8 ms·

Self-driving trucks seem to have such great promise to improve the safety and efficiency of the trucking industry and our highways in general. Even if they're o

by macNchz 11y ago

Self-driving trucks seem to have such great promise to improve the safety and efficiency of the trucking industry and our highways in general. Even if they're only self-driving during the long haul sections and human drivers take over for local deliveries it would make a huge difference. Hopefully the various interested lobbies don't try to put too many artificial barriers in the way of self driving trucks becoming a reality.

ajmurmann 11y ago
I'm carefully optimistic since this would be in there interest of the trucking industry and they already seem to be succeeding at pushing laws through that are bad for the drivers. I would love a system where the trucks get driven to a lot outside of the city where they get set on a automatic course to the equivalent lot at the destination. During transit no person is onboard at all. At the destination lot a human enters and drives it downtown. If the truck goes to some industrial facility outside the city you shouldn't even need the human driver. Also I wish there was done way to go after those congress people who are in essence committing murder.
- gamerdonkey 11y ago
  This system sounds an awful lot like the freight rail system. That seems like it would be easier to automate, too.
  - bro-stick 11y ago
    Rio Tinto is replacing some of its engineers with ATC.
- Alex3917 11y ago
  > I'm carefully optimistic since this would be in there interest of the trucking industry How would self-driving trucks help the trucking industry? It seems like driverless technology will only make the business even more commoditized than it already is, and the only ones that make any money will be the one or two companies with the iPhone apps where you push the button to get your truck.
  - bro-stick 11y ago
    "Industry" is both ambiguous and nebulous. It would seem to help the stakeholders whom depend on trucking, perhaps the fleets of trucks and most definitely not the drivers. There are far too many truckers' jobs at risk to retrain and place in nonexistent "freeing" jobs that just don't exist. Loads of unemployed people with no job prospects to feed their families would be an idiotic situation rife with discontent bordering on insurrection.
    - ssalazar 11y ago
      > There are far too many [...] jobs at risk to retrain and place in nonexistent "freeing" jobs that just don't exist. Loads of unemployed people with no job prospects to feed their families would be an idiotic situation rife with discontent bordering on insurrection. This is an argument against nearly every technological development ever.
  - ajmurmann 11y ago
    I agree with practically everything you said. However, I expect that the companies that do most of the lobbying are larger and are all the ones expecting to be one of the one out two companies with the iPhone apps that now also don't have to deal with drivers anymore. The big companies will be able to upgrade their first, small companies won't be able to. The small companies get pushed out of the market. So I expect large companies to push for this.
  - wpietri 11y ago
    > How would self-driving trucks help the trucking industry? The people running the companies will be looking at labor as a major expense and human employees as a high source of variability and day-to-day complication. Trading labor cost (typically seen as an expense) for fixed asset costs (typically seen as investment) is hugely appealing to a lot of executives. > It seems like driverless technology will only make the business even more commoditized than it already is [...] Sure, and buying a $1 lottery ticket is financially equivalent to asking the store clerk to change $1 and then throwing $0.40 into the nearest sewer grate. But everybody buying a lottery ticket thinks they'll one of the few winners. Executives are generally like that too. But worse, because they get to gamble with other people's money and then take a slice of any winnings.
- ericd 11y ago
  Lots of decisions at the government level require putting a value on human lives. It's a feature, not a bug, that congressmen aren't usually held accountable for indirect death like this.
