8 ms·

> 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

by ctvo 11y ago

> 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. The mechanical aspects of controlling a large truck and accounting for the variables is probably the easiest part of the problem. Things involving humans (vehicles cutting you off, pedestrians, etc.) are part of the general class of problems that I'm assuming all automated vehicles are working on and are much harder.

jmspring 11y ago
Mechanical aspects, may be easy. Modeling human behavior and reacting to it, not so much. I suspect it will still be years before much of trucking is automated. Why? It's not just the take crap from point A to point B, it's also being responsible for making sure what was ordered is actually loaded. It will be years before, say, the laborers at Earth Bound Farms south of Salinas (supplies large quantities of "organic" produce all up and down the west coast) automates their work staff or actually has their schedules down tight. Trucking and hauling is full of inefficiencies, and those that suffer the most are the drivers. A pickup/dropoff that takes too long because the people at the origin/destination are lazy/slow/don't care/behind has a ripple effect. And, one could argue "but automated trucks, what schedule?", there will still need to be a human present, regardless. I suspect said human will be restrained by rules similar to what drivers experience now.
- ori_b 11y ago
  But we've already got automated warehousing systems that work pretty well -- I'd imagine these wouldn't be too hard to extend to load and unload trucks. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that they already can.
  - jmspring 11y ago
    Where is the money going to come from for produce suppliers, some on thin profits, to automate where hiring a bunch of seasonal laborers is less overhead, maintenance, etc.
    - elsewhen 11y ago
      if an automated solution ends up being cheaper than manual laborers, then some lending institution will be happy to lend the money for the transition. any players that avoid the transition will likely get obviated by the competitors that capture and pass on the cost savings.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      It's going to come from automation costs dropping and seasonal (and other) labor costs rising in real terms, so that the cost effective approach is automation. Same as everywhere else.
    - Bombthecat 11y ago
      It is coming from another Uber company. Or maybe a new brunch of Uber.
  - jmspring 11y ago
    Specifically, the automation of long haul trucking, comparable to what large tanker ships do, may be more feasible. The last mile, scheduling, and the rest, is a horrid mess. A family member is in the business and I live in an area where ag work is prevalent and know people who have worked in such.
    - phil21 11y ago
      Agreed here. I don't think anyone reasonable is suggesting the local delivery trucks are going to get automated any time soon. But the long-haul interstate runs? I see this happening faster than any automated passenger cars, and once it starts it's going to rapidly take over that industry. Probably starts with convoys with a couple human tenders until the tech is proven.
- jonknee 11y ago
  It won't be a perfect fit for all types of trucking (say, delivery drivers), but many loads can certainly be transported place to place without a person needing to babysit it. Example: I imagine Amazon would love to be able to move loads around distro centers with automated trucking.
- chrisseaton 11y ago
  > the laborers at Earth Bound Farms south of Salinas (supplies large quantities of "organic" produce all up and down the west coast) Why on earth did you pick them out so incredibly specifically and put scare quotes around organic? Doesn't seem relevant.
dv_dt 11y ago
I wonder what the accident rate of professional truck drivers is compared to other passenger class drivers. Certainly the outcome of an accident is potentially a much higher level of mayhem.
- tyingq 11y ago
  Not exactly what you're asking for, but related. In accidents where both a large commercial truck, and a car were involved: "the car was the encroaching vehicle in 89% of headon crashes, 88% of the opposite-direction sideswipes, 80% of the rear-end crashes, and 72% of the same-direction sideswipes." http://www.trucking.org/ATA%20Docs/News%20and%20Information/Reports%20Trends%20and%20Statistics/02%2012%2013%20--%20FINAL%202013%20Car-Truck%20Fault%20Paper.pdf http://www.trucking.org/ATA%20Docs/News%20and%20Information/...
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - ovi256 11y ago
    Now you need to take into account how many cars vs how many trucks were on the road in the period that yielded those numbers. Only then you can obtain the propensity of car drivers vs truck drivers to get into accidents.
    - tyingq 11y ago
      Not sure I understand...these are only accidents in which both a car and truck were involved. The definitive thing you would want, I assume, is "at-fault accidents per xxx miles driven" for all accidents, segmented by vehicle type.
      - SerLava 11y ago
        Yeah, that one makes sense. Because if 1 truck has 30 cars around it, chances are that a car will screw up before a truck.
peterwwillis 11y ago
Yes. Truckers have to deal with a sort of standard "road safety dilemma" all the time, which can be boiled down to this: A trucker is driving a 40 ton truck at 65mph. A passenger car with a family of four cuts in front of it, and the distance is closing fast. A passenger car takes roughly 315 feet to come to a complete stop. A fully loaded truck takes 525 feet. The trucker now has to make a decision. A) Do I slam on the brakes and keep going straight, and completely obliterate the car in front of me and the family inside it? B) Do I cut off to the side, running over the rail, flipping the truck, killing myself, and possibly any other vehicles or pedestrians around, behind, or coming in the opposite direction of me? The robot trucker could of course decide on B), but there are unknown variables about the extent of the resulting damage. This risk increases with merging between lanes or on/off ramps both by passenger vehicles, the truck itself, and motorcycles. A dedicated lane would make this fantastically safer, but who will pay for it?
- tomjen3 11y ago
  I am convinced. Ban trucks.
- dsfyu404ed 11y ago
  Don't forget C) attempt B and jacknife your truck across several lanes killing the occupants of the car that runs into the side of your trailer...
- SixSigma 11y ago
  or, apply full brakes, apply full audible warning and swerve at the last possible moment, while calling the emergency services to put them on alert. But how common is your scenario ? I consider this a more critical failure : The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration suspects that as many as 28% of commercial truck drivers have sleep apnea. The Sleep Medicine Division surmised that nearly a 250,000, persons fall asleep while driving each day of the year. Nearly half of semi-truck drivers have admitted to actually ‘drifting off’ while driving a long-haul route. https://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=29866 https://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=29866
  - 11y ago
creshal 11y ago
> Things involving humans (vehicles cutting you off, pedestrians, etc.) are part of the general class of problems that I'm assuming all automated vehicles are working on and are much harder. The more mass you have, the longer your braking distance and the more sluggish the reactions. While the problem is the same, and the mechanical differences easily modelled, light vehicles get away with lower accuracy and higher latencies, because they don't need to plan ahead so far.
- 1stop 11y ago
  But it's still simple math. More weight, be more aggressive with brakes. If human truck drivers can do it, then a computer truck with a 360 model of the environment around it can do it more efficiently right. I don't understand the problem here really. Computers are way better at logical computation than humans and that's all we require here.
  - gambiting 11y ago
    Yes, but there are more problems to consider here. With some types of cargo, applying maximum brakes can actually damage it(think livestock for example). You also don't want the truck to be going into panic mode and applying maximum brakes for a plastic bag or a small animal. I'm afraid that our current technology can at best tell that there is something there, but it won't be able to tell what - humans at the moment are much better at visual recognition. It's just a concern at the moment, but I think it's an important one because it can lead to some serious accidents when the technology launches.
    - CodeCube 11y ago
      have you not been following the developments of self driving cars? Like the story of how google cars had problems gauging the intent of bike riders that were themselves stopped to let the car pass ... it looked like they were about to take off, so the car was too conservative and didn't move until the bike changed what they were doing. And then, once that condition was experienced and identified, it was fixed for all google cars in the entire fleet. I'm pretty sure the car will be able to identify and plastic bag ... not to mention a simple cargo manifest that would apply parameters about how the cargo is to be dealt with.

