a different accident further down the road, that doesn't really matter.

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

#333

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…

Reliable self-driving highway trucks are indeed quite far off. And the OP does at least admit that entry/exit ramps would need to be massively upgraded to support peloton-style semi-automation. Full automation would require a huge investment in road maintenance that many jurisdictions currently skimp on. At some point we'd be far better served to seriously invest in a high-capacity high-speed railroad network. It could move people and freight far more efficiently and could be far more easily automated than automated semis, which are really just a kludge on the current overbuilt and undermaintained highway system. The money follows the infrastructure you have. If we have to rebuild our highway infrastructure to accommodate self-driving trucks maybe we should rethink whether those trucks are the right way to ship goods over long distances after all.

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

#334

> Trucking represents a considerable portion of the cost of all the goods we buy, so consumers everywhere will experience this change as lower prices and higher standards of living. No, consumers won't. The savings will be funneled directly to shareholders.

Not really, competition will eventually drive down the prices.

People say things like this, then we end up with the cable (TV/Internet) industry.

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

#335
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Truckers have to deal with a sort of standard "road safety dilemma" all the time, which can be boiled down to this: A trucker is driving a 40 ton truck at 65mph. A passenger car with a family of four cuts in front of it, and the distance is closing fast. A passenger car takes roughly 315 feet to come to a complete stop. A fully loaded truck takes 525 feet. The trucker now has to make a decision. A) Do I slam on…

The article mentions driverless trucks would drive slower, at 45mph, wouldn't this make a key difference in this scenario, eg a much shorter breaking distance. Also, a driverless vehicle has one option a manned vehicle doesn't - self destruction to save life, eg drive off the side of the road and crash (assuming it could determine that no one was there)

It's difficult enough for driverless cars to know where the lines on the road are. I don't think we can expect in the near future to be able to not only detect pedestrians, but to have an idea what series of events may happen during an avoidance maneuver. There's a lot of things to go wrong.

However, stopping distance in real-world scenarios is wayyyy farther than in practice runs, because even a second faster braking by the driver can save a hundred feet. So robotic braking (that we have today in passenger cars) could improve the distance a lot. But...

Trucks are still 10-20x heavier than passenger cars, and there are practical upper bounds to the size of their brakes and the g's they can pull. If a passenger car normally stops in 388 feet at 65mph (not uncommon) and it would stop at 196 feet at 45mph, a truck at 45mph would stop in 265 feet. So yes, the truck could in theory stop faster than the passenger car.

But passenger cars don't just slam on their brakes in front of trucks (often). They also just drift right the heck into the truck. Perhaps mechanisms could be developed to safely merge away, and they'll probably be developed in passenger cars first. But there's no denying that a dedicated roadway would not only save repair costs for passenger-vehicle-only roads, it would remove the risk of colliding with passenger vehicles no matter whose fault it was.

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

#336
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much did you pay for the super computer in your hand?

How much did UPS/Fedex shipping prices go down when fuel prices dropped? (hint, they went up).

Ocean and air freight real prices are the cheapest they have ever been.

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

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but if a driver falls asleep it's clearly their fault, if they survive the accident they will be charged with manslaughter. If a driverless truck rear ends a car because of a glitch or a mechanical fault where it didn't see the car in front for some reason, then I can only imagine the corporation recalling all of them at huge cost, and possibly paying millions of dollars in damages. I think the point is that when…

The company making the vehicles will be responsible for any damages, and paying a massive insurance premium I'm sure. There will be legal consequences for gross negligence and anyone damaged will be made whole. I don't see how that's any different than the system we have now. And the emotional appeals cut both ways. How long before the parents of a child killed by a drunk or sleeping truck driver say "Why was he driv…

> and paying a massive insurance premium I'm sure

Nah, it'll be much cheaper than what they pay for humans since the bots will be in far fewer accidents and insurance companies actually care about statistics.

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

#338

So many comments here are in the form of "People won't trust autonomous vehicles." Well I'm people, and I trust them. And it's for one simple reason: Whatever bugs they have can be fixed for every autonomous car on the road at the same time. That just can't be said for human beings. Every one of us has to learn how to idle icy roads, fog and other hazards individually, with wildly varying results. A computer program…

You overstate what data is available. What self-driving cars are currently operating in icy/snowy/rainy conditions on poorly maintained roads that aren't radar-mapped to the inch?

In any case, avoiding hitting people and other cars is the easy part of building self-driving vehicles. Navigating in ever-changing uncertain road conditions reliably is a different problem altogether.

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

#340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company making the vehicles will be responsible for any damages, and paying a massive insurance premium I'm sure. There will be legal consequences for gross negligence and anyone damaged will be made whole. I don't see how that's any different than the system we have now. And the emotional appeals cut both ways. How long before the parents of a child killed by a drunk or sleeping truck driver say "Why was he driv…

> and paying a massive insurance premium I'm sure Nah, it'll be much cheaper than what they pay for humans since the bots will be in far fewer accidents and insurance companies actually care about statistics.

I think you might be surprised - companies would be insured against a total recall due to software/hardware failure, which would far exceed the cost of any accident a computer could get into, so I guess the premiums might stay relatively high.
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