22 ms·

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

• vermontdevil 10y ago
  I think it's better to put more of the trucking freight back on rail. But that requires a lot of investment in various secondary rail lines. That means public money. Something I don't see happening for a long time.
  • thedogeye 10y ago
    Why do you think that? What if the trucks were electric?
    • BufordTJustice 10y ago
      Trucks are very hard on the roadbed, especially given that road damage scales proportionally to the fourth power of the axle weight. For the same reason we don't ship all of our goods in tons of little cars, but use trucks with GVWR potentially many times greater, similar efficiency is pretty simple with trains in that they require less operators and prime movers to move more goods in the same amount of time.
• dantiberian 10y ago
  The introduction of tractors and machinery into farming would have caused a similar amount of job loss (if not more?). I really feel for all of the people and communities that will be affected by the loss of trucking jobs, but in 100 years, we're unlikely to look back and say "I wish we kept human truckers", just like no-one says "I wish we never introduced tractors".
  • goatforce5 10y ago
    It is the cotton mill workers who are famous for their dislike of technology taking their jobs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
  • jqm 10y ago
    no-one says "I wish we never introduced tractors" The Amish?
    • icebraining 10y ago
      Only some of them: http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/16/us/some-amish-to-use-tractors-those-opposed-may-move.html http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/16/us/some-amish-to-use-tract...
• andrewstuart 10y ago
  I wrote about this recently: "Get ready for our first civil war against robots - here's what it will look like." http://fourlightyears.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/get-ready-for-our-first-civil-war.html http://fourlightyears.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/get-ready-for-...
  • tyingq 10y ago
    I agree. I think another difference with the trucker community (vs angry taxi drivers) is that they are "tight". They have their own social circles, unions, radio talk shows, cb radio, websites, newsletters, etc. They already know how to organize, communicate, influence, etc. And then there's the union history, tactics, etc.
• HorizonXP 10y ago
  My father is a truck driver. He made his living driving vehicles and doing heavy lifting and menial work. Truck driving is just the latest evolution in his "career" and I'm ever grateful to him for battering his body in various ways to ensure I had every opportunity available to myself. We talk a lot about his job. It's not fun. He works long hours, a lot of it is mundane driving, and he sits idle a lot of the time. I think he would be the first to agree that automation of his job is inevitable and likely necessary, given the dangers of truck driving. Hurling a multi-ton vehicle to and fro is a dangerous task at the best of times. But therein lies the rub. We are just now reaching the point where we as a society are getting comfortable with automated cars. I think people will be less comfortable with the idea that the truck next to them has no human in it, and could experience some kind of glitch with catastrophic consequences. HN readers will understand that these cars are still a ways away, since the last 10% of the work required for true automation will take a lot longer to develop. Trucks are way more complicated to drive. Once they're up to cruising speed, they're easy. But it's everything leading up to that point which is hard. Dealing with gear changes, airbrakes, load shifting, other vehicles that will inevitably cut you off, and much more. And then when you get to your destination, manoeuvring a 50' trailer is no easy task, even for a trained driver like my dad. It will happen, and it should happen. But it won't be easy, nor soon. Of course, I'd be happy to be wrong, and I'm sure my dad would be too.
  • samcheng 10y ago
    The geometry- and mechanically- related tasks seem like they would be ripe for automation. For example, the trailer reversing problem is related to the inverted pendulum problem, which is easily solvable by automated systems. The judgement for when to stop with an unsafe load and wayfinding at the last 100 yards of a route are indeed tasks that I'd prefer to leave to a human for the time being. Maybe we'll have 'dock pilots' like we do for large cargo ships?
    • wheresmypasswd 10y ago
      Build a robot that balances this broomstick was a sophomore-level engineering course at my university. xD
• ghaff 10y ago
  >The demonstration in Europe shows that driverless trucking is right around the corner. The primary remaining barriers are regulatory. We still need to create on- and off-ramps so human drivers can bring trucks to the freeways where highway autopilot can take over. We may also need dedicated lanes as slow-moving driverless trucks could be a hazard for drivers. So, right around the corner except for billions in infrastructure investment. I'm quite certain that this--like many other things related to autonomous vehicles--will happen. But they're decades further away than 75% solutions lead many people to think.
  • DougWebb 10y ago
    Depots on the highway where loads are transferred to human-driven trucks, and dedicated lanes for slow-moving driverless trucks? Might as well put the trailers onto a train, and build out the rail network (where needed) to be as extensive as the highway network. We've already got plenty of driverless trains around.
    • tempestn 10y ago
      There are plenty of highways that already have a ton of trucks driving slowly in the right lane. Many routes will need changes to take advantage of this technology, but not all. The on- and off-loading areas will probably need to be created in many places, but that's a lot easier than adding a whole lane.
    • diamondlovesyou 10y ago
      I wish. Unfortunately, even though that is the better option, it is more risky: everyone (meaning businesses in this case) already pay taxes to support roads, thus using them, even if it's less efficient, is "free". Plus, all businesses are connected to a road. Compared to building and maintaining infrastructure for a rail network, where you're limited to customers you've built rail to. So I'd wager the "last mile" would likely continue to be truck based, even if rail use exploded. To be fair though, the rail networks here in North America are seen as the most developed freight networks in the world (I wish we had more passenger service though; my daily commute to KU and back is a pain): 2863 Gt-km (NA), 2451 (China), 2351 (Russia), vs 391 (EU).
• intrasight 10y ago
  I have read this prediction several times this year. I expect to be reading the same prediction in 5 years.
  • aidenn0 10y ago
    I'm with you on that one, but much less skeptical about say 20 years.
• jakelarkin 10y ago
  navigating high-grade descents are the wrinkle - truck air brakes seem very finicky. But I think there's no reason why long, sparse, flat freeway sections could not be run by automated cabs relatively soon, for example CA-I5 from Tejon Ranch to Stockton, or the I80 between Chicago outskirts and somewhere in Wyoming.
  • wheresmypasswd 10y ago
    Presumably we don't spend $10k/trunk on better brakes because humans can deal without them. But if that was what's needed to make self-driving work, the economics could support it. Electric regenerative breaking would do nicely.
