Are We Ready for Driverless Trucks? (cbsnews.com) 313
Two million truckers move 70% of America's goods. But hundreds of thousands of their jobs could be disrupted away, reports Jon Wertheim on the CBS news show 60 Minutes, in "a high-stakes, high-speed race pitting the usual suspects — Google and Tesla and other global tech firms — against small start-ups smelling opportunity."
One of those startups is TuSimple, and their company's chief product officer points out that an AI driving system never gets distracted or falls asleep at the wheel: Chuck Price has unshakable confidence in the reliability of the technology; as do some of the biggest names in shipping: UPS, Amazon and the U.S. Postal Service ship freight with TuSimple trucks. All in, each unit costs more than a quarter million dollars. Not a great expense, considering it's designed to eliminate the annual salary of a driver; currently around $45,000. Another savings: the driverless truck can get coast-to-coast in two days, not four, stopping only to refuel — though a human still has to do that...
Jon Wertheim: How far are we from being able to pick up the specific cars that are passing us? "Oh, that's Joe from New Jersey with six points on his license.
Chuck Price: We can read license plates. So if there was an accessible database for something like that, we could...
Test Driver Maureen Fitzgerald: This truck is scanning mirrors, looking 1,000 meters out. It's processing all the things that my brain could never do and it can react 15 times faster than I could.
Most of her two million fellow truckers are less enthusiastic. Automated trucking threatens to jack-knife an entire $800 billion industry. Trucking is among the most common jobs for American's without a college education.... Sam Loesche represents 600,000 truckers for the teamsters. He's concerned that federal, state and local governments have only limited access to the driverless technology.
Sam Loesche: A lot of this information, understandably, is proprietary. Tech companies wanna keep, you know, their algorithms and their safety data — secret until they can kinda get it right. The problem is that, in the meantime, they're testing this technology on public roads. They're testing it next to you as you drive down the road...
One of those startups is TuSimple, and their company's chief product officer points out that an AI driving system never gets distracted or falls asleep at the wheel: Chuck Price has unshakable confidence in the reliability of the technology; as do some of the biggest names in shipping: UPS, Amazon and the U.S. Postal Service ship freight with TuSimple trucks. All in, each unit costs more than a quarter million dollars. Not a great expense, considering it's designed to eliminate the annual salary of a driver; currently around $45,000. Another savings: the driverless truck can get coast-to-coast in two days, not four, stopping only to refuel — though a human still has to do that...
Jon Wertheim: How far are we from being able to pick up the specific cars that are passing us? "Oh, that's Joe from New Jersey with six points on his license.
Chuck Price: We can read license plates. So if there was an accessible database for something like that, we could...
Test Driver Maureen Fitzgerald: This truck is scanning mirrors, looking 1,000 meters out. It's processing all the things that my brain could never do and it can react 15 times faster than I could.
Most of her two million fellow truckers are less enthusiastic. Automated trucking threatens to jack-knife an entire $800 billion industry. Trucking is among the most common jobs for American's without a college education.... Sam Loesche represents 600,000 truckers for the teamsters. He's concerned that federal, state and local governments have only limited access to the driverless technology.
Sam Loesche: A lot of this information, understandably, is proprietary. Tech companies wanna keep, you know, their algorithms and their safety data — secret until they can kinda get it right. The problem is that, in the meantime, they're testing this technology on public roads. They're testing it next to you as you drive down the road...
Intermediate steps (Score:5, Interesting)
Before we have autonomous trucks I think we will have semi autonomous trailer convoys. Basically 3, 4, 5 trailers attached to motorized, driverless cabs linked to a lead, manned cab leading the whole train. Can even have the semiautonomous cabs collecting data for you for the eventual switch to fully autonomous. But even then you will have 1 driver doing the work of 3 or 4.
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Only about 23 states permit "triple tow" (two trailers) and that would have to change in order to enable such road trains. It would make a lot more sense to run more freight rail, though. Trucks suck.
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The extra trainers are not connected to one truck. Each trailer would have a truck, with the front one being manned and the rest being self driving in convoy mode.
I would imagine it wouldn't even be a "truck", since it wouldn't need a cab. Just a motor, wheels, communication/data/monitoring equipment, and a body to hold it all in. And as a bonus, once the convoy gets to the facility the autonomous trailers can split off from the convoy and use GPS to independently move to docks for loading/unloading, since those pathways would be known and static (take pathway A to door 1, pathway B to door 2, etc).
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I see. They don't need a human for that, though. Also, it's not safe. Following distance isn't just about human reaction time. It's also about issues like parts falling off, blowouts, other vehicles getting in the way, etc. We have a superior technology for having trailers closely follow trailers already. It's called rail. You can load shipping containers or entire trailers onto rail cars, we do both of these things already. We should do more of that instead of playing stupid games with trucks.
