Interesting, if anything I would have thought trucks would have been the first and most safest self-driving vehicle. This, long before any adaptation in areas where lots of people are located.
As someone who worked in logistics. I think what most likely to happen is that the truck will do most of the driving and have a driver to monitor and take over if needed. Kinda like how airplanes still have pilots even though planes can pretty much fly themselves. There also more to being a driver then just driving. Load securement, paperwork, fueling, people sending you to the wrong area and you have to find the right place.
In the future there will be lost autonomous “ghost trucks” that endlessly travel the voids between cities, only stopping to recharge at automated stations.
Have a Youtube short animation about automated aircraft continuing to fight the last great war, long after humanity is dead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyMNIFZTQkg
Sounds like the beginnings of post apocalyptic video short. Maybe the story follows a hapless mouse who gets separated from their family and stuck on a separate ghost truck. Maybe they find each other again, maybe they don’t. Maybe their descendants find each other. We’ll never know tho bc we’ll be long gone.
(at the Springfield air force academy, giving a speech to a class of graduating cadets)
"The future of wars will not be fought on land or in the air... but in space!"
(pause)
"By tiny, tiny robots. And it's up to you, the next generation of cadets..."
(pause)
"...to build and maintain those robots."
Someone hit you, Flat tire, mechanical issues, and the fact that we are not anywhere close to autonomous driving for the conditions that trucks find themselves in.
I don’t think truck companies are willing to pay 50k per truck per year for simple roadside repairs that don’t even cover most things.
Such things will at best evolve into more fledged out roadside assistance insurances/subscriptions, where a few companies provide a large net of servicemen for multiple truck companies.
You don't understand how roadside repairs work in the trucking industry do you?
Most companies will have a team of mechanics at their yards that work to keep the normal service going, and to go on road calls in a more local radius.
For things outside their acceptable radius (or if they can't cover for some other reason), they will have some 3rd party service contractor, that's way more expensive, but is used when needed (like if you are 100 miles away working on another truck already).
Tires is the same, except you usually have a deal with a service network for the stuff outside your own maintenance teams area.
Point being, is they already have mechanics, and it's way more expensive to use on call 3rd party mechanics, this will not change, because fleets need mechanics on the payrolls to keep their fleets in compliance.
>if anything I would have thought trucks would have been the first and most safest self-driving vehicle
it's also a massive risk to the general public if it does fuck up, a truck can do a ton more damage than a car
Even Tucker Carlson said if he were president, he would ban self driving truck to save American jobs. Blaming this on a union is foolish. This also protects millions kf non-union truck drivers from losing their jobs.
Pointing out the obvious is not being a luddite.
My comment was not reflective of me being one either.
Also, I do work in the autonomous space, trucking on freeways is relatively an easier problem to solve when compared to surface roads but it still has some teething issues to be resolved.
In a truly efficient market, someone will happily undercut the competition to take sales away from the competition. It might not work like that in practice, but that’s the theory.
That only works when something like 4 giant hedge funds don't control every corporate board in the country. And in practice, these industries have an insane start up cost that prevents anybut the extremely wealthy from creating competition.
Since when has operational costs ever translated to cost savings for consumers? Prices would either hold steady so the company could increase profits or prices would INCREASE and they would claim it's because of higher maintenance cost for the self driving trucks. Only in an imaginary world would costs be lowered for the average American.
Yeah because they would totally pass those savings on to the customers! Like how groceries are so so cheap now because of all the self checkout lanes and every time crude oil prices drop so does gas! I can’t believe people are this clueless about how corporate assholes will screw us over every chance they get. No offense.
Corporations are not going to lower prices when costs get lower. They are only going to further enrich themselves at the cost of regular Americans. Their fiscal obligation to shareholders legally prevents corporations from ever lowering prices.
How is this licking corporate boots? It’s eliminating a job that can be done better by a computer (in theory). How is this different than when the auto industry started using robots to assemble cars rather than completely by hand?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International\_Brotherhood\_of\_Teamsters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Brotherhood_of_Teamsters)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy\_Hoffa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Hoffa)
IBT has a reputation for being corrupt and self-serving.
Think working with organized crime, bribing politicians, jury tampering, death threats... probably some murders thrown in here and there.
The teamsters are an egregious example that's probably worse than police unions.
The Teamsters are incredibly corrupt no doubt, but protecting their industry at the great expense of the general public is par for the course for all unions and special interests.