  • bitwize 10y ago
    Truck air brakes are finicky because they are mechanically designed to distribute brake pressure evenly across the wheels in response to one input -- pressure from the driver's foot on the brake pedal. An automated cab could communicate more information: desired speed, tolerance, required stopping distance, and general vehicle stability info, and a microcontroller at each wheel could combine that with sensor info about road conditions and temperature at that wheel to determine how much brake to apply and where -- all with faster reaction times than a human driver would be capable of.
    • graycat 10y ago
      The old technique was, at a wheel, hit the brakes really hard to stop the wheel rotating as fast as possible, hopefully less than one second, and then fully release the brake. Then the stopped wheel starts sliding and, then, starts rotating again, while still sliding some, until it is full rotating again, and then hit the brakes again. So, the technique is automatically sensitive to load, tread on the tires, traction on the road, etc. So, don't want all the wheels stopped at the same time. Then on an 18 wheel truck, should still be able to maintain directional control. Of course, there is a lot that could be done, but most of that has one thing in common -- money, for the engineering, manufacturing, original purchase, in-service monitoring, problem detection, problem diagnosis, and repair. Money.
• _RPM 10y ago
  I really don't think this will happen in my lifetime. Could the whole robot drives car really evolve to replace the current state? I'm not sure that can happen over night.
  • knieveltech 10y ago
    The technology already exists. We're there.
    • TheLogothete 10y ago
      Because of a single experiment in highly controlled environment :) Please come back to earth.
      • knieveltech 10y ago
        Because of self-driving vehicles currently safely operating in the US, some of the more impressive results various DARPA challenges have resulted in in recent years, and of course a single experiment in a highly controlled environment. I never left. ;)
• nxzero 10y ago
  Are any startups working on the last mile of autonomous logistics?
  • lemiant 10y ago
    There are a few: - Dispatch [1] - Starships [2] - And at least one stealth mode company [1] http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/06/self-driving-delivery-vehicle-startup-dispatch-raises-2-million-seed-round-led-by-andreessen-horowitz/ http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/06/self-driving-delivery-vehic... [2] https://www.starship.xyz/concept/ https://www.starship.xyz/concept/
    • nxzero 10y ago
      Interesting, not exactly the last mile I was imagining; meaning the last mile from long haul to local distribution hubs.
• fblp 10y ago
  Driverless trucks have been operating in the mining industry in Australia for over four years. There are lots of long haul routes around the world that are almost entirely truck traffic where automation makes a lot of sense. Video showing how the mining trucks operate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0RCSX95QmE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0RCSX95QmE (2012)
• a3n 10y ago
  > Dealing with gear changes, airbrakes, load shifting, other vehicles that will inevitably cut you off, and much more. Awhile back there was a post about the early experience of a young and enthusiastic programmer. The take away phrase, in response to someone sending nonsense input, was "Some people just want to watch the world burn." I can see assholes trying to make sure that an automated truck can't change lanes, or get to the exit it needs to reach, etc. I myself have at times intentionally walked too close to the robotic carts that move supplies to workstations at my work, just to hear them stop and beep for a few seconds.
  • mrep 10y ago
    > The take away phrase, in response to someone sending nonsense input, was "Some people just want to watch the world burn." That's a big line in the batman movie "the dark knight". While it could have originally came from elsewhere, I'd be willing to bet it came from the movie.
  • tyingq 10y ago
    >I can see assholes trying to make sure that an automated truck can't change lanes 3.5 million truck drivers in the US alone. I suspect that would be your pool of assholes, and I'm not sure I would blame them.
  • onewaystreet 10y ago
    At first maybe, but people get used to things. Sabotage by replaced workers and luddites is nothing new (just look at the origin of the word luddite). And I wouldn't be surprised if laws are passed that create heavy penalties for interfering with self-driving vehicles.
  • bglazer 10y ago
    It's an interesting thought, but I don't think this will be a significant problem. The inevitable combination of laws, surveillance, and social norms will, as it does now, keep the vast majority of people from doing random asshole acts like this. The self-driving trucks will, by definition, be equipped with omnidirectional, high resolution 3d cameras. Who was that guy who kept cutting off our truck? Well, we could 3d print his face and license plate if you'd like. Also, the trucking industry will run to lawmakers the very first time this happens, and they are a very strong lobby. Finally, it's just a shitty thing to do, and everyone will understand that. Much like shining a laser at a plane is almost universally reviled, there will be social consequences for being that guy who torments driverless trucks. By the way, "robotic carts that move supplies to workstations"? Is this a common thing? Can you say where you work?
• sandGorgon 10y ago
  I'm thinking about India where politicians are clashing over train and road as we speak. For a country building new infrastructure, I wonder which one is more viable? This has been a subject of long debate in India - autonomous cars are fairly useless in Indian cities. At the scale of transportation needed, nothing other than mass transportation (subways,etc) makes sense with last mile connectivity. The same question exists for freight - should we construct trains or trucks? Taking into account offloading cost - which one is more efficient? I think people overestimate the complexity of shipping items with time guarantees. A hub and spoke model works great here - but what is doing the actual long haul? And people don't understand the scale at which countries like India or China need to operate. The transportation needs of all of Europe are dwarfed by how much needs to be moved (quickly and economically ) in India.
• kilroy123 10y ago
  My friend is some kind of logistics manager for a trucking company. He literally manages dozens of trucks and truck drivers daily. He says, it's so ridiculous, how far away we are from automatting truck driving. There is a lot of manual work for loading and off-loading rigs. Plus there is driving in every single possible driving condition possible, around the world. He said, he could see an auto-pilot system being installed in trucks in the next 10 years, but the rest is all manually done.
  • thedogeye 10y ago
    Did he see that driverless trucks made a delivery in Europe last week?
    • andygates 10y ago
      That was platooning with a lead driver.
      • randallsquared 10y ago
        Sure, so it makes 5/6 long-haul truckers redundant instead of ~6/6.
  • thedogeye 10y ago
    Did he see that driverless trucks made a delivery in Europe last week?