by ctvo 11y ago

jmspring 11y ago

Mechanical aspects, may be easy. Modeling human behavior and reacting to it, not so much. I suspect it will still be years before much of trucking is automated. Why? It's not just the take crap from point A to point B, it's also being responsible for making sure what was ordered is actually loaded. It will be years before, say, the laborers at Earth Bound Farms south of Salinas (supplies large quantities of "organic" produce all up and down the west coast) automates their work staff or actually has their schedules down tight. Trucking and hauling is full of inefficiencies, and those that suffer the most are the drivers. A pickup/dropoff that takes too long because the people at the origin/destination are lazy/slow/don't care/behind has a ripple effect. And, one could argue "but automated trucks, what schedule?", there will still need to be a human present, regardless. I suspect said human will be restrained by rules similar to what drivers experience now.

ori_b 11y ago
But we've already got automated warehousing systems that work pretty well -- I'd imagine these wouldn't be too hard to extend to load and unload trucks. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that they already can.
- jmspring 11y ago
  Where is the money going to come from for produce suppliers, some on thin profits, to automate where hiring a bunch of seasonal laborers is less overhead, maintenance, etc.
  - elsewhen 11y ago
    if an automated solution ends up being cheaper than manual laborers, then some lending institution will be happy to lend the money for the transition. any players that avoid the transition will likely get obviated by the competitors that capture and pass on the cost savings.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    It's going to come from automation costs dropping and seasonal (and other) labor costs rising in real terms, so that the cost effective approach is automation. Same as everywhere else.
  - Bombthecat 11y ago
    It is coming from another Uber company. Or maybe a new brunch of Uber.
- jmspring 11y ago
  Specifically, the automation of long haul trucking, comparable to what large tanker ships do, may be more feasible. The last mile, scheduling, and the rest, is a horrid mess. A family member is in the business and I live in an area where ag work is prevalent and know people who have worked in such.
  - phil21 11y ago
    Agreed here. I don't think anyone reasonable is suggesting the local delivery trucks are going to get automated any time soon. But the long-haul interstate runs? I see this happening faster than any automated passenger cars, and once it starts it's going to rapidly take over that industry. Probably starts with convoys with a couple human tenders until the tech is proven.
jonknee 11y ago
It won't be a perfect fit for all types of trucking (say, delivery drivers), but many loads can certainly be transported place to place without a person needing to babysit it. Example: I imagine Amazon would love to be able to move loads around distro centers with automated trucking.
chrisseaton 11y ago
> the laborers at Earth Bound Farms south of Salinas (supplies large quantities of "organic" produce all up and down the west coast) Why on earth did you pick them out so incredibly specifically and put scare quotes around organic? Doesn't seem relevant.