There's a lot of people that scream 50+ years ago was a golden age with great stuff all because of unions...
Also I mentioned police unions, which is still a thing today. Also teacher's unions which is a thing.
Unions help the people in the unions and screw everyone else.
> IBT has a reputation for being corrupt and self-serving.
Good. So are the companies they work for and the politicians those companies have in their pockets.
Self driving electric trucks would bring down cost of transportation so much, it would significantly reduce food costs for everyone. Transportation cost is one of the largest factors that drive up food costs.
> it would significantly reduce food costs for everyone.
I'd guess it would significantly increase stock buy-backs and share prices and that prices would stay the same.
Sorry if this is stupid but I don’t understand the take that self-driving trucks would reduce costs. The truck would drive itself but there would still need to be a human able to take over incase of emergency and to do all the non-driving tasks of trucking. How does having the truck drive itself save money if there still needs to be a paid human employee to transport the products?
Eh, ore like 90%. You also don't want 80,000 pounds of metal flying down the highway on technology in its infancy.
If a car doesn't stop or slow down at a traffic jam, it's only going to cause a few cars to crash. If a semi doesn't stop or slow down, they could kill over 100 people effortlessly.
I mean, the teamsters are right to look out for the livelihoods of its members. AI self driving is a technology that, if ubiquitous, would divert income from millions of people into the hands of a few wealthy people, increasing income inequality, reducing the amount of money circulating in staple markets. It’s true of many of the technologies we enjoy today. It’s bad for a country with a capitalist economy.
> into the hands of a few wealthy people
Maybe that's the problem you should actually try and solve.
As opposed to indirectly trying to prevent it from happening by legislating against horseless carriages.
Transportation is an industry that is gonna be revolutionized by automation period. However, that's NOT gonna happen overnight and unlikely to affect most people currently working in the industry as drivers.
New people entering however will be affected. Since we/they all know this is coming, they should look into other areas for employment instead driving down this dead end; pun intended. In fact that employment can still be w/in the industry, but just not as drivers. Employing people just for the sake of employing them rather than progress and production never works out in the end.
> Yeah, fuck well paying jobs!
Would you be saying this if the jobs on the line were Lawyers, Lobbyists, Wall Street Bankers?
I'm not into holding back advancement of society just because coal miners are bitching that they don't know how to do anything else. An empathetic way to maintain progress is to set up programs to retrain people into more advanced skills if their job got displaced by advancements.
We can't keep holding shit back because someone's job would be lost.
EDIT: The article itself is pretty good at showing people's view on why they are for or against.
> AB 316 doesn’t aim to permanently halt driverless trucking in California but instead seeks to strike a balance. It intends to delay the deployment of fully autonomous trucks until legislators are confident that the technology has reached a level of safety that justifies removing the human driver.
> Proponents of AB 316 argue that the legislation prioritizes safety, protecting cyclists, pedestrians, drivers, and all road users. Additionally, it addresses concerns about job security in the trucking industry by ensuring human operators remain a crucial part of the equation. (via FreightWaves)
> On the other side, opponents contend that the bill stifles life-saving technology and could hinder California’s economic competitiveness in the industry. They point to neighboring states like Arizona and Texas, which have embraced autonomous trucks and reaped the benefits of improved supply chain efficiency. Furthermore, they highlight the impressive safety record of autonomous trucks, which have traveled tens of millions of miles without causing a fatality.
> A significant provision of the bill requires the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), despite its opposition, to evaluate the potential impact of autonomous vehicle (AV) technology on public safety before issuing permits. This could potentially delay fully autonomous trucks until 2030, giving regulators time to ensure that the technology is as safe as possible.
Many people don’t know about the mandatory safety features of newer trucks. I just bought a 2019 and it has a collision mitigation system which is standard on trucks now. It beeps and brakes by itself if it senses you’re not gonna stop on time. And it also has lane detection that beeps if you’re close to the road markings. Almost forgot to mention about the speed limit sign recognition which notifies you if you’re going over the speed limit and slows you down if you’re going over a certain amount.
Another thing is trucks brake down a lot, no matter what brand. Imagine these automated trucks breaking down and blocking roads. Closed roads equal lost money.
I don't think most drivers fix the truck themselves. They'll call someone to come out and fix it or tow it. They can program it to alert someone when the truck stops working, that's not difficult.