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Not going to happen on most roads. But I can see it being a possibility for those Australian trucks that are 3 or 4 trailers hooked up to a monster truck that travel for days across the outback.
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at that point why not use trains, cause its got the same problems, my stuff is in the middle car and its at a depot
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Before we have autonomous trucks I think we will have semi autonomous trailer convoys. Basically 3, 4, 5 trailers attached to motorized, driverless cabs linked to a lead, manned cab leading the whole train. Can even have the semiautonomous cabs collecting data for you for the eventual switch to fully autonomous. But even then you will have 1 driver doing the work of 3 or 4.
This would only work on highways. Around here, you have some traffic lights that will turn yellow again before a single heavy semi can get all the way through an intersection, let alone the 4 more following it. So now you have several trucks running a red light to keep up with their convoy, or the front of the convoy has to stop in the street to wait until the others catch up. Either way will create havoc.
You could only do this if you can magically materialize the convoy on a highway, and disperse it before
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We do. But train tracks don't run everywhere, particularly for the last mile. Trains also don't work well for just-in-time deliveries or perishable goods, because of the extra time needed to plan and pool loads and schedule track usage.
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Getting fruit that isn't spoiled from sitting in a railcar for an extra five days, waiting to be hooked up to a train, waiting in a freight train yard, waiting for that truck to take it that last mile?
Re:Intermediate steps (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is, to solve the last mile problem you use little trucks to make deliveries from the rail depots. No new infrastructure needed, no heavy truck convoys wearing out the roads and presenting a hazard to other vehicles.
What could be better?
So you have to load the freight into little trucks, drive them to the freight yard where they are loaded into rail cars, have to wait for the train to be fully loaded, have it go off to the destination where it is then unloaded into little trucks for delivery to a local warehouse.
Or you load the freight into a trailer, it can leave as soon as it is loaded, and head straight to the destination warehouse which can be located basically anywhere without having to be near a rail yard.
Rail is still used in the US, but it has limited options in terms of starting points and destinations so still requires a large road network to ensure delivery. What you gain in efficiency from being able to transport a large amount of material at once, you lose in adding the intermediate steps of not being able to do direct point to point shipping.
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Rail is much less of a thing in the US. The story goes that the allies bombed German railways in WW2 and the US in particular was amazed that Germany could still move troops from anywhere to anywhere quickly. The excellent german road network was the reason. The US copied German roads and pretty much gave up on rail.
Rail should be far cheaper than road, at least in theory.
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Rail is much less of a thing in the US. The story goes that the allies bombed German railways in WW2 and the US in particular was amazed that Germany could still move troops from anywhere to anywhere quickly. The excellent german road network was the reason. The US copied German roads and pretty much gave up on rail.
The irony is, as heavily mechanized as the Germany Army was, a significant amount of their transportation system relied on horses (particularly for the movement of artillery), ultimately using 2.75 million during the course of the war. Of course, horses were almost a necessity on the Eastern Front because during the rainy season the narrow tires used by their automobiles were unable to traverse the mud, while their heavy equipment was often so heavy and with such low ground clearance it would just push the
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Re:Intermediate steps (Score:4, Informative)
Roads aren't perfect environments. How would they program for every eventuality? Especially when they come to complex situations inside of cities.
The idea would be to use the convoy system between cities, with the freight broken down or split up for last mile delivery within the city. As for how do you program for every eventuality, well, that's what this convoy system could help with. Have the connected driverless cabs collecting data on weather, road conditions, traffic patterns, etc, and match it with the actions of the driver. Should be able to scoop up a lot of data that way.
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You mean trains.
140,000 miles of rail vs 4.09 million miles of roads in the US(164,000 of which are considered highway).
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yea and are you going to wait for a 8 trailer semi train to break apart and dock at every stop, no your going to a central depot and disperse from there with local trucking, just like trains.
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no your going to a central depot and disperse from there with local trucking, just like trains.
Which can be located virtually anywhere there is cheap land next to a major city, as opposed to having to be right next to a rail yard (where freight will be offloaded onto trucks anyway, sent to a central depot, then broken down for local trucking).
No. We have to change taxation (Score:2)
Hopefully, Tesla gets smart and pushes for allowing automated trucks to run on federal highways from 2100-0530 on clear nights and with no construction/obstruction on the route. Doing runs between warehouses would be perfect start.
Re:No. We have to change taxation (Score:4, Interesting)
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The reason, as we see today, is that "meat" is cheaper. Those machines require a large up-front cost and costly maintenance.
We have fruit picking machinery, yet we pay labourers (ie cheap immigrants) to pick fruit.
We have automated warehouse picking machines, yet we pay labourers (ie cheap immigrants) to pick crap off warehouse shelves.
We have automated car wash machines, yet we pay labourers (ie cheap immigrants) to wash cars by hand.
