Colorado Deploys Self-Driving Crash Trucks To Protect Highway Workers (denvergazette.com) 61
Colorado unveiled an autonomous crash-protection truck designed to absorb highway work zone collisions, removing human drivers from one of the most dangerous road maintenance roles. The Denver Gazette reports: At a press event in Falcon on Monday, the Colorado Department of Transportation demonstrated an autonomous truck-mounted attenuator -- a driverless crash-protection vehicle designed to absorb impacts in roadside work areas. These trucks are already in the state's fleet, but previously required a worker in the cab, leaving them exposed during crashes. "These vehicles are designed to get hit so people don't have to," said Kay Kelly, CDOT's chief of innovative mobility. "We want to remove the human from that truck whenever possible."
[...] Colorado pioneered this technology in 2017, becoming the first state to test it. Developed by San Diego-based defense contractor Kratos Defense, the company started on autonomous follower systems in 2012 and installed its initial version in Colorado in 2013, according to Maynard Factor, Kratos' vice president of business development. The system uses sensors, actuators, and video links, allowing the unmanned crash truck to trail directly behind a paint-striping or maintenance vehicle. The lead vehicle records its route and transmits navigation data to the follower. Both are equipped with global positioning system and communication tools, with the lead driver monitoring via video feed.
"It's a convoy system," Factor said. "The leader does the work, while the driverless vehicle mirrors its path. This protects the operator with the crash truck instead of sitting inside it." Sensors detect objects darting into the lane, triggering an automatic stop. Operators can pause or override via a user interface featuring forward-facing cameras on the autonomous truck and rear-facing ones on the work vehicle. The trucks, existing state assets, are driven to sites and then switched to autonomous mode. Outfitting each with the technology costs about $1 million, excluding the base vehicle and crash absorber.
[...] Colorado pioneered this technology in 2017, becoming the first state to test it. Developed by San Diego-based defense contractor Kratos Defense, the company started on autonomous follower systems in 2012 and installed its initial version in Colorado in 2013, according to Maynard Factor, Kratos' vice president of business development. The system uses sensors, actuators, and video links, allowing the unmanned crash truck to trail directly behind a paint-striping or maintenance vehicle. The lead vehicle records its route and transmits navigation data to the follower. Both are equipped with global positioning system and communication tools, with the lead driver monitoring via video feed.
"It's a convoy system," Factor said. "The leader does the work, while the driverless vehicle mirrors its path. This protects the operator with the crash truck instead of sitting inside it." Sensors detect objects darting into the lane, triggering an automatic stop. Operators can pause or override via a user interface featuring forward-facing cameras on the autonomous truck and rear-facing ones on the work vehicle. The trucks, existing state assets, are driven to sites and then switched to autonomous mode. Outfitting each with the technology costs about $1 million, excluding the base vehicle and crash absorber.
20t dump truck filled with gravel. (Score:2)
Now that will protect workers at a fraction of the cost.
Re:20t dump truck filled with gravel. (Score:4, Informative)
The crash trucks our state uses have a rack of plastic water barrels on the back. The dope hitting it stands a better chance of survival. As does the crash truck driver. And for long distance travel between job sites, much easier to lighten the load and save guzzoline.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Years ago I knew a guy who lived on the outside edge of a curve in the street. People continually missed the curve and ran their cars up onto his lawn, a few even hit his house.
He wanted to put a concrete barrier in his front yard to prevent this but the lawyers said that if he did then he would be taking on a great deal of liability if someone was injured when they hit that barrier.
So as far as I know people are still misssing that curve and ending up on his lawn.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
a Lawyers Office next door
So, that's why they keep "missing" the mailbox...... /s
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This is all really up to state law, USPS has standards for the mailbox itself but only makes recommendations about what you should put it on. They do suggest that you use a pole that swings away or is knocked over easily to avoid causing harm to people who hit your mailbox pole. This is a distinctly different thing from barriers preventing people from crashing into your house.
I lived in a house on a back road which was a traditional venue for mailbox baseball. The owners put up a very sturdy metal post (som
Re: (Score:2)
And how do you do that when it is a moving work-party? Because that is what this is about.
Re: (Score:3)
You misunderstand the problem. The problem is keeping the vehicle in the right position at all times, especially with moving work teams. This is tedious, boring and human drivers struggle with it. At the same time, they have a high risk of injury or death.