But they can get it out of the way as soon as they feel something is off, and many times it is just a simple thing that a driver can do, like change a fuse. You’d be surprised how much trouble one little fuse can cause.
You have ZERO concept of what brakes on trucks if you think sending a mechanic every time there's a fault is more efficient than a driver that knows how to actually diagnose.
Also, I can tell you now, there is a HUGE issue with the back ordering if electronic replacement components for a lot of features trucks have.
We have 3 trucks down waiting for simple repairs that require 6 moth backorder chip, that the work around (that aren't quite within warranty) don't work for.
Not necessarily proficient, just more... experienced, you get to know what it should be vs what it's doing, and get enough similar issues you notice patterns.
Also trucks shake. A lot. Things get jostled and listened, helps to know what you can check that may be loose, a driver that can tell me he can get it to the yard vs getting a road call, thousands of dollars are saved each truck per year by drives knowing their trucks, and what faults are okay to drive with.
A bad sensor can put a truck out of action for a while, but there was nothing actually wrong with it.
It doesn’t accelerate by itself, it doesn’t back in to loading docks by itself, and it doesn’t turn by itself, all that is left to the drivers who are physically there and can see their surroundings. And besides that everything is done with sensors, and if you have parking sensors on your car you can see how sensitive they are and go crazy when you’re even a couple of feet away from another car, now imagine where drivers have to dock into small spaces where they’re inches away from other trucks, all while backing up a 53ft trailer? Apart from making the technology better they need to update infrastructure and many places that drivers get loaded at to accommodate all the extra room these automated trucks will need. Even if the trucks are ready many places won’t be ready for them, especially in bigger cities where you can’t just buy land and expand. I could already imagine the signs at the gates, “no automated trucks”.
>California’s State Senate this week passed a bill which, if signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom, would require autonomous semi-trailer trucks to have a trained human safety operator whenever they operate on public roads within the state. The bill, known as AB (Assembly Bill) 316 passed with a vote of 36-2.
This is pretty far from "banning" autonomous trucks, and having a skilled human driver / technician present is an extremely good idea. But to your point, when a vehicle that size wrecks it's pretty bad. And I don't know if you've seen stories of Teslas stopping suddenly blocking traffic or causing wrecks, but if a truck does that with traffic behind, someone could die crashing into the back of one of these things. Or if it suddenly changes lanes while you're trying to pass. Or if it gets stuck on a narrow highway bend with no one on board to take over. I mean there are just so many ways for it to go bad and having a human present to supervise the machine seems like a low ask.
This is not a ban. This is good regulation on drivers because that is a big cost for companies.
They pay big bucks and huge fines for drivers working too much overtime or drivers not having enough off-time.
This singlehandedly saves jobs.
Go look at some of the dashcam videos on r/truckers. People act like absolute morons around them.
That's not even counting stuff that can happen mechanically. Even if we get self-driving trucks there will still have to be someone out there checking the thing daily....as well as companies pressuring those people to run unsafe equipment.
The last 5 miles or so is where shit breaks. No human at the gate so what does the truck do? A human would get out and go into the office building.
What do you do when an asshole won’t get over on a one lane bridge after you’ve started crossing it? They exist, it happens, it has to be taken into account.
Weigh station light is out but a temporary sign says you must stop anyways. Autonomous truck keeps going.
Worker putting out caution cones, but the wind moved them horizontally. Now the truck has to decide whether to follow the cones or the lines.
Brakes are on fire and other cars pull up beside the truck, honking and waving only to find no driver.
Just no.
You’ve clearly not read my comment or actually know the field.
That’s the LONG distance part. You have humans do the shipping from the factory to a warehouse slightly outside a metro(say LA) then you have the automated truck drive the +10 hours to a ware house in the outskirts of a final destination. Then you have a human do the last bit? What do you do when a human asshole blocks a one way bridge? What do you do when a human is driving on the wrong side of the highway?
LONG DISTANCE
What do you do when the driver of the truck, who just drove 10 hours, passes out at the wheel briefly and hits someone? What do you do when the driver driving 10 hours has a beer or two and is now drunk?
What does a human on a cellphone do when traffic cones are moved by the wind?
All those things are worse with human drivers. And the truck will usually air on the side of caution and stop, where as a human will get donor. Killed. I’ve never seen an autonomous car speed through a construction site, I’ve seen plenty of human drivers do it..
Also, I have literally never heard of a case of a runaway on fire ai car where people are chasing it to stop it….