yoo1I 11y ago
I'm putting my hat in with the unions on this one myself: MAXIMUM HOMERDRIVE!
notNow 11y ago
I think that the trucking industry is one of the biggest employers in the US. Are you OK with devastating these people's lives for extra efficiency promised safety? Before we push for more automation and job losses, we need to revamp the whole political/economic/social system to ensure a more egalitarian income distribution since the vast majority of the Earth's population are proletariat who exchange their labor in return for capital to make a living.
- robbrown451 11y ago
  If everything was going to be automated all at once, this "devastation" might be the case. But it won't happen all at once, it happens over the course of a decade or two. In almost every case in history, automation has increased jobs and increased the quality of life. Your post reminds me of this story: "Prof. Friedman visited China in the early 1960s and was taken by a government official to see a public works project. Chinese workers were building a canal. Friedman was struck by seeing everyone digging the canal with shovels. Friedman asked the official, "why no heavy earth-moving equipment?" The official said, "oh, this is a jobs program." So Friedman then says to the official, "then why don't you just give them spoons instead of shovels to create even more jobs?"
  - ZoeZoeBee 11y ago
    History is what it is when it comes to changes in technology. However there have been moments in history which were R3voltionary, where a great deal of people were no longer necessary and that change came with periods of upheaval
  - notNow 11y ago
    Since you quoted that super villain Friedman, it's a futile exercise to discuss this issue with you but touching on the silly analogy cited by Dr. Evil: Abandoning spoons to shovels ==> 1000X efficiency gain and net positive mass-scale job opportunities Abandoning shovels to heavy equipment ===> 100X efficiency gain and net positive of mass-scale specialized job opportunities. Abandoning manual trucks to fully auto ===> ~1X efficiency (disputed) and net negative of job opportunities for the masses save for highly specialized super white collar jobs such as for engineers and developers like us. Do you really think that it's OK from an economic point of view and not politically as this is almost settled to destroy the livelihoods of these poor & lower middle class people just to get an estimated albeit unrealistic 100% efficiency boost? Are you ready to pay the price in terms of increasing crime rates and lower median quality of life and seeing decrepit hoods everywhere except inside your gated community where you plan to hide from all those poor people and truckers-turned-criminals on the street?
Aloha 11y ago
I'm a former over the road truck driver who hauled truckload freight. I disagree profoundly that self driving trucks are the future, the future is multimodal transport, even now a significant proportion of long haul (greater than 3-600 miles) is already on the rail, either in the form of a container or piggyback. The issue that keeps the remaining long haul (greater than 600 miles) on the road (vs rail) is timing, when you put something on the rail, you loose a day or so at one end in loading/classifying and another in classifying/unloading. That time loss is something that in all but a few situations can be accommodated for by extra planning - but it requires the planning and consent of the shipper and consignee to do so - the trucking and rail companies are already on board as shipping by rail is much cheaper/easier. For LTL companies, most of their drivers only run from terminal to terminal, and the distance driven and time spent is much much lower, but even with them, a crossdock transload facility where one side is a truck dock, and the other is a railcar could for example cut down on some logistics pain - but it still would incur additional delay due to the machinations required by the railroad to switch and deliver cars in their network. Another complicating factor is reefers, right now each refer either has a generator attached (for containers) to it powered by diesel