  • justratsinacoat 10y ago
    My friend was a truck driver for a while, and a friend-of-a-friend is some kind of logistics manager. They both had the same objections to self-driving trucks -- the regulatory necessity for a human driver to initially inspect and periodically check the load, and the last-mile driver thing (which they expressed in different terms). The 'some kind of logistics manager' thinks there'll be autonomous trucks pretty shortly, but the implementation will look like that Simpsons episode for years to come -- the way things work right now, a human in the cab is required.
• n0tsofastpal 10y ago
  It's a super interesting subject, but I don't really buy the argument that this will drive down costs for the consumer. Never mind that whole better standard of living line...that's just cheerleading. Companies have shown over and over again in the last two decades that they are capable of absorbing those new profits from efficiencies.
  • hellameta 10y ago
    I agree there are examples that show what you suggest. There are far more examples to suggest the opposite though. If the technology becomes widely available and there are enough independent companies to promote competition rather than collusion, the prices have no choice but to go down.
  • thedogeye 10y ago
    How much did you pay for the super computer in your hand?
    • tyingq 10y ago
      How much did UPS/Fedex shipping prices go down when fuel prices dropped? (hint, they went up).
      • doyoulikeworms 10y ago
        what about their other costs?
        • tyingq 10y ago
          UPS and Fedex raise their rates every year in January with a figure that far exceeds inflation or other indexed costs. https://www.lojistic.com/pdf/UPS-Fedex-General-Price-Increase-History.pdf https://www.lojistic.com/pdf/UPS-Fedex-General-Price-Increas...
      • the_economist 10y ago
        Ocean and air freight real prices are the cheapest they have ever been.
• tyingq 10y ago
  Mentioned in the article, but there's a pretty big trickle down effect that will crush other businesses. Roadside motels, for example. And while trucks will still need fuel, I don't think the current economics of truck stops work if you just sell gas. Maybe a surprise for the government as well, less tax revenue since the new drivers will drive in a more fuel efficient way, and probably require a smaller overall fleet (no need for sleep). Currently, an average truck pays ~$15k/year in road/registration/use taxes. It's going to be a very visible adjustment for everyone.
  • randycupertino 10y ago
    It's basically going to decimate the blue-collar workforce. "short term disability" is already increasingly the new stopgap between gaps in social welfare for unemployed and underemployed blue collar workers. If driverless trucks become the new norm, expect major jumps in SSDI rolls, unless we institute some form of basic income. http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/
• ascotan 10y ago
  I'm skeptical. European roads are not American roads. According to google there are over 4 million miles of road in the US and there is very little standardization. I would venture to say that road quality is much worse in the US. I'm skeptical that the sensors in self-driving vehicles are capable of making long hauls on US roads. > We may also need dedicated lanes as slow-moving driverless trucks could be a hazard for drivers. I wonder if the author realizes the amount of money this would take in the US. Even if the federal government put up the money to make this happen on interstates, each state would have to come up with the money for state roads. For most states, the transportation budget is a ongoing battle and I can't see tax payer money going to automated truck lanes any time soon. My guess is that driverless trucks will only be 'a thing' in very urban areas over a short distance due to safety, maintenance, and financial concerns. Therefore, the long haul trucker will still have a job at the end of the day.
  • losteric 10y ago
    Well even Germany isn't going to start with self-driving trucks driving everywhere. Every country has standardization problems... in Germany there are ancient towns with arches that trucks can't go under (and not all of them are marked). In the US we have inconsistent/missing signs, dense urban areas built for small cars, and all kinds of crazy human driving. My guess is actually opposite of yours though. I think short distance trucking will come last, with long-haul interstate trucking coming first. Short distances don't really need an automated truck... the trucker just gets in, drives, and arrives. Automating/standardizing loading/unloading would be great but automating the driver is less of a win. On the hand, take interstates. Trucker gets in and drives for upward a few days with multiple mandated stops for naps/food... afaik, it takes 3 days to safely drive from SF to NY because of those stops. Now imagine a self-driving truck where the driver is only responsible for first/last-mile driving and refueling... done in 48 hours flat. 30% shorter transit time, plus whatever fuel/insurance savings the AI driver generates. Not bad.
    • the_economist 10y ago
      The trucks will likely drive at 45 mph so it would take 65 hours to cross the country. Still a huge improvement.
• duck 10y ago
  "The average age of a commercial driver is 55 (and rising every year), with projected driver shortages" and "The loss of jobs representing 1 percent of the U.S. workforce will be a devastating blow to the economy" don't really add up. There is more and more jobs that young people don't want to do and this is probably one of the best examples. They have to be automated or at some point we won't have anyone to do them. In addition, this is going to take more than 10 years to get both regulations and road improvements to make this happen, so based on the current average age, a lot of them will be near/past retirement.
  • thedogeye 10y ago
    Immigration is another way to solve this.
    • duck 10y ago
      Very true, but I guess my argument is that the author is wrong in terms of this being a devastating thing to our current workforce.
      • ChartsNGraffs 10y ago
        If you were 55+ with your only qualification being that you could drive a truck and that niche was automated away, this would absolutely be devastating to you.
        • vlasev 10y ago
          Just a thought: What if they only replace retiring/stopping/dying drivers with a driver-less alternative and close off the profession for others?
          • Infinitesimus 10y ago
            That would probably be better. In reality, however, a business will go for the cheaper (or required-by-law) option and will more heavily towards humans or automation
• WalterBright 10y ago
  Most of the truck freight carried on highways should be on railroads instead. It's economically and environmentally far more efficient. The reason it is still carried on highways is because the highways are heavily subsidized while the railroads are not. For example, most of the reason for expensive highway maintenance is the fatigue damage cause by trucks. Fatigue damage goes up as the cube of the weight, and the weight fees charged trucks don't remotely pay for it.
  • jessriedel 10y ago
    > the weight fees charged trucks don't remotely pay for it. Source?
    • WalterBright 10y ago
      Don't have one. I just recall reading years ago that the fatigue damage cause by trucks loaded to the legal weight limit was 9,000 times that of a passenger car (and trucks are often overloaded). The flexing of the roadbed causes it to crumble away after a while. You can feel the roadbed go down when a truck passes. The main damage passenger cars do is erosion from snow tires.