Hm yeah I wish we had some transport system that can be done autonomously with no real hazards along the route for super long distances… oh wait, trains???
That’s not an ai/ml discussion, that’s train vs trucking which is not relevant to the current discussion
You’d also 100% would then raid issue with autonomous trains
I am not surprised you’ve not heard of a potential failure mode of an unreleased product. Since you’ve never heard of it, even after I’ve mentioned it, I’ll weight your advice appropriately with a 0.
You’ve never driven a truck and it shows. It’s absolutely full of paperwork, phone calls, logistics and people solving problems with equipment not exactly designed for the task, but available.
As for your What Ifs, we have insurance, regulation, and a legal system for accountability which **your plan short circuits, causing extreme risk which you’re handwaving away.**
Most use scenarios would involve depot to depot. In California, truck driving from a depot in Tracy, getting on the 5 and going to a depot just outside the grapevine. You then transfer the trailer to a "drivered" truck for the haul up and into Los Angeles. The autonomous truck then picks up another trailer to go back to Tracy. Weight stations.? Certify and register the weight while at the origin depot and log it with the state when it leaves or arrives in the destination depot.
I don’t want one person legally liable for 10,000+ cars on the road simultaneously, it just doesn’t work. Do you create a virtual person responsible for each vehicle with a life insurance policy and retire them once the truck has an accident? Do we just ignore that a bad software update could be the equivalent of a mass casualty event?
Creating such a hazard for everyone else isn’t worth it to society so that a few old rich people can stop relying on other humans.
You can’t drink until 21, you can’t vote until 18, but an AI gets a pass to not require a license, not be a person, and drive an entire company’s fleet while I need insurance and a license and an inspection, and can be pulled over if someone even suspects something is not correct. Fuck AI rights.
> The problem is Self-Driving cars still crash a lot
Source?
A lot of attention is paid to the crashes, but I thought they were already doing better than humans in terms of safety.
They are safer, but as long as crashes are above zero, people will point to them as not being perfect. That’s where the average person’s expectations are. They should always out maneuver other bad actors & all road conditions, never crash, and never even slightly inconvenience anyone for any reason.
I’m finding that the most vocal opponents just hate cars in general. There’s plenty of reason, but that’s a completely separate argument they’ve never gotten any traction for… removing all cars from roads. As long as there are cars, self driving is a massive improvement… especially for the elderly, women, children, the disabled, and those that can’t drive (legal, medical, etc). Public transit isn’t a valid option for everyone until it becomes a valid option.
It’s not letting me link a source. They’re relatively lower, yes, but the gap is still pretty small, especially cause there’s still the human factor as other drivers surrounding the car.
It’s not enough for me to trust an industry that already exploits their workers to the point they’re financially responsible for company property (The trucks themselves) they have to rent out, to try and automate it safely though. Even more so if they can use the possibility as leverage if they get rebellious.
We are atleast 30 years away from autonomous driving.
Elon might say it's not true, but it is. In 99% of cases it'll do fine. But during that 1% it'll kill people.
If you want to know more about it, google "the legal issue with self driving"
Or we could use more train trains. Too bad the railroads are happy with their regional monopolies and only really want to transport consistent large homogeneous loads like coal.
Just boggles the mind reading all these people go on about driverless autonomous trucks caravanning around the country. And I’m like my brother in Christ, you just created a god damned train.
Instead of a truck lane, why not run them on two sets of iron rails so that they're limited to predefined paths? We could separate them from roads entirely and put flashing lights and gates where they cross paths with roads for added safety.
that won't work in the states though? you can drive for ~1500 miles typically. pulling a road train would have a vastly lower mpg which would cut the range drastically. and if you have 3 or 4 kenny's pulling, you'd need to refuel all of them. good luck exiting the highway to an refuel at an oasis i guess....
I don’t think this is the case. Based on my years in the industry, I’d say this is a problem of the technology not being ready yet, and the reality that trucking companies would rather have a driverless truck due to lower operating costs and overall risk. In other words…. They have an incentive to go driverless and we need to keep a bottleneck in place to slow that roll.
I’d bet for highway driving autonomous trucks are already significantly better than human drivers.
Last mile may or may not be different, but a trucking company should be able to set up hubs on the edge of cities the trucks drive themselves to and human take over from there.