I'm just beginning to see a common factor here!
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"American's without a college education" (Score:5, Funny)
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Double irony!
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I was trying to figure out the word ironic in this, when there it was, big as a frikkin eighteen wheeler, with no driver
As soon as they realize its an infrastructure proj (Score:2)
They can set up the digital highways and do it. Its not expensive, you just cameras, local positioning, 5g and remote control override capabilities, plus large shoulders, etc. But the "final miles" would be trillions of dollars for changes, the first and last 4 miles of routes not to modern recievers.
Bigger question: (Score:2)
Re:Bigger question: (Score:4, Insightful)
Why worry? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Oh, I'm sure we'll invent more telephone sanitizer jobs for the unemployed truck drivers. If Covid-19 has taught us anything, it's that a good portion of the public are employed in "non-essential" jobs which only exist to enable them to participate in the economy.
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If Covid-19 has taught us anything, it's that a good portion of the public are employed in "non-essential" jobs which only exist to enable them to participate in the economy.
Most non-essential service jobs are there to provide services that people want but don't want to do themselves. Those are legitimate jobs. Jobs like long haul trucking exist because we spend our subsidy money on roads instead of rail. Those jobs exist to enable other people to participate in the economy, as a means of producing pork. Because we choose to spend the money on roads in order to benefit big oil, big auto, big rubber and so on, we have to have those trucks, so we have to have those truck drivers
Highways but not Streets, Insurance (Score:2)
I trust driverless trucks with driving on highways, but not on streets. Streets are where we have more issues like snow not being shovelled (remember, LIDAR doesn't work with snow), tighter spacing in roads, humans, etc.
The thornier issue I forsee will be insurance, as normally you can blame any crashes on the human. Even if they weren't driving, they should have been watching out for mistakes. Eventually once the states/countries and insurance weigh in, you'll see driverless insurance.
Where I see things go
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Where I see things going once we figure out the insurance issue is driverless to a hub either on the highway or with a direct exit on a highway then human on the streets.
The obvious thing to do is to run from truck stop to truck stop, which is a reasonable place to match up drivers with trucks. But it really makes much more sense to run freight on rail, and match trucks up with cargo at rail depots. We should be outlawing rails-to-trails projects, and instead refurbishing rail lines for freight carriage. Instead, government introduced a thing called "Rail Banking" where rails can be removed without losing right-of-way in some situations, so that in theory rail service can b
there are a few steps to this (Score:4, Informative)
First, you have to have the technology capable of actually doing this. I think it's irrefutable that we have the basic ai driving tech in place for driving down a clear dry level road in Mountain View CA. But of course, there's a strong Pareto principle involved. Nearly ANYONE can drive down a clear dry level road in Mountain View CA. It's the weather, traffic, obstructed views, unpredictable others, pedestrians, animals, equipment failure, etc that make driving...interesting.
I'm not entirely convinced that we're there yet for that last 20% of driving. (TBH, that's the point of failure for humans as well; and there are a lot of questions about how we determine what is an acceptable level of 'good enough' for humans, as well - for example for seniors whose abilities are fading.)
All of those are magnified in complexity and difficulty when your vehicle is 80,000 lbs and 60' long (36t and 20m for our imperial-impaired friends).
Secondly, this being America, we need a LEGAL regime conceptually prepared for these vehicles. This is a complicated enough question for humans to resolve, but if a AI car hits a pedestrian, who's liable? The carmaker? The passenger? The software developer? Worse, of course, is if the AI has to make a trolly-problem decision; effectively the result will have to be coded by SOMEONE who is then directly responsible for a death, even if that meant fewer other deaths and was the "best" choice.
We are totally nowhere near that yet.
While I understand that there are compelling amounts of money behind this in a pressure that doesn't yet exist for cars, maybe we want to start this tech out on TRAINS?
They have comparable (if a few orders-of-magnitude bigger) issues with weight and length but substantially simpler operating environments - no route decision, no oncoming traffic, nearly no pedestrians, and repetitive routing that would be ideal for 'training' the AI in a very clear set of "weight A, weather B, location C = speed X" rules.
Once that's all working, let's implement that in SIMPLE real world car situations before going to the hardest route-driving challenge of trucking.
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if a AI car hits a pedestrian, who's liable? The carmaker? The passenger? The software developer?
If Ubers example of BSing the data by darkening footage before releasing it to the public, trying to hide the fact they had most or all of the safety systems disabled because it stopped the vehicle too much, and blaming the emergency take over driver - staring for hundreds of hours doing absolutely nothing then supposedly a human is able to take over in a split second, has taught me anything it’s that NO ONE is going to pay.
Re:there are a few steps to this (Score:5, Informative)
While I understand that there are compelling amounts of money behind this in a pressure that doesn't yet exist for cars, maybe we want to start this tech out on TRAINS?