      • jessriedel 10y ago
        I was able to find this from the Congressional Budget Office > Estimates of pavement damage by trucks, the largest per-mile external cost of truck use, range from about 5 to 55 cents per mile depending on the weight of the truck, the number of axles over which its weight is distributed, and where it operates.... https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/112th-congress-2011-2012/reports/01-19-highwayspending_brief.pdf https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/112th-congress-2011-... The fuel tax is 30 cents/gallon of diesel, which for an 18-wheeler getting a typical 6 mpg is about 5 cents / mile. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_State... So at the absolute highest end of that estimate you need to increase fuel taxes to $3/gallon, i.e., double the price of fuel to ~$6/gallon. That would make trucking 40% more expensive (since that's the fraction of operating costs devoted to fuel). http://www.thetruckersreport.com/infographics/cost-of-trucking/ http://www.thetruckersreport.com/infographics/cost-of-trucki... And a more realistic number might be closer to 20% or 30% more expensive. This would change things on the margins, but it's not clear to me that it would be transformative in pushing transport to trains.
• elijahparker 10y ago
  Here's an article about the self-driving trucks that were referenced in the OP: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/07/convoy-self-driving-trucks-completes-first-european-cross-border-trip https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/07/convoy-se... They still had drivers in them, but the trucks were automated (it doesn't mention if the drivers had to override it at times or not).
• Cshelton 10y ago
  How about we automate rail traffic first. They are close...but the electronic system is still so far behind. They keep having to push back the requiremen.
  • arebop 10y ago
    I think there's less incentive for automating trains because of the cargo:driver ratio. The cost of the human at the helm is a much smaller portion of the cost of operating the railroad.
    • seansmccullough 10y ago
      Totally agree, they only need a handful of people to operate a multi-mile long train.
      • Cshelton 10y ago
        Actually not true; the total number of people it requires to move a train, with all the other trains on the track, and then taking in every safety precaution, track monitoring, etc. The operation involves many people on a highly coordinated level...they don't have a lot of room for error with the number of trains on the small amount of track.
    • Cshelton 10y ago
      I was just saying it from a standpoint of that is has been mandated by the government (U.S.) and the date has had to be pushed back multiple times because the railroads are having a tough time implementing it. It's actually a much harder problem then you might initially think. The cost of the human is negligible; it's about the cost of the cargo, and not needing to stop unnecessarily to change the humans out. Either way, if we can't accomplish automated long distance rail...automated trucking freight doesn't look to be that close.
• mmahemoff 10y ago
  "Where drivers are restricted by law from driving more than 11 hours per day without taking an 8-hour break, a driverless truck can drive nearly 24 hours per day. That means the technology would effectively double the output of the U.S. transportation network at 25 percent of the cost." This suggests each truck has one driver - the truck stops when the driver stops. Aren't there systems that let drivers pool/share trucks so the trucks can be on the road 24 hours a day?
  • jdoliner 10y ago
    I'm pretty sure the limiting factor for trucking throughput is drivers not trucks. That's why labor accounts for 75% of the cost of shipping.
    • usrusr 10y ago
      I think thorstadt was talking about latency: just like express messengers switched horses in the pre-telegraph age, trucks could be handed from driver to driver to keep them running without mandated breaks. With half-workday legs, a system like that could even allow many relay drivers to get home every day despite driving long-haul loads. My gut feeling is that this could work in theory, but would never evolve in the framework of a free market economy (whereas a planned economy would tend do everything by train).
  • thorstadt 10y ago
    Yes, it's called "team driving".
• dreamdu5t 10y ago
  Can someone explain why we're supposedly getting driverless cars and trucks yet the simplistic task of ordering food isn't automated? Why does McDonald's have order takers?
  • icebraining 10y ago
    McDonalds already has automated order takers around here. There are still humans, but so will there still be manned trucks, just fewer.
  • amatix 10y ago
    Upselling? Why did several fuel stations pull out their pay-at-pump systems and force you to go into the store to pay -- so they can sell you more stuff you didn't originally intend to by (that they also make better margin on).
• mixermf 10y ago
  Automation is driving humans out of jobs. Driverless trucks will layoff 1%+ of the US population, because driverless trucks are far more economical. The general trend is profits go up and employment goes down. What to do with such an economy? Basic income. Tax the profits and give everyone sufficient income to pay for the basic necessities. That's one of the conclusions of the 2011 book Race Against The Machine, by two MIT professors.
  • themartorana 10y ago
    I'm a big fan of Alan Watts' "Money, Guilt, and the Machine" [0] as are many people here. It's most poignant point IMHO is that we're screwed until we can separate money and morality. As we move towards more political extremes here in the US, that's going to be near impossible. So we can either separate money from morality, or suffer greatly as jobs - especially blue collar jobs - are automated away. Alas I fear there will be great suffering... [0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ssDY74nLuLg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ssDY74nLuLg
    • mixermf 10y ago
      I just listened to "Money, Guilt, and the Machine." I don't understand what you mean "separating money and morality." Can you explain?
• karmacondon 10y ago
  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 does it once, and is constantly getting feedback from the millions of cars on the road all the time. Sure, people want someone to blame for accidents. And people might not like the idea of cars without drivers, or worry about contrived "Does the car kill the driver or the pedestrian" situations. But at the end of the day, statistics is overwhelmingly on the side of driverless cars. Saying "Yes, but people aren't reasonable enough to see that" isn't helpful. The question is, how quickly can we get people to do what's best after the technology has been perfected?
  • skywhopper 10y ago
    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.
• jejones3141 10y ago
  At one point the author says something about convoys of trucks and taking advantage of the speed for maximum fuel efficiency, 45 mph. I'm not sure that people traveling on the interstate will appreciate being stuck behind convoys of automated trucks all running at 45 mph.
  • jdoliner 10y ago
    Hopefully our convoy of self driving cars will learn to stay separate from the convoy of self driving trucks.
    • themartorana 10y ago
      I cannot wait.
  • loeg 10y ago
    If they stayed in the right lane it wouldn't be too much of a problem. The problem with trucks vs cars I run into most today is trucks passing other trucks in the left lane, or middle lanes on 3- or 4-lane highways. A convoy isn't the same thing as three trucks abreast, though.
• simonebrunozzi 10y ago
  I don't expect drivers to go away immediately. Instead, I expect their wages to drop 50% overnight - but they will still be required to be on the truck: to fill the tank, to clean something, to be there and guard it against theft, etc.