This is also reasonably well established and known-to-work tech. For example in Germany, these have been in use since 2018: https://www.tir-transnews.ch/k... [tir-transnews.ch]
Re: 20t dump truck filled with gravel. (Score:3)
Ah yes, it's the "I gave it thought for 2 seconds, and now I have a better solution than the people who've been thinking about it for decades even though it's not my job, area of expertise, I don't understand the problem anyway, and I am free of a litany of other considerations that apply" guy. Good work.
Re: (Score:2)
We are entering an era of at least 20% permanent unemployment maybe more. We will of course wallpaper over it with statistical games like we're doing right now.
This has always been the prediction of Luddites, that technology would displace workers and that new jobs would never emerge. The Luddites have always been wrong for the last two centuries ... at least so far. The only thing that would make the unemployment rate permanently 20% is something that prevents the creation of new jobs. The sunsetting of job types has always happened, way before the industrial revolution. As long as entrepreneurs and inventers are allowed to do their thing, new types of jobs w
Wrong since the Stone Age (Score:2)
The Luddites have always been wrong for the last two centuries
They've been wrong since the end of the stone age when bronze technology made all the flint knappers redundant. It's just that we did not know to call them Luddites back then.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
This has always been the prediction of Luddites, that technology would displace workers and that new jobs would never emerge.
Well, that's just false. Not the first part of course, but the second part. They didn't claim new jobs would never emerge. They claimed that the profits would flow upwards and make The People poorer while the rich got richer. They have been right for the last two centuries... so far.
Re: (Score:3)
We are entering an era of at least 20% permanent unemployment maybe more. We will of course wallpaper over it with statistical games like we're doing right now.
This has always been the prediction of Luddites, that technology would displace workers and that new jobs would never emerge. The Luddites have always been wrong for the last two centuries ... at least so far. The only thing that would make the unemployment rate permanently 20% is something that prevents the creation of new jobs. The sunsetting of job types has always happened, way before the industrial revolution. As long as entrepreneurs and inventers are allowed to do their thing, new types of jobs will be created.
The Luddites may have been wrong in the long term, but they weren't wrong in their lifetimes. There is a massive disruption before those new jobs come along, every single time. And this go-around, the promise being screamed from the rooftops is "no more work from people, we'll automate your workforce away." There may be a reason people are scared that we're headed toward a world without middle and lower class jobs. Probably because, right or wrong, we're having that message thrown at us all day, every day,
Re: (Score:2)
The message is: "Never work again. Fuck you. Hope you die quick."
Did you think the GP had any other message in mind? They won't care until it's their job and livelihood on the chopping block.
Re: (Score:2)
Clearly, you live in a well-off neighborhood. Where I live, in an apparently more normal-income neighborhood, our garbage trucks have THREE people: a driver and TWO in the back, slinging trash cans.
YOUR apparently cushy life (and your trash truck driver's cushy life) isn't replicated everywhere. There's no reason to assume that because your trash company can afford high-priced automated trucks, means that everybody else can.
That's the problem with all these AI doom and gloom prophecies. They discount the *h
Re: (Score:1)
Really doubt that side-load garbage trucks are a 'high-income neighborhood' thing. For instance, the not-rich town my parents live in has them.
Adding an arm is only going turn a $300K truck into a $350K truck, and the labor savings would be huge.
It's more likely that things like neighborhood layout, labor agreements, and simple inertia are the reasons for the difference.
Re: (Score:2)
They use the arm trucks where I live too, and literally no part of this county is well-off. But they only use them for recycling and yard waste, both of which are only retrieved from their official cans which are designed to be picked up by it. Trash is picked up by 2-man teams of driver and... trash chucker? Whatever you call the guy who ride on the back of the truck and hopes you don't drive up his ass.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
How and where did you get that false 20% number? It can't possibly be your ass because you've already pulled out a hell of a lot of things from there.
I'm somewhat confused why it's autonomous (Score:2)
I'm familiar with attenuator trucks - I see them at highway work zones all the time. They're parked in a position to block a drunk / high / sleepy / inattentive driver from plowing into the workers. It's a great thing that protects the workers while giving the driver a good chance of survival too.
But, point is, they're parked.
So what is really gained by making these autonomous?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Some tasks are done by moving convoys. The summary mentions paint striping, and things like tar spraying on cracks and pothole filling are often done by vehicles that move frequently or constantly.