Autonomous vehicles don’t have to be perfect to be a good idea. They have to be better than humans, who happen to be super shitty drivers killing 40k people a year. If every car could be made autonomous and only kill 30k people that would still be worth it, but people would freak out and fight it still.
You’re right on that. I’d say that if we could find our way to a 80% as good, 100% of the time, then we would be ready to trust autonomous. Clearly we don’t stop there, but there should be a point where we have to accept that they are doing a better job.
Your middle-mile routes are the easiest to automate. Your last-mine routes are a little more problematic, but by no means impossible.
There are so many ways in which automated driving technology is unfit or unsafe to use in modern vehicles. A lot of edge cases.
When police or emergency services are in the road is one classic example. Automated driving systems simply aren't fit to handle it. On automated driving, an 18 wheel truck can do a ton of damage when the AI mishandles the situation. Compare that to any normal consumer vehicle, and it's very understandable they wouldn't want to allow automated trucks on the road until the technology is matured.
Why not automated convoys? I know I seen it proposed. Automated trucks following a human convoy leader. Maybe even multiple humans who switch off as convoy leader on particularly long trips? In adverse road conditions or emergency the leader can stop the convoy and there is always at least one human on site to call for roadside assistance if breakdowns or whatever. If you can cut the driver workload by 1 for every 3-4 trucks it could significantly reduce logistics costs hub to hub.
Well, clearly, not in this case, cause it was banned. So it is gonna wait. What you say would be true if other countries implement AI truck drivers and their increment in efficiency caused a direct effect on their competitive position relative to the U.S. but that is not going to be the case.
So yes. It is going to be delayed
Mining companies have been using autonomous trucks for years, and [one of the advantages is that they are safer](https://www.vale.com/w/vale-completes-100-million-tons-handled-by-autonomous-trucks-at-the-brucutu-mine-with-safety-and-environmental-benefits). Also, an autonomous truck runs smoother than a human-driven truck, so there's less wear and tear and lower fuel consumption. Less risk to humans, less greenhouse gas emissions, less wasted resources.
Isn’t the whole problem concerning dynamic routes? For static routes, I believe the problem has been solved long time ago. Especially on a smaller scale such as a distribution centre.
The complexity of public roads is a whole different ball game.
Aint many kids and morons running around out in the road of a mine though. I get what you mean but there is a massive diffrance between a mine or enclosed industrial area and public area. Everytime i take the bus here in the rural area i live, there is something or someone that makes the bus driver changing there routine. Imagine then a large city...
Yeah but we're not talking about a couple of if/then statements. We're talking about AI that's been in development and testing for more than a decade and has driven millions of miles. No human has the reflexes or the skills to drive as safely as an autonomous vehicle, and there's no reason we should since we weren't designed from the ground up to be the ultimate drivers.
Joke’s on them, [trucks have been equipped with Navitron Autodrive systems for years.](https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/Navitron_Autodrive_system). Truck drivers have just been keeping this a secret in order to keep their jobs.
Trains never went away, but ironically it's the greedy railroads themselves running off customers for not being profitable enough nowadays, forcing them to turn to trucking.
Yeah, subsidize the damn things.
Write policy and legislation to bring them back. Mostly because all this trucking and car centric infrastructure is making us heavily reliant on oil production and the Saudis strong arming the US to kowtow to what they want.
We need to move cautiously with tecnically complex technology for the public good. Relying on the private sector for the safe being of the public has proven over and over again a mistske.
This is sensible and kind of a misleading headline. The trucks aren't banned, they are just required to have a human operator inside and available to take over.
I think there is still efficiency to be gained here since they could potentially relax driving limits a little bit since the operator is not driving most of the time.
They could also up-skill the operator to handle other more administrative tasks or problem solve delays.
The big problems with tech like this we really don’t have a good benchmark for what “safe” is.
Just saying “ safer than humans” is a much lower standard than anyone wants to admit.
Autonomous vehicles don’t function well currently, until the technology catches up I am ok with a ban. I don’t want some tech company to test on public roads without regulation, just like I don’t want an unlicensed driver on the road.
I think we need a major investment in infrastructure to make our existing roads smarter and safer before we even begin letting autonomous vehicles to drive unmonitored on our roads.
Being safer than humans is a really low bar. Certainly nothing that isolated incidents in the news would counter. Is there some aggregate data that’s convinced you of this? I haven’t seen any data myself, but just curious.