fuel, or has a diesel powered refrigeration unit on the trailer - this for the rail could be replaced by freight trains with HEP (head end power) to power the refrigeration units - but to do so requires a sizable investment by everyone involved (rail cars that support such a system, cans and trailers that support such a system, and transit yards that can supply the power to keep everything cold) Even with the challenges, in 20-30 years, I'd expect only 10% of truckload miles to be actually hauled end to end by a truck, the rest of it should go on the rail, then be carried the proverbial last mile (in reality couple hundred miles) by a truck. As a former driver, in my opinion the issue is not the HOS (hours of service) rules, its the way companies, especially many smaller ones dispatch their drivers - you can be expected to go from working days, to working nights instantly, and it can really fuck hardcore with your sleep schedule.
- Silhouette 11y ago
  The issue that keeps the remaining long haul (greater than 600 miles) on the road (vs rail) is timing, when you put something on the rail, you loose a day or so at one end in loading/classifying and another in classifying/unloading. That's an interesting comment. Modern container ships and the infrastructure that supports them are surely one of the most effective logistical developments in human history, transferring huge volumes of cargo between the ships and road/rail at either end with impressive efficiency. It seems like you're suggesting that road/rail links bring in more of an overhead, despite the lower volumes on a train vs. a ship. Is that a fair conclusion from what you're saying? If that's reasonably accurate, what do you think causes those extra overheads? Is it the wider variety of loads instead of everything being in standard shipping containers, the need for power to support some of them that you mentioned, or maybe just the need for better loading/unloading systems at road/rail transfers?
copsarebastards 11y ago
> Hopefully the various interested lobbies don't try to put too many artificial barriers in the way of self driving trucks becoming a reality. I just don't see this happening. A qualified truck driver costs a trucking company upwards of $30K/year in salary alone. The cost of running a truck capable of driving itself even partially is obviously going to be higher, but at $30K/year + other human-related expenses, it will pay for itself very quickly. Even if regulation drives up the cost a lot it will still be cost-effective to run self-driving trucks. I think a bigger concern is that self-driving trucks create a high up-front cost and low long-term cost: the ideal conditions for large businesses to drive out small businesses and make it impossible to start a trucking business.
- jonknee 11y ago
  Especially because 1 self driving rig would replace 2-3 human drivers (no sleep!).
- jessaustin 11y ago
  ...high up-front cost and low long-term cost: the ideal conditions for... ...financing? An industry as well-understood and predictable as trucking will not want for lenders.
  - copsarebastards 11y ago
    Financing is not an answer to this problem. 1. Banks may not choose to finance small businesses at all, because they can finance bigger businesses which are a lower risk. 2. If banks do finance small businesses, they charge them higher interest rates than a larger business, again, because a larger, more established business is lower risk. A small business that has to finance at a higher interest rate will have to make larger gross profits to pay their financing costs. 3. Larger businesses may have enough cash on hand that they don't require financing at all, which makes it even harder for small businesses to compete. I wasn't ignoring financing when I said that high up-front costs and low long-term costs create the ideal conditions for large businesses to drive out small businesses. Financing simply doesn't solve this problem.
OscarCunningham 11y ago
I suspect that this NYtimes article is a move by the lobby for self-driving cars.
agumonkey 11y ago
Couldn't there be an intermediate step with speed limiter sensors. When in crowded places or approaching slow objects too fast, reduce speed to say 20mph.