Re:I'm somewhat confused why it's autonomous (Score:4, Informative)
It is autonomous because it needs to follow moving "construction", like inspecting things and mowing grass. And it needs to always be in the right position to fulfill its role. This is tedious, boring and human drivers struggle very much to do it.
Re: (Score:3)
They're parked in a position
Yes, sometimes they are parked. At other times, they move. That you haven't seen them moving doesn't prove that they do not move. Things happen even when you are not looking.
In CA we have trucks with (specifically) the Scorpion® TMA Truck Mounted Attenuator [traffixdevices.com]. Sometimes they are parked, but most of the time when I see them they are slowly following another vehicle.
Re: (Score:2)
Which makes me wonder how many of those trucks actually get hit. I mean, they're big and covered in flashing lights. How
Re: (Score:2)
Couldn't find any consolidated stats, but this site [bts.gov] says there were 45 crashes with TMAs in 2014 in Virginia. You can extrapolate that to: it happens a lot.
Based on stats in the article, at least two people are going to die TODAY in roadwork-related incidents, as part of the more than 40,000 people who die every year on US roads.
That death toll is an insane number, but we've mostly become inured to the costs of our transportation choices.
Cost effective? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
And $1M per truck will be a sufficient financial deterrent that will prevent this technology from wiping out the jobs of human drivers.
Re: (Score:2)
And $1M per truck will be a sufficient financial deterrent that will prevent this technology from wiping out the jobs of human drivers.
Will it?
According to the AI overlords the average American highway maintenance worker earns $50k/yr. Factor in the costs of providing healthcare/pensions and the fact that the robo truck isn't restricted to an 8hr workday, and I can easily imagine a $1M truck paying for itself in the lifespan of a piece of industrial equipment. Hell, with the unfortunate state of American healthcare costs, it might pay for itself if it prevents a single highway worker from needing to be hospitalized.
Re: (Score:2)
The guy that drives the crash truck, isn't the one making $50K per year. The guy running the heavy equipment, maybe.
And, that truck is going to require maintenance, and it won't be as cheap as maintaining a "regular" truck.
I think you might be overestimating the cost of a human, and underestimating the cost of the truck.
Re:Cost effective? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it is a little more complicated and specialized than a drive by wire system, but if it avoids one injury from a state worker it likely pays for itself economically.
Re: (Score:3)
But easy to spend someone elses money, especially on the unable to be argued against -=Safety=- the cheat code for hand over money and turn off your brain. Then "it pays for itself" with the notion that spending money, saves money. And the business doesn't have to se
Re: (Score:2)
If the work needs to be done to maintain the roads, and there is a defined probability of the crash truck getting hit, and the cost of the system is > 10% less than the probability x cost then it is a good investment for taxpayers and ultimately reduces taxpayer burden. Is it the best return on invested funds? Harder to say. Is it better than closing the freeway to traffic while repairs are made? To me that just needs a $10/hour/car stuck in traffic to offset the money... but I don't live in Colorado.
Re: (Score:2)
Drive-by-wire? From the description, it almost sounds like all they need is a trailer to be pulled behind the primary vehicle. Maybe with a fancy hitching mechanism to give it more separation, but still, self-driving seems like overkill for this application.
Re:Cost effective? (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't want a trailer - because you don't want to push the tow vehicle if someone runs into it.
It's for roadwork that moves at a slow pace - because you can either close a mile of road to paint it, or you can keep the road open, and paint the lines, but then you have the problem of dealing with live traffic. The crash vehicle needs to travel behind the work crew at a sufficient distance so if someone crashes into it at highway speeds, it will not hit the road crew ahead.
Drive by wire is quite hard - and you need instant reactions when it gets hit. An autonomous vehicle could react instantly when hit by slamming on its brakes or swerving to avoid running into the work crew ahead. Drive by wire systems don't have such reaction times and thus likely to present a hazard.
Also, $1M isn't really expensive for this kind of equipment. It doesn't need a lot of intelligence - basic ADAS systems cover 99% of what it needs to do (literally "follow the work crew ahead at a distance of 250ft") and "slam on brakes when hit and avoid road crew". LIkely also some bit about turning towards the side of the road if the 250ft runs out if it was hit by say, a semi.
(and honestly, $1M is cheap compared to the hospital costs for a work crew)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
You don't want a trailer - because you don't want to push the tow vehicle if someone runs into it.