• niels_olson 10y ago
  I think one thing people don't understand is that if truck drivers are out of the equation, a huge amount of cargo will go back to rail. Roadways will clean up nicely. And if rail becomes more efficient, we might start building more rail. And put more passenger trains on said rail. That would empty out the roads even more.
  • AdamTReineke 10y ago
    The trucks will still be there, just without their drivers.
• Homunculiheaded 10y ago
  A very useful visual to add next to this is "The Most Common Job In Every State"[0] map from NPR's Planet Money. As soon as I was aware of the research in autonomous driving I was pretty confident trucking would be the first industry hit. Until I saw that map I had no sense of how major of a disruption this could be. [0] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t...
  • iofj 10y ago
    It's not just the jobs. Self-driving trucks will transform an industry where large amounts of humans are necessary into (yet another) industry where capital is the only thing that matters. Once trucks are self-driving, larger companies will gain the advantage and one of the main economic sectors dominated by small to medium companies will become dominated by large international businesses.
  • FussyZeus 10y ago
    Disruption nothing, this is going to be an economic apocalypse for huge swathes of the country. We've never seen an automation wave like this one. It's exciting times to be alive for sure but I'm also legitimately worried if we're going to be able to handle it as a society, if anything is going to tip us into needing basic income, this could be a serious contender. It's not even just the trucking, it's truck stops, highway diners, tiny motels all over the place, there is a massive amount of infrastructure that was built because of and for truck drivers and their needs, and that's still not it because there are tons of small town economies built on the last job that pays well without a college education that more or less anyone can do.
    • TheLogothete 10y ago
      Yeah, it's not like this has happened ever before. We definitely need basic income. It will solve all the problems.
      • FussyZeus 10y ago
• krinchan 10y ago
  I keep saying this over and over and over to my more "the market will figure it out" co-workers and I just can't seem to get through to them. This is literally more than 20% unemployment in less than 5 years. Society will either crumble or completely change how it views unemployment.
  • djrogers 10y ago
    > This is literally more than 20% unemployment in less than 5 years First of all - what? It's not 20%, nor is it happening in 5 years... Neither of those numbers make any sense. Secondly, accuracy aside, the same arguments were made all through the 70s, 80s, and 90s about manufacturing automation. And guess what, those jobs are gone now, but society didn't crumble. It's not like his is all brand new people - it's happened over and over again for the past 200 years. Read your history, and realize that we will repeat it.
    • mabbo 10y ago
      The 20% figure isn't actually that crazy. A small town near where I grew up had a factory- Hershey chocolate- that supported maybe 20% of the jobs in the town. But it represented how 50% or more of the money entered the town. That money bounced around, creating jobs- stores, restaurants, even gas stations and hotels. When the factory closed, everything was hit. A small town with few sources of external income can be devastated by the loss of a major one. A huge percentage of America is small towns, and a large portion of them have truckers as their income. Yes, they economy will recover, but if this automation happens very quickly there can and will be collateral damage. I'm still for it happening, but the government would be wise to start preparing for the fallout now.
    • unprepare 10y ago
      >And guess what, those jobs are gone now, but society didn't crumble. I wouldn't say the loss of manufacturing jobs has been particularly well absorbed, in fact i would argue that we are still trying to deal with the effect this loss has had on our economy.
    • 0xffff2 10y ago
• fernly 10y ago
  Where will an autonomous truck (AT) refuel? On US highways, fuel stations are not "full service", the driver is expected to operate the fuel filling and pay. So will some stations provide attendants to fuel ATs? If there is resentment against the ATs -- and that is just about a certainty -- there will be cases of resentful attendants shorting the fuel delivery, or even sabotaging trucks (water/sugar in the tank). So, maybe the trucking companies hire min-wage attendants to work the pumps at designated stations along the routes. The stations that permit AT refueling would be obvious targets for Luddite retaliation. Actually, the ATs themselves would be pretty obvious targets for vandalism. They would be easy to identify -- driving at 45mph in platoons, as described in the article -- and unprotected along the vast open stretches of US interstate highways. I would expect many, many ATs would arrive at their destinations with rifle bullet holes in them.
  • yummyfajitas 10y ago
    Luddite terrorists is already a problem we are facing. http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/25/french-anti-uber-protest-turns-to-guerrilla-warfare-as-cabbies-burn-cars-attack-uber-drivers/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/25/french-anti-uber-protest-tu... http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/01/the-fight-against-uber-is-getting-violent-in-brazil/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/01/the-fight-against-uber-is-g... I don't think protecting trucks from terrorists is a major issue - providing security is just a minor added cost, as is armoring the trucks. The real issue is that for the most part governments seem to be siding with the terrorists rather than shutting them down.
  • analog31 10y ago
    It doesn't require any kind of criminal activity to disrupt the trucking industry. Just lay off the truckers, and the drop in consumer demand will take care of the industry.
• known 10y ago
  Why are we not seeing driver-less trains?
  • pm24601 10y ago
    As in freight trains? Because freight trains have problems that need to be solved in the middle of nowhere. For example, a car shell's a wheel and it needs to be cut out to a siding in the middle of Utah in the middle of winter. Communication is limited to say the least. The siding is rarely used and is covered with snow and ice. The switch is a manual switch and is jammed with ice. A human can deal with getting these issues, cut out the defective car, put the train back together and proceed. How does a driverless freight train deal with this? The point here is that exceptions to normal behavior happen all the time. Most of the time, the human pulls to a siding, walks the train and a half-hour/45mins later the train is rolling again.
  • elsewhen 10y ago
    there are driverless trains at lots of airports, but i think the reason they dont appear elsewhere is that the cost savings wouldnt be as great. a single train conductor is managing a massive vehicle - sometimes two orders of magnitude more than a truck. the labor component with trains is significantly lower than in trucking. i think the same is true for ships. taxis are at the other end of the spectrum, where labor is a very large part of the cost structure.
  • vlasev 10y ago
    We are. We have our very own driver-less light rail in Vancouver: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_(Vancouver) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_(Vancouver)
• Bombthecat 10y ago
  According to my co workers it won't happen or be a problem. Because! The level of deny is really... Annoying..