We already have self-driving trains. The technology is completely irrelevant to self-driving trucks because everything about the operating environment differs. It is however yet another good argument for using more rail and less road. Taking the steering out of self-driving makes the whole thing dramatically easier.
Re: there are a few steps to this (Score:2)
But those trains require a human operator anyway. At least freight trains do. If it's really self driving, it shouldn't need a human. Otherwise it's more of an emergency braking system than a self driving system.
Great, one of the last blue collar jobs goes poof (Score:2)
Great, one of the last relatively stable, well paying, and high demand blue collar jobs now goes poof.
Re: Great, one of the last blue collar jobs goes p (Score:2)
It's a concept we refer to as progress.
Teamsters will have to go back to horses (Score:2)
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Trucks don't drive themselves now without oversight, tech may never be good enough.
Well how secret can they keep after an deadly cras (Score:2)
Well how secret can they keep after an deadly crash in court?
Yes (Score:2)
Yes, we are ready, but I don't know if the technology is ready. I live in an area where two long-haul interstates merge briefly where they cross. We have wrecks here CONSTANTLY. At least a few a week, sometimes a few per day, and they almost always involve tractor trailers.
One thing many people don't realize is the truck driver turnover rate is insane. Do you know what the annual truck driver turnover rate was in 2018? 98% That is almost unbelievable, but it also explains why there are so many wrecks - most
Re: Yes (Score:2)
Well, that's super misleading. That's only at large fleets. Aren't most truck drivers working independently or in small fleets?
When I worked in shipping, I saw the same 15 drivers every day for a couple of years.
No (Score:2)
what kind of dumbfuck question is that? no we are not ready to let barely functional hardware barrel down the interstate with damn near 100,000 LBS of dead weight behind it
This is the sound of inevitability, Mr Loesche (Score:5, Insightful)
Self driving trucks are going to happen whether the Teamsters, or anyone else, wants it or not. It is inevitable that when trucks can drive themselves they will do so, and it is inevitable that long distance routes - on predictable, grade-separated roads - will be automated first. That means long-distance truckers will be rare - first they will be driving the lead truck in a platoon with automated followers, later the trucks will be entirely autonomous.
The Teamsters can take this gracefully or they can fight it and lose, and their members will suffer more. The example they should follow is that of containerisation of docks and shipping in the 1960s. Most unions and dock workers realised that the mechanisation of docks and the replacement of break-bulk stevedores with container crane operations was inevitable - and they worked with dock owners and operators to preserve the jobs of the existing workforce as far as reasonable, and to ensure that the existing union organisations were not displaced when the existing job types disappeared.
The Teamsters can either accept this, ensuring that workers who will no longer be driving trucks are given alternative careers or alternative roles n the transportation industry, or they can fight a rear-guard holding action until there are large scale job losses and the entire Teamster union becomes irrelevant and is suppressed.
Road pirates. (Score:2)
I could see an uptake in truck hijackings. divert the truck , unload it and sell the goods, maybe hack the computer so it thinks it is still on the road.
Lots of interesting problems to solve. What do these things do if it is cloudy and GPS is not accurate. Do they 'keep trucking'. How and where do they recharge/ refuel? The downside is whole industries being destroyed, not just drivers jobs, but truck stops etc. Upside, is food prices should go down because the drivers never need to sleep and deliverie
Re:Is that all they pay for a driver? (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed says $60k
https://www.indeed.com/career/... [indeed.com]
They're a hiring/recruiting firm so take that for what it's worth. Total cost to employer could easily be $80k+.
Re: Is that all they pay for a driver? (Score:4, Interesting)
I have worked in it. It comes out to twenty something an hour, if you work nonstop all year its easy to make 70k but most people dont.
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Indeed. I know a lot of immigrants from former USSR who drive 18-wheellers and own their own trucking business. Their logic is that working for a company normally involves a limit on the working hours, but a lot of these immigrants are already almost middle-aged men, and own very little things of value in USA. So they need a job that, albeit with long hours and away from home, may pay off rapidly in the short term so they can afford to buy a home, etc.
Re: Is that all they pay for a driver? (Score:2)
As another added data point, a company I worked for in 2014 always hired truckers at $21/hr. Hazmat certified pays more, but I'm not sure how much.
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$50k/yr is about what most livable wage jobs that don't require college tend to pay, once you're outside the so-called "coastal elite" areas of the USA.
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If husband and a wife work and make even 40K each, they can make a nice living somewhere in the southwest or mid-west. Just stay out of expensive coastal cities and states. My parents came into USA in 1990s, started work from minimum wage job, learned English, moved up the ranks, and four years later bought a nice new 3-bedroom home in a safe neighborhood in big city. That's of course in Texas. Can't imagine them making it as easily some place like LA, Bay Area, NYC, Boston, etc.