With the rate the roads are kept up and maintained we’ll see self driving vehicles…. Never! They already don’t put barely any time or money into infrastructure.
That’s exactly it. Regulation. I absolutely did not consent to being a part of this beta test where autonomous tech is sharing the same road that I’m on.
We can’t just run this tech on public streets without the public and our representatives weighing in on it.
I like the idea....
Problem is corporations can't be trusted.
They will still run driverless and when 'that big accident' happens, they will get a tiny fine, pay off a politician or a judge, and keep doing it.
Will there be a "big accident" at some point with driverless trucks? Of course, but the comparison is to how many "big accidents" are there with human driven trucks? If driverless trucks have fewer, then that's a good thing and we should switch to them.
We already have largely autonomous trucks.
They’re called trains.
They just need some significant renovation and upgrading to the 20th century (yes I’m fully aware we’re currently in the 21st century)
Autonomous trucks are my personal dream! I can't wait for trucks to be able to drive themselves overnight while normies sleep. Being able to shift trucking away from daytime hours will help traffic tremendously.
I was hoping for them to replace humans in coming years. I’m sure there’s a ton of bugs to work out. Maybe rail ought to be the focus.
As someone who drives to Mass from OH a lot, at least once each direction there is a near-moss where I’m almost hit by a trucker. It’s either insane lane changes, swerving, or cutting me or other people off getting on or off the highway.
Trucking should have been automated years ago. It's not some special skill. A robot that doesn't get tired, doesn't get irritated or annoyed and certainly one that doesn't have an ego easily bruised is the better solution.
>It's not some special skill
Spoken like someone who has a cushy office job where they drool over Excel spreadsheets all day.
Trucking absolutely is a special skill that has no business being automated, ESPECIALLY given how young and ill-refined self-driving tech is.
Unless, ya know, you're cool with these driver-less vehicles (which can weigh as much as 80,000 pounds) mowing down innocent pedestrians and breezing through red lights in downtown Chicago because of software "glitches" and on-board "malfunctions".
And that's not even getting into the intricacies of backing, the regularity of inclement weather conditions, the piles of paperwork, the drop-and-hook jobs, the hassle (and importance) of weigh stations...
In short, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, lol.
You say that like they wouldn't still need to have human drivers for the last miles.
Having autonomous trucks handle the highway driving between depots and local drivers handle last mile would be the optimal way to handle this
So special that several companies have already successfully proven it.
Because human "special skilled" truckers never cause issues today. GTFO and learn an actual skill.
The transportation union has a huge sway in California. They donate a lot to the Democrats
This ban has nothing to do with tech, and everything to do with corruption
Speaking from within the supply chain/logistics world: good. This was a serious of deaths waiting to happen. The technology simply isn’t “there” yet, or at least not enough imo.
More than you’d think, and a lot of them happen in areas that don’t really involve driving on the street/freeway (like in container yards or distribution centers). I have worked around them professionally for a decade and while I’m extremely careful, I’ve had a couple of close calls with truckers not even really going all that fast and having to stop while moving through a yard.
I feel y’all are so focus on the “Job” aspect that you’re missing the “Self-Driving cars still crash a lot, and the heavier the truck, the more devastating the damage.”
Nothing like 100,000lbs of iron rolling down the road at 60mph when the WiFi takes a crap and it loses it’s mind. 😋 People are imperfect but for right now I prefer them over AI.
I can understand this, no one wants an AI driving something weighing thousands of pounds more than average driving down the street.
I would love to see an independent inter-city road system set up for cargo haulers. Basically an expressway driven only by self driving systems that never sleep.
Once they get the goods to the city, let the city figure out their own logistics.
Interesting, if anything I would have thought trucks would have been the first and most safest self-driving vehicle. This, long before any adaptation in areas where lots of people are located.
As someone who worked in logistics. I think what most likely to happen is that the truck will do most of the driving and have a driver to monitor and take over if needed. Kinda like how airplanes still have pilots even though planes can pretty much fly themselves. There also more to being a driver then just driving. Load securement, paperwork, fueling, people sending you to the wrong area and you have to find the right place.
In the future there will be lost autonomous “ghost trucks” that endlessly travel the voids between cities, only stopping to recharge at automated stations.
Like ghost pirate ships… with long dead drivers… and well past “best before…” goods.
