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The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars

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Re: The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars

#3

Post by rickdale »

The only flaw I see with beginning with semi-trucks is the perception of driverless cars to the masses and the potential damage a driverless semi-truck accident could incur vs a driverless Prius or something smaller. Not saying there won't be a market for it in the trucking business, but seems smart to start on the smaller cars just for the sake of perceived safety.

Re: The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars

#4

Post by fvrghl »

I totally agree that driverless trucks are the future, but I don't think it will come easy. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is one of the largest unions in North America, and one of the most politically powerful. I think that they will fight this with everything they have to keep humans getting paychecks.

Re: The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars

#6

Post by dnautics »

fvrghl wrote: post #4

I totally agree that driverless trucks are the future, but I don't think it will come easy. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is one of the largest unions in North America, and one of the most politically powerful. I think that they will fight this with everything they have to keep humans getting paychecks.

yet, it already exists.

http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/content/en/mineweb-fast-news?...

Re: The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars

#7

Post by dlsx »

fvrghl wrote: post #4

I totally agree that driverless trucks are the future, but I don't think it will come easy. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is one of the largest unions in North America, and one of the most politically powerful. I think that they will fight this with everything they have to keep humans getting paychecks.

Except the power of going on strike has been completely disintegrated with an automated fleet of trucks sitting back ready to be deployed.

Disruption will come, and they won't be able to stop it.

Re: The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars

#8

Post by modeless »

fvrghl wrote: post #4

I totally agree that driverless trucks are the future, but I don't think it will come easy. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is one of the largest unions in North America, and one of the most politically powerful. I think that they will fight this with everything they have to keep humans getting paychecks.

Exactly. One of the main barriers to the adoption of driverless cars is going to be politics. Starting off by threatening a bunch of unionized jobs would be political suicide. I can see the political cartoons now: Terminators with glowing red eyes driving trucks, running down crowds of helpless union members.

Re: The Driverless Car Revolution Should Not Begin with Cars

#9

Post by kposehn »

> Compared to driverless cars, driverless trucking is technically way simpler. When going from one warehouse in a sparsely populated area to a another warehouse in a similarly sparsly populated area, there’s a lot less that can go wrong.

Not quite. Long haul trucking has far more things to go wrong than a short jaunt from two packed urban spots to another. A lot goes wrong on these trips. Flat tires, accidents, bad weather and - of course - other drivers.

Case in point: a long haul truck from Oakland to Chicago has to tackle Donner Pass, the Wasatch, Sherman hill (the Wyoming continental divide) and then finally gets a flat stretch across the Great Plains.

I would counter that the best start is short-haul intermodal: trucks that pick up a container and haul it to an intermodal rail yard, and so on. Those trucks have to deal with a short route and much fewer potential problems.

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