4 ms·

I'm not sure tens of thousands of people die in accidents with big rigs every year (IIHS says around 5,000)[0]. Additionally, many big rig accidents could not

• jdminhbg 6y ago
  > they are caused by things like weather, other drivers doing stupid things, sudden stops in traffic, etc. AI does not really improve your stopping distance in a big rig. AI doesn't need to improve your stopping distance, just your propensity to follow by more than your stopping distance. Even simple adaptive cruise control can do that.
  • almost_usual 6y ago
    > AI doesn't need to improve your stopping distance, just your propensity to follow by more than your stopping distance. Even simple adaptive cruise control can do that. Do you write AI software for self driving vehicles?
• tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  > AI does not really improve your stopping distance in a big rig. It doesn't improve the braking distance, but it should be able to improve the stopping distance if it can react faster.
  • csours 6y ago
    Hmm, my general point is that there is a lot of energy in a semi running at highway speed. AI could help, but that energy doesn't just go away.
• scoopertrooper 6y ago
  An autonomous truck could drive twice as conservatively as a regular truck driver or even just pull over in bad weather and still deliver its load faster than a human driver. A human has to stop for 10 hours every 11 hours, while an AI truck and just sail on through. Tandem drivers might be competitive on time, but now you're paying two humans!
  • Judgmentality 6y ago
    > Tandem drivers might be competitive on time, but now you're paying two humans! But you're only paying them for the time they're driving - so this is actually incredibly efficient.
    • mamon 6y ago
      That's not how labor laws work in many countries - if a driver is sleeping in the car, and not in his own bed at home that still counts as working time.
      • mewpmewp2 6y ago
        But they reach the destination in half the time.
    • scoopertrooper 6y ago
      I actually looked into this, you're half right. Truckers don't get paid by the hour, rather they're paid by the mile (or km). Each member of the pairing gets paid for half of the total distance of the journey. However, tandem teams are in high demand as customers are willing to pay a significant premium to get their goods delivered quickly. This has resulted in team drivers earning more for a unit of travel than solo operators.
  • whatisthiseven 6y ago
    That article on efficiency comes to mind: currently businesses have some slack built in on their deliveries because they can only arrive so quickly. If AI trucks are the norm, and all that slack is eliminated for efficiency sake because the "AI truck can always get here in 13 hours, no stopping", then that increased efficiency only raises the urgency that it arrives on time, thereby eliminating the time savings on delivery.
• de_watcher 6y ago
  It can actually improve stopping. Theoretically you can pack some systems to disintegrate the truck in case of an emergency, you don't have a driver inside to save.
• sam_goody 6y ago
  The one big rig accident that I know of personally was road rage - a car cut off a truck at at 3AM on the entry into Phoenix, and the rig got even by running the car off the road. Now, that is entirely anecdotal, and I have no idea how common such things are, but these type of things would at least be avoided by self driving.
  • csours 6y ago
    I wonder if Self Driving Vehicles will retaliate by reporting bad drivers to the police instead of traditional road rage.