  • thorstadt 10y ago
    Because lawyers.
• pm24601 10y ago
  This "Nirvana" of the driverless truck is focusing on long distance trucking. There are a number of issues with this. The biggest one is that there is already a solution to the long distance safe movement of goods with minimal human involvement. It is called a t-r-a-i-n. Trucking companies already use long distance trains as alternatives to long distance truckers. It is far cheaper and less technologically risky to simply increase the amount of long distance freight that moves via railroad. With driverless trucks, : * each truck needs complex (expensive) electronics that need to be kept repaired and up to date * regulatory hurdles * liability issues What happens when a computer has a memory corruption issue and shuts down halfway across Nevada? For driverless trucks to be a real thing, the very real competition from the railroad industry needs to be addressed. Based on past history, the railroad industry is going to be reminding all the regulators of how dangerous trucking (and now unmanned trucks) can be --- and how safe and proven the railroad alternative is.
  • icebraining 10y ago
    Trains may already be a solution, yet a very large percentage (as high as 75%+ in Europe) of freight is carried using trucks. There's plenty of business for the driverless trucks to take over without having to tackle competition with rail.
• mcbits 10y ago
  The best way for this to play out is for drivers to buy their own automated rigs and work as contractors. Regulations would need to be updated to allow "drivers" to log the hours spent sleeping while the truck was moving.
• f_allwein 10y ago
  I think it's a misunderstanding that self-driving trucks will not have drivers on board. Or am I being naive? See this article on Daimler's recent trial in Germany: "While self-driving is the name of the game, Highway Pilot isn't about letting those behind the wheel plonk their feet on the dashboard and snooze their way to their destination. Daimler likens the system to the autopilot used in aviation, in that the driver must be prepared to take control at any time." http://www.gizmag.com/daimlers-production-autonomous-truck-debuts-public-roads/39701/ http://www.gizmag.com/daimlers-production-autonomous-truck-d...
• ajuc 10y ago
  Wouldn't it be much easier to assure security on roads if every car had to have 50 USD short-range (500 m is enough) radio transmitter that sends its velocity and position (from GPS). It's obviously possible techincaly (see cheap tablets), and from law POV (see seat belts requirement). It would be useful (the device can have cheap black and white lcd screen and show "radar"-like view with cars ahead and behind). It would also increase security even if there are no automated cars (overtaking tall cars will be much easier for one thing). Of course - if some cars don't use it - it's actaully decreasing security, so there needs to be adjustment period. And when these things are in place - automated cars are much easier problem.
  • mantas 10y ago
    Would it require to have a backup device? Would cyclists and pedestrians have to have it as well?
    • ajuc 10y ago
      Backups - yes I guess. It's cheap so why not. Pedestrians and cyclists would surely protest.
• ommunist 10y ago
  The author forgot to mention that it will be Russian, and produced by KAMAZ. http://sputniknews.com/science/20151006/1028104950/kamaz-driverless-truck.html http://sputniknews.com/science/20151006/1028104950/kamaz-dri... . Mind the muzzak on 0:51 in video. UPD: it appears Russians also have Gazelle for small business already driverless and capable to drive on Russian "roads" in rural regions. https://ninja.oximity.com/article/Russia-ready-for-driverless-bandwagon-1 https://ninja.oximity.com/article/Russia-ready-for-driverles...
• shiftoutbox 10y ago
  This is bad for the 99.998% .
• astannard 10y ago
  Maybe we will get hubs initially where humans make the small journey to their local hub A with a some standardized container load, then the robots take over loading it onto a robot road train as designated by the software for the long haul and another human picks up the consignment from hub B and takes it to the recipient? All the hubs are next to a highway.
• yoav_hollander 10y ago
  "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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11565601
  • yoav_hollander 10y ago
    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-2015-496.pdf https://www.cs.york.ac.uk/ftpdir/reports/2015/YCS/496/YCS-20...
• ilamont 10y ago
  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 (cited by @ommunist) talks with the experts, who are by no means 100% convinced this is "right around the corner": (1) Industry players are aware that just one serious accident on the roads involving a driverless car could set back their development by decades. “Everyone has come to understand that the technology is 90 percent ready, but even when it’s 99.99 percent ready, it still won’t be launched,” says Gol, whose product is currently being tested in various scenarios and weather conditions. “Until we can teach [artificial] intelligence to learn the nuances of things that can occur unexpectedly on the roads … what will happen if transparent glass is being carried across the road, what if there’s a paper bag that the system perceives as a rock,” the system isn’t ready, he said. “We need a mathematical revolution to overcome that 0.01 percent,” says Gol. “We all understand perfectly that to have just one accident involving autonomous transport will have a huge fallout in society – the technology could be closed down completely for another 50 years. It’s a huge responsibility,” he added. 1. https://ninja.oximity.com/article/Russia-ready-for-driverless-bandwagon-1 https://ninja.oximity.com/article/Russia-ready-for-driverles...
  • estefan 10y ago
    > Industry players are aware that just one serious accident on the roads involving a driverless car could set back their development by decades. It'd be awfully "convenient" for the truckers & taxi drivers if this were to happen... I predict a dirty tricks campaign with one or two engineered "accidents" to safeguard their industries. Vehicles, autonomous and current ones, will need incredibly reliable security to prevent remote hacking.
    • rayiner 10y ago
      Yes, because computers and software aren't buggy by themselves without human intervention.
• bane 10y ago
  Many of the comments here are overestimating what's required for this to have an impact. Driverless trucks only need to cover some large percentage of the driving currently performed by humans to be major economic changers. For example, let's say they can only run during daylight hours, in conditions other than rain and snow, only on long-haul routes, and humans will do the "last-mile" piloting on local roads. Now let's suppose that for routes that fit those parameters driverless trucks end up taking over 40% of those kinds of routes. That's huge. It would absolutely transform the economies of all the states that are looking for truck drivers here. http://media2.policymic.com/bf05a1c9e6b8a55095f8b4726e30b52f.PNG http://media2.policymic.com/bf05a1c9e6b8a55095f8b4726e30b52f...