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Truckers are only allowed to drive so many hours at a time, and that time has to match up with a load in order to produce income. The basics of the job don't require much skill and they will let pretty much any jackoff who can pass a drug test and doesn't have too bad of a driving record be a truck driver, so there's lots of competition, keeping wages low.
Re:Driverless Trucks? (Score:4, Interesting)
So I'm not the only one who has been forced onto the hard shoulder after a truck changed into my lane without looking?
Automatic trucks would look everywhere all the time, tirelessly, and without human emotion. They won't miss a bicycle, a motorcycle, or a car at any angle. No more "if you can't see my mirrors I will murder you" stickers.
Re:Driverless Trucks? (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess the trucks won't want to change lane and overtake any more - so (in the UK) no more will we see one truck on the slow lane driving at 60mph being overtaken in the middle lane by another truck driving at 61mph.
Those clog up the entire network, now they will all just trundle along behind each other. That one change will probably increase capacity on the motorways by 50% at least.
Re:Driverless Trucks? (Score:4, Insightful)
Automatic trucks ... won't miss a bicycle, a motorcycle, or a car at any angle.
I'd really prefer them to always miss.
Re:Driverless Trucks? (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, trucks are large and expensive and commercial. Cars are relatively small and cheap and generally non-commercial. So, it makes sense that trucks should be forced to implement safety technologies and, let's face it, it's ridiculous for a "blind" spot to exist with modern technology available. It may be hard to avoid a blind spot if you just have an array of mirrors jutting out from the side of the cab. We're two decades into the 21st century. We have cheap cameras that can be placed on the actual trailer. We have computers that can patch together multiple camera feeds into a composite of the entire area on the sides of the truck and overlay all sorts of useful information. We have LIDAR and RADAR and all sorts of other sensing technologies. We have automatic braking and automatic collision avoidance technologies and technologies that can keep a vehicle in a lane. We have technologies that can detect when a driver is falling asleep.
If, instead of saying that trucks should have these driver-assistive technologies and drivers should use them, the attitude is that people shouldn't hover in a truck's blind spot or they'll be forced off the road then we should definitely replace the drivers. Of course, the reality is that truck driving isn't as simple as just staying in lane on the highway and not hitting other cars and then parking at a shipping dock. Long haul trucking may be 95% driving long distances on highways, but at the start and end of the route, there may be some more tricky driving involved in local roads, often in industrial areas. The thing about industrial areas is that often the "roads" are poorly maintained or confusing. Sometimes there are areas that are just dirt tracks, or sometimes there are confusing interfaces with railroad tracks, or vast open asphalt areas that aren't really roads, etc. Navigating those might be tricky for an AI. Also, the truck driver often does more than just drive. They're also often involved in some capacity with the delivery at either end. There's plenty of trucking that isn't long haul trucking that involves delivering things where the model isn't just docking the truck at a dock. Instead it involves parking the truck on a city street and unloading things and bringing them into a business. Automating that is a lot trickier. Still for long haul trucking, it seems like it would be practical for trucks to drive themselves from a depot that has easy highway access to another depot that has easy highway access and have a local driver that handles getting the truck to the first depot and another driver that handles getting the truck from the second depot to its final destination and back. In between, it could be driverless.
Basically, the self driving should start with autopilot systems with an actual driver, then the driver could be eliminated in more and more situations as it becomes clear that they're not necessary. In some cases, the driver may persist, less as a driver, and more as a safety/security officer for dangerous or precious cargoes. Overall we should expect actual truck driving as a profession to diminish, but not altogether disappear. Consider portrait painters. They still exist, but they're much less common, having been phased out by technology, specifically the camera. Portrait artists were replaced by professional photographers. These days, professional photographers are being replaced by ubiquitous, advanced camera technology. People don't need trained, professional photographers as much when they are perfectly happy with the pictures their phones produce. That doesn't mean that photography studios and professional photographers will vanish, it just means that the profession will diminish to a degree. That's just the way it goes.
Re:Driverless Trucks? (Score:5, Interesting)
I foresee a different problem with driverless trucks - hijacking of the loads. There's nobody on board, so the hijackers don't need to care about being convicted of assault and unexpected responses.
All a hijacker need is now to have a fake navigation logic to divert the truck into a holding area and then empty it.
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Or a hijacker could fake an impassable road emergency. Obviously the driverless truck programmers would program it to just run over the impassable road emergency.
Better not have a real emergency in front of that truck!
Re:Driverless Trucks? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you sue a trucking company? [google.com]
You can sue both the driver and the driver's employer, if the driver is an employee of a trucking company. ... When suing a truck company, you might also sue the owner, the leaser of the truck, and the company who acquired the services of the trucking company to ship the goods.
And now...the manufacturer of the self driving truck, the software developer and the software testers!