by macNchz 11y ago

ajmurmann 11y ago

I'm carefully optimistic since this would be in there interest of the trucking industry and they already seem to be succeeding at pushing laws through that are bad for the drivers. I would love a system where the trucks get driven to a lot outside of the city where they get set on a automatic course to the equivalent lot at the destination. During transit no person is onboard at all. At the destination lot a human enters and drives it downtown. If the truck goes to some industrial facility outside the city you shouldn't even need the human driver. Also I wish there was done way to go after those congress people who are in essence committing murder.

gamerdonkey 11y ago
This system sounds an awful lot like the freight rail system. That seems like it would be easier to automate, too.
- bro-stick 11y ago
  Rio Tinto is replacing some of its engineers with ATC.
Alex3917 11y ago
> I'm carefully optimistic since this would be in there interest of the trucking industry How would self-driving trucks help the trucking industry? It seems like driverless technology will only make the business even more commoditized than it already is, and the only ones that make any money will be the one or two companies with the iPhone apps where you push the button to get your truck.
- bro-stick 11y ago
  "Industry" is both ambiguous and nebulous. It would seem to help the stakeholders whom depend on trucking, perhaps the fleets of trucks and most definitely not the drivers. There are far too many truckers' jobs at risk to retrain and place in nonexistent "freeing" jobs that just don't exist. Loads of unemployed people with no job prospects to feed their families would be an idiotic situation rife with discontent bordering on insurrection.
  - ssalazar 11y ago
    > There are far too many [...] jobs at risk to retrain and place in nonexistent "freeing" jobs that just don't exist. Loads of unemployed people with no job prospects to feed their families would be an idiotic situation rife with discontent bordering on insurrection. This is an argument against nearly every technological development ever.
- ajmurmann 11y ago
  I agree with practically everything you said. However, I expect that the companies that do most of the lobbying are larger and are all the ones expecting to be one of the one out two companies with the iPhone apps that now also don't have to deal with drivers anymore. The big companies will be able to upgrade their first, small companies won't be able to. The small companies get pushed out of the market. So I expect large companies to push for this.
- wpietri 11y ago
  > How would self-driving trucks help the trucking industry? The people running the companies will be looking at labor as a major expense and human employees as a high source of variability and day-to-day complication. Trading labor cost (typically seen as an expense) for fixed asset costs (typically seen as investment) is hugely appealing to a lot of executives. > It seems like driverless technology will only make the business even more commoditized than it already is [...] Sure, and buying a $1 lottery ticket is financially equivalent to asking the store clerk to change $1 and then throwing $0.40 into the nearest sewer grate. But everybody buying a lottery ticket thinks they'll one of the few winners. Executives are generally like that too. But worse, because they get to gamble with other people's money and then take a slice of any winnings.
ericd 11y ago
Lots of decisions at the government level require putting a value on human lives. It's a feature, not a bug, that congressmen aren't usually held accountable for indirect death like this.

yoo1I 11y ago

I'm putting my hat in with the unions on this one myself: MAXIMUM HOMERDRIVE!

notNow 11y ago

I think that the trucking industry is one of the biggest employers in the US. Are you OK with devastating these people's lives for extra efficiency promised safety? Before we push for more automation and job losses, we need to revamp the whole political/economic/social system to ensure a more egalitarian income distribution since the vast majority of the Earth's population are proletariat who exchange their labor in return for capital to make a living.

robbrown451 11y ago
If everything was going to be automated all at once, this "devastation" might be the case. But it won't happen all at once, it happens over the course of a decade or two. In almost every case in history, automation has increased jobs and increased the quality of life. Your post reminds me of this story: "Prof. Friedman visited China in the early 1960s and was taken by a government official to see a public works project. Chinese workers were building a canal. Friedman was struck by seeing everyone digging the canal with shovels. Friedman asked the official, "why no heavy earth-moving equipment?" The official said, "oh, this is a jobs program." So Friedman then says to the official, "then why don't you just give them spoons instead of shovels to create even more jobs?"
- ZoeZoeBee 11y ago
  History is what it is when it comes to changes in technology. However there have been moments in history which were R3voltionary, where a great deal of people were no longer necessary and that change came with periods of upheaval
- notNow 11y ago
  Since you quoted that super villain Friedman, it's a futile exercise to discuss this issue with you but touching on the silly analogy cited by Dr. Evil: Abandoning spoons to shovels ==> 1000X efficiency gain and net positive mass-scale job opportunities Abandoning shovels to heavy equipment ===> 100X efficiency gain and net positive of mass-scale specialized job opportunities. Abandoning manual trucks to fully auto ===> ~1X efficiency (disputed) and net negative of job opportunities for the masses save for highly specialized super white collar jobs such as for engineers and developers like us. Do you really think that it's OK from an economic point of view and not politically as this is almost settled to destroy the livelihoods of these poor & lower middle class people just to get an estimated albeit unrealistic 100% efficiency boost? Are you ready to pay the price in terms of increasing crime rates and lower median quality of life and seeing decrepit hoods everywhere except inside your gated community where you plan to hide from all those poor people and truckers-turned-criminals on the street?