  • Svip 10y ago
    Indeed. I find the binary view of self-driving/driverless/robot lorries somewhat narrow. Furthermore, a lot of these sort of technologies have already made it into lorries and cars, just commonly called 'driver aids'. Such as radar controlled cruise control, lane control, etc. Most of lorry hauling takes place on motorways, where the process can be easily automated. Only when trips from the origin to the motorway and the motorway to the destination could remain in control of the driver. And moreover, this sort of technology could be fitted to lorries very soon. Fully automated self-driving lorries are still decades off. Partly of all the minor quirks and issues, but mostly because once more than 50% of the actual lorry driving is automated, there will be less urgency for it.
    • minikomi 10y ago
      It doesn't even have to be all or nothing. Imagine a kind of road-train, where the leading truck is driven in a heavily assisted manner but still has human control in the mix. Another 5 - 10 fully automated "follow the leader" style trucks could simply imitate the leader truck. All the while gathering data..
• Pamar 10y ago
  One question (I didn't read the article, but it just popped in my mind while thinking of driverless trucks). Is anyone working on driverless trains? If not, why not? I understand that the impact would be less huge, but at the same time the problem domain is arguably more tractable. In my hometown we have a fully automated underground train line which has been working flawlessly (i.e. no accidents) for almost 10 years now, but according to Wikipedia it looks like ATO (Automatic Train Operation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_operation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_operation) is currently deployed only for urban transport, while proper railways, even the Japanese ones, seems to use only ATC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_control) which from what I understand provides support to a human driver but still needs one to operate. (edit: typos)
• JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  > 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.
  • ryanlol 10y ago
    Not really, competition will eventually drive down the prices.
    • JustSomeNobody 10y ago
      People say things like this, then we end up with the cable (TV/Internet) industry.
      • 0xffff2 10y ago
        Cable companies are universally granted local monopolies in the US; by definition they are an example of what happens when you artificially limit competition.
  • malz 10y ago
    Fuel is half the price it was two years ago. So we should already be enjoying massive savings, right?
    • JustSomeNobody 10y ago
      Nope [1]. [1] http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865646660/Why-food-prices-dont-drop-when-gasoline-prices-decline.html?pg=all http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865646660/Why-food-prices...
• perseusprime11 10y ago
  We need to create a new highway system for driverless cars/vans/trucks/etc. The current road infrastructure with its potholes, tolls, traffic congestion is not ideal. They need to conceive something similar to HOV lanes in order for this to move forward.
  • ck2 10y ago
    lol - like politicians give a damn about infrastructure for living human beings that suffer every day on broken roads and dangerous bridges they'll get right on that
    • perseusprime11 10y ago
      How did we ever get to HOV lanes?
  • usrusr 10y ago
    Taken to the extreme, a separate network for platooned long haul transport could even be electrified, combining 90% of the relative advantage of railroad over conventional road with more than 100% of the benefits of conventional road over railroad.
• dmalvarado 10y ago
  Just going to say this before reading the article because it's been on my mind since college. The end state of automation is unemployment and massive income inequality, with wealth being concentrated amongst the owners of capital. Now I'll go read the article.
  • randomgyatwork 10y ago
    Isn't that how its aways been, less the mass unemployment at least? Maybe the inefficiencies make it less obvious?
• bsharitt 10y ago
  I hope they remember to write an algorithm so that when approaching a hill and there are two lanes each direction, two trucks will pull up beside each and race up the hill each at 55MPH despite the speed limit being 70MPH.
  • celticninja 10y ago
    no, one of them has to go at 55.25MPH to make it look like they have a chance of overtaking before the top.
• cdnsteve 10y ago
  Society will trust these automakers with autonomous vehicles? They can't even get their gas milage right. - Mitsubishi Motors: We did false mileage tests since 1991 - Toyota Unintended Acceleration and the Big Bowl of “Spaghetti” Code - Volkswagon emissions scandal On and on and on...
• sickbeard 10y ago
  One would think that ships would be the first to be automated but alas they are not.. why? theft. Would you trust your driverless truck not to get hacked and stolen? would you trust sensitive and expensive equipment to be moved by driverless trucks? There's still a long way to go.
  • mdorazio 10y ago
    That ignores the economic factors. Much like trains, cargo ships haul a huge amount of cargo while being manned by a small crew. Thus the labor cost as a percentage of total cargo haul cost is quite low. A truck, though, requires a human driver to move a single cargo container any distance, so there's a much bigger economic incentive to replace the driver with a computer.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• tboyd47 10y ago
  Good riddance. Just because a job exists doesn't mean it's a fair contract or even beneficial to the employee. If you drive cross-country and break down your hourly rate according to how many hours you spend tied to your load, it only comes out to be slightly more than minimum wage, if even that. I know a guy who has spent an entire week, 24/7, stranded across the country and he only received $200 for it from his company. That's less than $2 / hr. A pizza delivery guy can make more than that just in tips. I'm not crying for the trucking industry.
• 1024core 10y ago
  Further fuel efficiencies will be had as the self-driving fleets adopt platooning technologies, like those from Peloton Technology, allowing trucks to draft behind one another in highway trains. Great. Now imagine trying to merge onto a highway, only to be cutoff by a long train of trucks blindly following each other, inches apart.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• _nickwhite 10y ago
  Last week, my brother (27) was ran over and killed in a truck stop parking lot by a distracted truck driver. I wholeheartedly embrace the prospect of automating trucks, as a sensor would have prevented this.
  • pm24601 10y ago
    First of all I am sorry for your loss. I formed a group within my own city to prevent traffic deaths from happening here. I agree with you; drivers need more sensors to alert them and stop them from killing people. However, computers can still fail - we need those sensors and maybe automatic brake application to prevent this sort of tragedy - I doubt if we want to trust a computer entirely for this sort of thing.
• spacemanmatt 10y ago
  I think land-pirates will start taking on driverless vehicles when they're common and easy to find. A lot changes when harming a fellow human is no longer on the table.
  • kailuowang 10y ago
    Or, even better, Robot land-pirates. There are many many things out there that you can steal without harming a fellow human now. When robots are doing all the tedious jobs for humans, you either live for free or work for fun. Not much need for breaking the law (unless that's just fun).
• vincefutr23 10y ago
  Driverless container carriers, traveling at medium speeds across the country, in groups, with only last mile labor required...sounds like, Trains?