Fun Times for attorneys ahead.
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Can you sue a trucking company? [google.com]
You can sue both the driver and the driver's employer, if the driver is an employee of a trucking company. ... When suing a truck company, you might also sue the owner, the leaser of the truck, and the company who acquired the services of the trucking company to ship the goods.
And now...the manufacturer of the self driving truck, the software developer and the software testers!
Fun Times for attorneys ahead.
Yep. Even if you do something stupid like try to pass a tractor trailer on the shoulder of the interstate, wreck, roll your car, and get injured you can still sue the trucker and win. Happend to my mother in law's husband, he lost his CDL and got arrested to boot (for fleeing the scene: another car had caused him to hit the car trying to speed past him on the shoulder and the 911 dispatcher told him to follow the car that caused the accident to get plate information; cops still arrested him and he faced ja
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The bigger legal issue is WHO is driving a self driving truck?.
If they follow the example of automated voice-recognition, people in third world countries that are paid a few dolars a day are driving them.
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Of course they would have GPS tracking. So if that did happen, it can be tracked down quickly and caught. Sure the cops will not bother if your car gets stolen. But if it is a truck with a million dollars of goods, It will get tracked down as fast as possible.
Re:Driverless Trucks? (Score:5, Insightful)
Congratulations you have hijacked the truck. It has now photographed you, your car, contacted the police, and is refusing to budge an inch.
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That won't work in Canada, where the official measurement system is metric .
Re: Driverless Trucks? (Score:2)
This would be a simple risk analysis problem. If hijacking became that much of an issue, then other measures could be taken, such as having a security guard escort a fleet of trucks. Not a fundamentally different problem from the same type of analysis you'd use to determine whether a building needs a security guard.
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I'm sure all of those will report their GPS position and have some sort of remote emergency control, besides having a whole bunch of cameras. If your idea is to fake the GPS signal, I'm sure it can be checked for consistency, and start some sort of emergency procedure if the truck suddenly thinks it got teleported. A truck isn't exactly easy to hide, or quick to unload, so I'm going to guess the police will likely find it before the hijackers are done with it.
Other than that it's simply a cost/benefits calc
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Especially easy with semitrailer trucks, just disconnect the semitrailer and connect an ordinary truck to the trailer and leave the automatic tractor to its own fate. When it automagically ends up at the delivery point without a trailer, that's when it's discovered that something is wrong.
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It is pretty easy to trigger a trouble alarm if the cameras and other sensors on the trailer suddenly stop working or are disconnected.
Part of the appeal of trucks and trailers is that you can rearrange them at will. All you have to know is whether your truck has enough balls to haul the load where it needs to go. Hell, trailers have ABS, you know how ABS failure is communicated to the driver? With a light on the driver's side of the ass end. One goal is to minimize connection between the truck and trailer.
Re:Driverless Trucks? (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Spend a few weeks using various hacks to cause multiple trucks from the company you're targeting to send off false alarms.
2) Wait for the humans in control to start ignoring said alarms.
3) $$$
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Well lets hope that the software makers for these driverless trucks, actually put some effort into security. Even some simple security principals, can make redirecting a truck very difficult.
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I foresee a different problem with driverless trucks - hijacking of the loads. There's nobody on board, so the hijackers don't need to care about being convicted of assault and unexpected responses.
A rent-a-cop napping in the trailer would be significantly cheaper than a driver up front if that actually became an issue.
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They won't be in the trailer. That's the load. They'll be in the truck, if they're there at all.
But it really doesn't make sense to have them there at all, because who cares? Put a tracker on everything.
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I think you watch too many movies. It's a lot easier to rob an unguarded warehouse at night time than it is to get a truck's destination, manifest, route of travel, etc then spoof GPS signals and defeat whatever other security measures the truck has. I'm extremely dubious "truck hijacking" is a major crime wave in the making.
Re:Driverless Trucks? (Score:5, Interesting)
There are other types of goods as well that would be worth it, especially if the warehouses are heavily guarded.
If the goods are that valuable that the warehouse is heavily guarded, why in hell would you then send it on an unescorted convoy? Hell, I used to work in an airfreight facility (so multiple levels of secure access, armed police, etc) that would regularly handle high value shipments such as gold and those shipments would have additional security attached even within our facility that would stay with it until the plane took off.
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So, truck driver employment down. Truck security employment - up?
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I foresee a different problem with driverless trucks - hijacking of the loads. There's nobody on board, so the hijackers don't need to care about being convicted of assault and unexpected responses.
Woah, hijackers just need mental services and UBI, and then they will stop hijacking. Robbery and theft is a social problem that people choose to do because of poverty. Rich people never commit crime.
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Oh they look.