Isn't that problem common to both trailers and autonomous followers? Trailer technology has also addressed the problem of the lead vehicle slowing or stopping by using electrically-actuated brakes in the trailer. It also wouldn't be hard to have the trailer measure the distance to the lead vehicle and hit the brakes if the distance falls below a threshold.
An autonomous vehicle could react instantly when hit by slamming on its brakes or swerving to avoid running into the work crew ahead.
And a trailer could do the same. In fact, both of these could react to a rapidly-approaching vehicle even before being hit.
"follow the work crew ahead at a distance of 250ft"
That seems like too far: the
Re: (Score:1)
> I get that safety needs to be a top priority, but $1M seems steep for what could be a half decent barrier
(FTFY)
Here in other countries, we neither have the desire to waste as much, nor do we have the space for a load of trucks unrelated to the repair of the highway. As a result, we use a painstakingly well designed contiguous barrier system. It's so effective, it'll stop cars from flipping over, and trucks from breaching it. We also limit the speed of passing traffic to further increase the effectivene
Re: (Score:2)
I get that safety needs to be a top priority, but $1M seems steep for what could be a drive-by-wire system.
Or, and you know I'm just brainstorming here, what about towing a trailer instead of being followed by an autonomous vehicle?
No way this will ever backfire (Score:2)
At the first sign of malfunction/software bug in the autonomous system software.
This may save the lives of the operators, but endanger others.
Why so expensive? Government procurement? (Score:3)
Waymo and Tesla have functioning full self-driving systems available for what? around $10,000 per car? This one which performs the arguably simpler task of following a slow convoy yet costs $1 million. How does the State of Colorado manage to spend so much?
Re: (Score:2)
Waymo has spent at least $11 billion [wikipedia.org] to get to this point. Even then, their additional cost per vehicle is apparently in the $100K range. [reddit.com]
Teslas are cheaper since they are camera-only, and the cameras are added on the assembly line. But their self-driving sucks, and their development costs would also have been measured in the billions.
Couldn't find the total program cost in Colorado's case, but the amounts in the article are pretty modest; it looks like they may have been pretty frugal.
Re: (Score:2)
This is a special purpose application and it NEEDS to work.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Waymo and Tesla have functioning full self-driving systems
Waymo's hits and drags pedestrians and Tesla's misinterprets the sides of trailers as the sky, turns itself off at the last second to preserve its statistics, and drives under them. Is that functioning as designed?
Re: (Score:2)
But to answer your last question, Federal grants.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Money is sex for government. They sling it around whe
Re: (Score:3)
According to the page linked below, the annual cost of work-zone accidents is estimated to be $38.9 billion, so on big projects it's probably worth the money to protect workers. But yes, it seems like this could be done cheaper. The bumper truck just has to roll down the road at low speed in a pretty much straight line. It seems like all you need is a large electric vehicle operated by remote controls. The full autonomous technology seems like overkill especially since even this expensive solution has to
Sounds like extreme skill issues with some drivers (Score:1)
How about better driving education?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm. Well, I overlooked that. My mistake.
Re:Sounds like extreme skill issues with some driv (Score:4, Informative)
There was no evidence that driver education is an effective approach to reducing crashes or injuries.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a... [nih.gov]
Other countries have had some success with intensive driver education, but it's not really due to anything that was taught - it's because the drivers ed system is used to weed out people who would never be good at operating a motor vehicle.
But those countries usually have useful transportation alternatives; that's not the case in the US.
Re:Sounds like extreme skill issues with some driv (Score:4, Interesting)
As you point out, this is a problem in the US because washing people out means they can't drive and therefore can't function in many ways. We don't exactly have a universal legal right to drive in the US, but because we absolutely ignore all other modes of transportation, we effectively do...we have made driving required in order to participate in society, yet we haven't guaranteed the right to do so either. I'm surprised the courts have never ruled that car-centric transportation planning a violation of the 14th amendment, ADA, or something else.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm surprised the courts have never ruled that car-centric transportation planning a violation of the 14th amendment, ADA, or something else.
This will probably happen in California eventually, but we're far from being able to provide alternate transportation at the state level at this point. If the HSR ever gets completed (ha ha) it will have various types of interconnections to essentially the entire state. The plan is for remote counties like Humboldt to be connected by an express bus. But getting to that bus is still going to suck for some of us if we try to do it on public transport, because for example if you live in Rio Dell then the bus o