  • 0xffff2 10y ago
    Sure, except that the Interstate + National Highway System alone have more total millage than the US railroad system.
• jondiggsit 10y ago
  Great just what everybody wants. A mile-long platooning heard of driverless trucks doing 45 in the middle lane =P
• _pmf_ 10y ago
  Code generation and Computer Aided Software Engineering is also "coming" and will make the lowly developer and programmer obsolete. Too bad that the 80 / 20 split does not quite work for things people pay for and rely on.
  • JabavuAdams 10y ago
    That's because we're trying to do more. If we were just trying to solve the same old problems as in 1970, then we wouldn't need as many programmers as we have now. Once trucks can drive autonomously, once it's a solved problem, what more is there to do within that vertical?
• mavhc 10y ago
  "A convoy of self-driving trucks recently drove across Europe and arrived at the Port of Rotterdam" Except it didn't. They were driven by drivers, only difference was software controlled the speed so they could drive closer together. https://www.eutruckplatooning.com/News/495554.aspx https://www.eutruckplatooning.com/News/495554.aspx
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• marknutter 10y ago
  Here come the bevy of calls for basic income..
• _Codemonkeyism 10y ago
  + AI is coming and it's going to automate millions of jobs (lawyers, call center, ...)
• ChuckMcM 10y ago
  This is one of those jobs that I can totally see being automated, and I really worry about being automated. If we automate the long haul truckers out of a job that is going to be a huge dislocation of workers. Further, what is their alternative job prospects? Even with free retraining do we have enough things for them to do? I'm really interested in disruptive ideas that can soak up lots and lots of human labor at a living wage.
• munificent 10y ago
  The author proposes building special "slow lanes" for a tightly bound string of trucks in a "peloton" where the trucks do not need to be individually manually driven. Isn't that a train?
• pinaceae 10y ago
  Why not operate trucks like drones? Why does the driver need to sit in the vehicle all the time? Have rotating drivers, no need for rest times of the machine enforced by the limitations of the human body operating it. You can then gradually phase in auto-pilot modes on highways, so that one operator is responsible for multiple vehicles. Already happening in combat drone space. As they're not transporting passengers it is an easier sell. Semi-autonomous drones with remote pilots/drivers/captains should change the game in trucking, shipping and freight trains.
• 37 10y ago
  I thought driverless trucks were already a thing. From [1]: >Driverless trucks aren’t new to the resource industry. Mining giants Rio Tinto Group and BHP Billiton Ltd. use them at many of their operations and oilsands producers see driverless trucks as an obvious way to boost productivity. I can definitely see it expanding, as automation has a tendency to do, and the idea that no technology will automate away more jobs is certainly interesting. [1] http://business.financialpost.com/news/energy/how-canadas-oilsands-are-paving-the-way-for-driverless-trucks-and-the-threat-of-big-layoffs http://business.financialpost.com/news/energy/how-canadas-oi...
• jdeibele 10y ago
  I'm surprised that I never see mention of having one human at the front and a dozen slave trucks driving behind. The trucks behind could be connected wirelessly. Or they could even use wires. Some sort of machine vision could keep an eye on the truck in front, adjusting distance as necessary. Obviously that takes coordinating trucks going to the same direction but it seems reasonable to have a hub-and-spoke layout where "trains" are broken apart and re-assembled.
  • JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    The Iowa Driving Simulator wrote a lot about that in the last decade. Trouble is, as I see it, that you use trucks precisely when you want to go to a destination uncorrelated with other trucks. Its hard enough to fill even one truck for a trip - that's the hard nut of the industry's problem. Solve that one, multiple trucks would be further down the list.
• gkilmain 10y ago
  I wonder what the net effect will be on truck brokerage? Since "75% of cost is labor" I'm sure revenue will be impacted but not margin.
• alex_duf 10y ago
  I'm starting to think we should tax the value made out of automation. I feel like it's the only way to redistribute the wealth accumulated by the few actors that will control these giant automated industries.
  • stale2002 10y ago
    Let's not kill an industry before it even begins.
• ende 10y ago
  I've always thought trucks should have their own lanes due to very different acceleration and lane changing patterns from other automobiles. I wonder if the emergence of driverless vehicles ends up leading to a separation of driverless and driver roads/lanes. At least early on. It could assuage safety concerns of mixing both modes, and one can imagine efficiency gains from chaining driverless vehicles in 'trains' on their own lane.
• beat 10y ago
  24 hour trucking is already possible. You just need two drivers. My sister was a 24 hour long haul trucker for a while, running routes from Virginia to Seattle nonstop with a partner driver. They'd work nonstop for three weeks, then take a week or two break, which is actually a pretty good schedule in some ways.
• beat 10y ago
  When I worked at the Federal Reserve, our vault was managed by autonomous, self-driving vehicles (more robots than trucks - basically smart forklifts). They drove standardized boxes of money around from counting rooms where humans touched the money, to storage where humans were not allowed to go. Warehouse management software knew exactly how much money was in each box. Laser scanning was used for guidance and security. This was over a decade ago. I'm sure things are much better now.
• agumonkey 10y ago
  Musk allegedly talked about automated Buses in Norway not long ago.
• cowardlydragon 10y ago
  You still need security for these trains of trucks. People can just "security guard" the trucks. Sleep, play video games, whatever. Get all the benefits of safety, constant movement, better efficiency, maintain SOME of the jobs. Require mechanic training to make it a skilled job, etc.
• mahranch 10y ago
  My father is a truck driver; He says he's not worried. There's too much other stuff to consider before robots replace him. Like the maintenance that needs to be done during the trip. That can't be automated. This might be good for short one day jaunts, but multiple day trips cross country are another story entirely.
• chiph 10y ago
  This will work, until they realize that the drivers were responsible for doing a pre-trip inspection of the truck and trailer (looking for bad tires, burnt-out lights, worn air-hoses). The warehouse workers aren't going to do this, as their boss is going to be telling them "Just get the thing loaded and don't worry about that." The result will be increasing accident rates, not only involving the trucks, but also cars near them (when a truck tire blows, the explosion is significant). Russian dash cam footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prTiFClMM0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prTiFClMM0A