It's a sport.
its like Mad Max out there some days... (Score:5, Interesting)
If cars would quit trying to race around a truck that's about to change lanes with its turn signal on, that wouldn't be anywhere near as big a problem. I wish I had some informed numbers to give (rather than pull a /. and just make something up) so if you know what the percentage of faults is for semis colliding while turning or lane changing I'd be interested to know. I'm expecting it to be the car's fault around 90% of the time. Drivers DO sometimes make mistakes, but they're professionals, doing their job, and they have lots of experience and much better driver education. They really don't WANT to get into an accident, It's the amateurs and the idiots in the cars that you usually have to worry about!
I believe the biggest challenge to autonomous trucks will be dealing with stupid and malicious car drivers. They're going to be packed with cameras and have NO blind spots (like current trucks do) and are going to instantly romp on their brakes when morons cut them off. Sadly, this is going to reinforce the morons that it's "OK" to do this, and so we're going to see an uptick in the number of semis pulverizing stupid cars because they think the humans can react just as well to their dangerous driving too.
Go look up the "swoop and squat" insurance scam. You can bet your life these trucks will all have a high def recording camera front and back specifically to collect the license plate number of people that coordinate those scams. For those that haven't heard of it, this is the game where two cars drive down a 4-6 lane divided highway looking for an easy mark to insurance fraud. Car 1 will overtake the semi , cut in front, and slow down to try to get the gap as small as possible. (this car will have several people in it, good at faking whiplash etc) Car 2 will then rush up from behind and overtake the semi and car, cut off the car, and brake hard. (the "squat") Car 1 will then "react" by braking even harder. (the "squat") Now, the semi basically has no choice but to rear-end the car. The swooper will speed off away from the scene and hide nearby while the squatter exchanges insurance information. The squatter didn't brake unsafely because of the other driver (the "swoop") that suddenly cut them off, bit he fled the scene so the cop can't get his statement or consider charging him with reckless driving or lane changing. Everyone in the car will lie and say the semi had been following them that close for miles and would speed up if they sped up etc. So the cop is left to conclude it's the semi's fault for "following too close". Of course the squatter's car is full of people with whiplash and back problems and they'll all sue the semi driver's insurance co for outrageous hard-to-disprove conditions that involve cash settlements.
Truck drivers are all aware of this scam, but it can be difficult to avoid even if you see it coming miles away. If you're fully loaded (80,000 lbs) there's no way to stop in time even if you react instantly, the car just has better braking time. If you jerk into the other lane, you risk rolling over (and sometimes there's a "car 3" to camp next to you during the act, preventing you from going left, leaving you only the shoulder, which is even riskier to dump into - and they'll whiplash you too if you do choose to hit them instead) Drivers that see this unfolding try to accelerate to prevent the squatter from getting in front of them, but 80,000 doesn't accelerate well either. They sometimes pull over a few minutes to get rid of risks, but I've watched videos where the scammers also stop and wait for their mark to get back on the road rather than pick another mark!)
So not sure how this will evolve. Maybe the swoopers will start using stolen plates? That's my best guess. That, and a lot more of the squatters are going to die from getting their car annihilated by a human driver that doesn't react as fast as the autonomous trucks that
Re:its like Mad Max out there some days... (Score:4, Informative)
I was going to make a similar comment. Its not that the drivers don't know the car is there a lot of the time. Its just that nobody will let them in and as you say the car drivers will accelerate and try to prevent the lane change.
On some of our busier sections of interstate (looking at you i81 thru most of Virginia) it can be just impossible for a rig to make a safe switch into the left lane at any point. Eventually they have to kind of muscle their where in and force whoever is in the car to drop back and let them. Otherwise they will be stuck behind the a-hole (who is the real problem) that is doing 15mph under the speed limit on a clear day and holding up traffic.
We really need some rules to make the situation safer!
1) Higher minimum speeds, that are enforced in good weather. Sorry granny if you can't do at least 60 on a strait stretch of interstate you should not be there, you need to use the surface streets and highways. Same for you with the oversized load or the undersized pickup hauling the huge trailer.
2) Set nighttime hours maybe 8p - 5a or something where the minimums are lower, and traffic that must move slower because of large loads should be restricted to using the roads during those hours.
I am going to pick on i81 here because its so familiar to me. It moves well below the posted speed even on nice days thru a lot of VA. The problem is fundamentally its not enough lanes, for being the only major artery in the area, and the only way up into New England besides I95 which we all know nobody would use voluntarily unless they had to because getting near DC means crawling and always will.
Re: its like Mad Max out there some days... (Score:2)
There are plenty of place (California comes to mind) where the streets aren't in some nice grid. You can't just decide to use some other street with a lower speed limit. The Interstates connect the valleys. The other roads often won't take you out of the valley. Even when they do, it often takes a 20 mile detour for a 5-10 mile trip. It's not practical to enforce minimum speed limits when you're forcing every driver onto the expressway.