Aloha 11y ago

I'm a former over the road truck driver who hauled truckload freight. I disagree profoundly that self driving trucks are the future, the future is multimodal transport, even now a significant proportion of long haul (greater than 3-600 miles) is already on the rail, either in the form of a container or piggyback. The issue that keeps the remaining long haul (greater than 600 miles) on the road (vs rail) is timing, when you put something on the rail, you loose a day or so at one end in loading/classifying and another in classifying/unloading. That time loss is something that in all but a few situations can be accommodated for by extra planning - but it requires the planning and consent of the shipper and consignee to do so - the trucking and rail companies are already on board as shipping by rail is much cheaper/easier. For LTL companies, most of their drivers only run from terminal to terminal, and the distance driven and time spent is much much lower, but even with them, a crossdock transload facility where one side is a truck dock, and the other is a railcar could for example cut down on some logistics pain - but it still would incur additional delay due to the machinations required by the railroad to switch and deliver cars in their network. Another complicating factor is reefers, right now each refer either has a generator attached (for containers) to it powered by diesel fuel, or has a diesel powered refrigeration unit on the trailer - this for the rail could be replaced by freight trains with HEP (head end power) to power the refrigeration units - but to do so requires a sizable investment by everyone involved (rail cars that support such a system, cans and trailers that support such a system, and transit yards that can supply the power to keep everything cold) Even with the challenges, in 20-30 years, I'd expect only 10% of truckload miles to be actually hauled end to end by a truck, the rest of it should go on the rail, then be carried the proverbial last mile (in reality couple hundred miles) by a truck. As a former driver, in my opinion the issue is not the HOS (hours of service) rules, its the way companies, especially many smaller ones dispatch their drivers - you can be expected to go from working days, to working nights instantly, and it can really fuck hardcore with your sleep schedule.

Silhouette 11y ago
The issue that keeps the remaining long haul (greater than 600 miles) on the road (vs rail) is timing, when you put something on the rail, you loose a day or so at one end in loading/classifying and another in classifying/unloading. That's an interesting comment. Modern container ships and the infrastructure that supports them are surely one of the most effective logistical developments in human history, transferring huge volumes of cargo between the ships and road/rail at either end with impressive efficiency. It seems like you're suggesting that road/rail links bring in more of an overhead, despite the lower volumes on a train vs. a ship. Is that a fair conclusion from what you're saying? If that's reasonably accurate, what do you think causes those extra overheads? Is it the wider variety of loads instead of everything being in standard shipping containers, the need for power to support some of them that you mentioned, or maybe just the need for better loading/unloading systems at road/rail transfers?

copsarebastards 11y ago

> Hopefully the various interested lobbies don't try to put too many artificial barriers in the way of self driving trucks becoming a reality. I just don't see this happening. A qualified truck driver costs a trucking company upwards of $30K/year in salary alone. The cost of running a truck capable of driving itself even partially is obviously going to be higher, but at $30K/year + other human-related expenses, it will pay for itself very quickly. Even if regulation drives up the cost a lot it will still be cost-effective to run self-driving trucks. I think a bigger concern is that self-driving trucks create a high up-front cost and low long-term cost: the ideal conditions for large businesses to drive out small businesses and make it impossible to start a trucking business.

jonknee 11y ago
Especially because 1 self driving rig would replace 2-3 human drivers (no sleep!).
jessaustin 11y ago
...high up-front cost and low long-term cost: the ideal conditions for... ...financing? An industry as well-understood and predictable as trucking will not want for lenders.
- copsarebastards 11y ago
  Financing is not an answer to this problem. 1. Banks may not choose to finance small businesses at all, because they can finance bigger businesses which are a lower risk. 2. If banks do finance small businesses, they charge them higher interest rates than a larger business, again, because a larger, more established business is lower risk. A small business that has to finance at a higher interest rate will have to make larger gross profits to pay their financing costs. 3. Larger businesses may have enough cash on hand that they don't require financing at all, which makes it even harder for small businesses to compete. I wasn't ignoring financing when I said that high up-front costs and low long-term costs create the ideal conditions for large businesses to drive out small businesses. Financing simply doesn't solve this problem.

OscarCunningham 11y ago

I suspect that this NYtimes article is a move by the lobby for self-driving cars.

agumonkey 11y ago

Couldn't there be an intermediate step with speed limiter sensors. When in crowded places or approaching slow objects too fast, reduce speed to say 20mph.