Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare • Hacker News Board

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#71

Post by sleepybrett » Sun, Jan 14, 2024, 6:35 PM UTC

photonbeam wrote: post #17

bradley13 wrote: post #16

Another issue will be piracy. Stop the truck using a couple of vehicles, cut open the lock on the rear doors, and loot. Pick an isolated stretch of toad, and the pirates will be gone before anyone can respond.

You can already do that, the driver wont defend the payload

but the driver is a witness and a potential chaos agent so must be at least monitored and possibly killed. Robbing a driverless truck would convey less risk or potential death to the robber and less risk of catching a murder charge to go with your grand theft.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#72

Post by gwern » Sun, Jan 14, 2024, 6:36 PM UTC

How much of this is just money? Waymo has been operating for a decade and a half and has spent billions upon billions. Probably it's spent more than all the trucking startups listed put together. So it'd not be surprising if they are doing much better.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#73

Post by foofie » Sun, Jan 14, 2024, 6:39 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #69

Yes trucks slow down slower than cars but that's just physics. You've got the exact same problem with humans driving under say rainy or foggy conditions. If anything driverless helps dramatically on this front. If you can run trucks 24/7 without stopping then you can cut their speed say 33% or whatever and still come out on top. You can also adjust the cargo to reduce stopping distance - use autonomous truckers for t…

> If anything driverless helps dramatically on this front. If you can run trucks 24/7 without stopping then you can cut their speed say 33% or whatever and still come out on top.

I think that this line of reasoning misses the forest for the trees. If the promise of a silver bullet is a mode of transportation that can safely and reliably work 24/7 day and night with limited to no human interaction and be able to move large volumes of goods, then we already have that: it's called railway.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#74

Post by marktangotango » Sun, Jan 14, 2024, 6:39 PM UTC

RockyMcNuts wrote: post #57

I feel like a truck convoy of 10 trucks with one or two humans in the first truck (or first and last) and getting alerts seems more doable.

Indeed there are multiple such optimizations. One that occurs to me is a hub/spoke model where inter-city/state is driverless, from/to truck "yards" on the outskirts of cities. Then human drivers take over and drive the last few miles. Drivers get to go home every night and lead normal lives instead of living on the road.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#75

Post by fallingknife » Sun, Jan 14, 2024, 6:40 PM UTC

Edman274 wrote: post #26

I often see logic along the lines of "if autonomous vehicles are safer than people, then let's deploy them" and that logic straight-up does not fly in the real world. In the real world, among the techno-pessimists, that is an outrageously low bar. Most accidents and deaths that happen because of human drivers occur because the driver was doing something illegal, which means the bar that we have for even humans is hig…

The problem is that if you have safer than human systems but you don't deploy them it's basically killing people. If you had autonomous driving that was 90% as deadly as the average human driver, not deploying it would cause 4000 deaths every year in the US.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#76

Post by fallingknife » Sun, Jan 14, 2024, 6:42 PM UTC

foofie wrote: post #73

Havoc wrote: post #69

Yes trucks slow down slower than cars but that's just physics. You've got the exact same problem with humans driving under say rainy or foggy conditions. If anything driverless helps dramatically on this front. If you can run trucks 24/7 without stopping then you can cut their speed say 33% or whatever and still come out on top. You can also adjust the cargo to reduce stopping distance - use autonomous truckers for t…

> If anything driverless helps dramatically on this front. If you can run trucks 24/7 without stopping then you can cut their speed say 33% or whatever and still come out on top. I think that this line of reasoning misses the forest for the trees. If the promise of a silver bullet is a mode of transportation that can safely and reliably work 24/7 day and night with limited to no human interaction and be able to move…

And when there is a railroad to every warehouse in the country, it will replace trucks.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#77

Post by maxerickson » Sun, Jan 14, 2024, 6:42 PM UTC

Edman274 wrote: post #26

I often see logic along the lines of "if autonomous vehicles are safer than people, then let's deploy them" and that logic straight-up does not fly in the real world. In the real world, among the techno-pessimists, that is an outrageously low bar. Most accidents and deaths that happen because of human drivers occur because the driver was doing something illegal, which means the bar that we have for even humans is hig…

Really the bar for humans to legally operate a vehicle is whatever licensing process is in place in a given state. We don't make them pinky swear to not do anything dangerous or illegal.

If an autonomous system can get a CDL, it's probably gonna be more effective at continuously meeting that standard than a lot of the humans that do the same thing (but are distracted on a given day or have started using substances, or didn't sleep well or whatever).

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#78

Post by jampekka » Sun, Jan 14, 2024, 6:43 PM UTC

fallingknife wrote: post #75

Edman274 wrote: post #26

I often see logic along the lines of "if autonomous vehicles are safer than people, then let's deploy them" and that logic straight-up does not fly in the real world. In the real world, among the techno-pessimists, that is an outrageously low bar. Most accidents and deaths that happen because of human drivers occur because the driver was doing something illegal, which means the bar that we have for even humans is hig…

The problem is that if you have safer than human systems but you don't deploy them it's basically killing people. If you had autonomous driving that was 90% as deadly as the average human driver, not deploying it would cause 4000 deaths every year in the US.

We have a lot safer transportation systems than private cars but don't deploy them. Is this basically killing people too? Driving is murder?

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#79

Post by maxerickson » Sun, Jan 14, 2024, 6:44 PM UTC

RockyMcNuts wrote: post #57

I feel like a truck convoy of 10 trucks with one or two humans in the first truck (or first and last) and getting alerts seems more doable.

Or more or less automate the highway so that vehicles share information back and forth. Huge task, but goes a long way towards helping big heavy vehicles have information about what is ahead.

Re: Autonomous trucking is harder than autonomous rideshare

#80

Post by jmull » Sun, Jan 14, 2024, 6:44 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #69

Yes trucks slow down slower than cars but that's just physics. You've got the exact same problem with humans driving under say rainy or foggy conditions. If anything driverless helps dramatically on this front. If you can run trucks 24/7 without stopping then you can cut their speed say 33% or whatever and still come out on top. You can also adjust the cargo to reduce stopping distance - use autonomous truckers for t…

> …you can cut their speed say 33%…

You probably can’t have cars going 70 or faster sharing the road with trucks going a steady 45.