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I was going to make a similar comment. Its not that the drivers don't know the car is there a lot of the time. Its just that nobody will let them in
If people are passing, it's illegal for them to come into the lane.
and as you say the car drivers will accelerate and try to prevent the lane change.
The ILLEGAL lane change.
On some of our busier sections of interstate (looking at you i81 thru most of Virginia) it can be just impossible for a rig to make a safe switch into the left lane at any point. Eventually they have to kind of muscle their where in and force whoever is in the car to drop back and let them.
Breakin' the law, breakin' the law!
Otherwise they will be stuck behind the a-hole (who is the real problem) that is doing 15mph under the speed limit on a clear day and holding up traffic.
No, the real problem is transporting freight long distance on roads, which is fucking stupid.
I am going to pick on i81 here because its so familiar to me. It moves well below the posted speed even on nice days thru a lot of VA. The problem is fundamentally its not enough lanes,
The problem is fundamentally that if you add lanes they get clogged in short order. Numerous studies have confirmed this. The right thing to do is to add rail capacity. Roads are stupid for long-haul travel, freight, etc.
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If people are passing, it's illegal for them to come into the lane.
Citation, the only law I can find in VA on the subject of the left lane is that drivers are required to yield it to traffic which is over taking in zones marked 65 mph and above. In this case the trucker will also be overtaking right lane traffic just not as quickly as the car drivers might like.
This is where where our problem lies. The car drivers are all coming down the left lane at or near 65 mph in zones marked 70. They all wish they could be doing at least 70 and probably 75-80. We have our trucker po
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What's wrong with the truck doing 15mph under the speed limit? It saves fuel. If it's a driverless truck, it doesn't cost labor. If the concern is not meeting shipping schedules, the schedules need to take into account congestion that could be the equivalent of 15mph under the speed limit.
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If cars would quit trying to race around a truck that's about to change lanes with its turn signal on, that wouldn't be anywhere near as big a problem.
It is illegal for that truck to pull in front of a vehicle that's trying to pass it. If truckers would stop being such fuckers, you wouldn't have that conflict at all.
I wish I had some informed numbers to give (rather than pull a /. and just make something up) so if you know what the percentage of faults is for semis colliding while turning or lane changing I'd be interested to know.
Turning and lane changing are two dramatically different things.
I'm expecting it to be the car's fault around 90% of the time.
I think that's a load of hot cockery. I see truck drivers do stupid shit constantly. They fail to keep their lane, they merge in front of traffic attempting to pass, they refuse to pull over to permit passing when there are five or more vehicles trapped behind them on the highway
Re: its like Mad Max out there some days... (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds like you are the one not paying attention while driving. I drive about 3 hours a day for work. I encounter traffic of all kinds. And I pay attention to the road. I know when something is happening a quarter mile down the road. I know how many people are in the lanes behind me. And it's definitely NOT the truck drivers who aoe the problem.
In fact I can actually tell you exactly who the problem is: BMW drivers. They are the absolute worst drivers. It's absolutely amazing how bad they are at driving.
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Sounds like you are the one not paying attention while driving.
Based on what?
I drive about 3 hours a day for work. I encounter traffic of all kinds. And I pay attention to the road.
Do you want a medal?
I know how many people are in the lanes behind me. And it's definitely NOT the truck drivers who aoe the problem.
Knowing is only half the battle. You also have to get the fuck out of the way.
And it's definitely NOT the truck drivers who aoe the problem.
I see truck drivers do stupid shit almost every workday, and I only have a half-hour commute.
In fact I can actually tell you exactly who the problem is: BMW drivers. They are the absolute worst drivers. It's absolutely amazing how bad they are at driving.
The groups I see committing the most stupid offenses by number (pretty much every group outnumbers truck drivers) are middle-aged women, old white men, and teenage girls, in no particular order. I'm one of those people who likes to look to see what kind of dildo has fucked up traffic. On my way home from t
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Re:its like Mad Max out there some days... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Driverless Trucks? (Score:2)
You sure they're not looking? It can be hard to find a clear opportunity for changing lanes. Sometimes, they just gotta take it rather than wait for it.
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Re: are we ready for mass unemployment? (Score:2)
Right now we're about as prepared as we've ever been. Due to COVID, we've started implementing widespread basic income programs, and we've started paying people more to stay home than we do to have them work.
We could be (and should be) better off in the future.
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Why do people have this fixation on "full employment?"
An economy produces an amount of stuff, which people want. A more productive economy produces more. If you can produce more stuff with fewer people, that's *good.* Stuff will be cheaper so on average, people will be able to afford more stuff. As a big bonus, they'll have more time to enjoy it too. The might even come up with ways to create even more stuff in their newly found spare time.
If you live in a society where the only way to get stuff is to spend