dv_dt 11y ago

I wonder what the accident rate of professional truck drivers is compared to other passenger class drivers. Certainly the outcome of an accident is potentially a much higher level of mayhem.

tyingq 11y ago
Not exactly what you're asking for, but related. In accidents where both a large commercial truck, and a car were involved: "the car was the encroaching vehicle in 89% of headon crashes, 88% of the opposite-direction sideswipes, 80% of the rear-end crashes, and 72% of the same-direction sideswipes." http://www.trucking.org/ATA%20Docs/News%20and%20Information/Reports%20Trends%20and%20Statistics/02%2012%2013%20--%20FINAL%202013%20Car-Truck%20Fault%20Paper.pdf http://www.trucking.org/ATA%20Docs/News%20and%20Information/...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- ovi256 11y ago
  Now you need to take into account how many cars vs how many trucks were on the road in the period that yielded those numbers. Only then you can obtain the propensity of car drivers vs truck drivers to get into accidents.
  - tyingq 11y ago
    Not sure I understand...these are only accidents in which both a car and truck were involved. The definitive thing you would want, I assume, is "at-fault accidents per xxx miles driven" for all accidents, segmented by vehicle type.
    - SerLava 11y ago
      Yeah, that one makes sense. Because if 1 truck has 30 cars around it, chances are that a car will screw up before a truck.

peterwwillis 11y ago

Yes. Truckers have to deal with a sort of standard "road safety dilemma" all the time, which can be boiled down to this: A trucker is driving a 40 ton truck at 65mph. A passenger car with a family of four cuts in front of it, and the distance is closing fast. A passenger car takes roughly 315 feet to come to a complete stop. A fully loaded truck takes 525 feet. The trucker now has to make a decision. A) Do I slam on the brakes and keep going straight, and completely obliterate the car in front of me and the family inside it? B) Do I cut off to the side, running over the rail, flipping the truck, killing myself, and possibly any other vehicles or pedestrians around, behind, or coming in the opposite direction of me? The robot trucker could of course decide on B), but there are unknown variables about the extent of the resulting damage. This risk increases with merging between lanes or on/off ramps both by passenger vehicles, the truck itself, and motorcycles. A dedicated lane would make this fantastically safer, but who will pay for it?

tomjen3 11y ago
I am convinced. Ban trucks.
dsfyu404ed 11y ago
Don't forget C) attempt B and jacknife your truck across several lanes killing the occupants of the car that runs into the side of your trailer...
SixSigma 11y ago
or, apply full brakes, apply full audible warning and swerve at the last possible moment, while calling the emergency services to put them on alert. But how common is your scenario ? I consider this a more critical failure : The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration suspects that as many as 28% of commercial truck drivers have sleep apnea. The Sleep Medicine Division surmised that nearly a 250,000, persons fall asleep while driving each day of the year. Nearly half of semi-truck drivers have admitted to actually ‘drifting off’ while driving a long-haul route. https://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=29866 https://www.hg.org/article.asp?id=29866
- 11y ago

creshal 11y ago

> Things involving humans (vehicles cutting you off, pedestrians, etc.) are part of the general class of problems that I'm assuming all automated vehicles are working on and are much harder. The more mass you have, the longer your braking distance and the more sluggish the reactions. While the problem is the same, and the mechanical differences easily modelled, light vehicles get away with lower accuracy and higher latencies, because they don't need to plan ahead so far.

1stop 11y ago
But it's still simple math. More weight, be more aggressive with brakes. If human truck drivers can do it, then a computer truck with a 360 model of the environment around it can do it more efficiently right. I don't understand the problem here really. Computers are way better at logical computation than humans and that's all we require here.
- gambiting 11y ago
  Yes, but there are more problems to consider here. With some types of cargo, applying maximum brakes can actually damage it(think livestock for example). You also don't want the truck to be going into panic mode and applying maximum brakes for a plastic bag or a small animal. I'm afraid that our current technology can at best tell that there is something there, but it won't be able to tell what - humans at the moment are much better at visual recognition. It's just a concern at the moment, but I think it's an important one because it can lead to some serious accidents when the technology launches.
  - CodeCube 11y ago
    have you not been following the developments of self driving cars? Like the story of how google cars had problems gauging the intent of bike riders that were themselves stopped to let the car pass ... it looked like they were about to take off, so the car was too conservative and didn't move until the bike changed what they were doing. And then, once that condition was experienced and identified, it was fixed for all google cars in the entire fleet. I'm pretty sure the car will be able to identify and plastic bag ... not to mention a simple cargo manifest that would apply parameters about how the cargo is to be dealt with.