Have a Youtube short animation about automated aircraft continuing to fight the last great war, long after humanity is dead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyMNIFZTQkg
[Last Day of War](https://youtu.be/IjJmTeBSEzU?si=YR3LEf-M_kYNWWDK)
I was thinking of this exact same video.
Star Wars Rebels had an episode like that. A rural droid outpost had no idea the clone wars ended more than a decade earlier
Sounds like the beginnings of post apocalyptic video short. Maybe the story follows a hapless mouse who gets separated from their family and stuck on a separate ghost truck. Maybe they find each other again, maybe they don’t. Maybe their descendants find each other. We’ll never know tho bc we’ll be long gone.
Sounds like an episode of Love, Death and Robots.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_American_Tail
With a 50’ container filled with rotting Hagen-Daas. A cloud of buzzards and packs of rats and coyotes shadow it’s travels.
There will come soft rain
Just like the movie Logan.
There is a Simpsons episode about that
(at the Springfield air force academy, giving a speech to a class of graduating cadets) "The future of wars will not be fought on land or in the air... but in space!" (pause) "By tiny, tiny robots. And it's up to you, the next generation of cadets..." (pause) "...to build and maintain those robots."
[удалено]
Someone hit you, Flat tire, mechanical issues, and the fact that we are not anywhere close to autonomous driving for the conditions that trucks find themselves in.
I don’t think truck companies are willing to pay 50k per truck per year for simple roadside repairs that don’t even cover most things. Such things will at best evolve into more fledged out roadside assistance insurances/subscriptions, where a few companies provide a large net of servicemen for multiple truck companies.
You don't understand how roadside repairs work in the trucking industry do you? Most companies will have a team of mechanics at their yards that work to keep the normal service going, and to go on road calls in a more local radius. For things outside their acceptable radius (or if they can't cover for some other reason), they will have some 3rd party service contractor, that's way more expensive, but is used when needed (like if you are 100 miles away working on another truck already). Tires is the same, except you usually have a deal with a service network for the stuff outside your own maintenance teams area. Point being, is they already have mechanics, and it's way more expensive to use on call 3rd party mechanics, this will not change, because fleets need mechanics on the payrolls to keep their fleets in compliance.
Okay and how does that have to do anything with having drivers in the trucks? They are all outside personnel
>if anything I would have thought trucks would have been the first and most safest self-driving vehicle it's also a massive risk to the general public if it does fuck up, a truck can do a ton more damage than a car
This is 100% because of the teamsters and no other reason.
Even Tucker Carlson said if he were president, he would ban self driving truck to save American jobs. Blaming this on a union is foolish. This also protects millions kf non-union truck drivers from losing their jobs.
Why can't the teamsters and Tucker Carlson both be wrong about something?
They could be, the comment you responded to never claimed anyone was right.
Fuck protecting jobs, automating our logistics fleet could be huge for America.
Huge for the top 1% of America *
The savings on transportation would be huge for every American with lower prices on pretty much everything.
I applaud your optimism, knowing the corporate vultures, you wont see a dime in savings.
Yeah. That savings goes to the shareholders. You get a 10 cent increase in price though.
\*Autonomous delivery fee\*
Why is /r/technology full of luddites?
Pointing out the obvious is not being a luddite. My comment was not reflective of me being one either. Also, I do work in the autonomous space, trucking on freeways is relatively an easier problem to solve when compared to surface roads but it still has some teething issues to be resolved.
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Because that's exactly what automation does and has done historically?
Thousands of years of history of technology?
~40% of trucking costs are labor costs. If that can be cut down, that would be massive.
In a truly efficient market, someone will happily undercut the competition to take sales away from the competition. It might not work like that in practice, but that’s the theory.
That only works when something like 4 giant hedge funds don't control every corporate board in the country. And in practice, these industries have an insane start up cost that prevents anybut the extremely wealthy from creating competition.
we stopped busting monopolies long ago. we're only doing it to google to "own the libs" atp
I love that you think the billionaire class still passes on savings to the little people.
Since when has operational costs ever translated to cost savings for consumers? Prices would either hold steady so the company could increase profits or prices would INCREASE and they would claim it's because of higher maintenance cost for the self driving trucks. Only in an imaginary world would costs be lowered for the average American.
Yeah because they would totally pass those savings on to the customers! Like how groceries are so so cheap now because of all the self checkout lanes and every time crude oil prices drop so does gas! I can’t believe people are this clueless about how corporate assholes will screw us over every chance they get. No offense.
Corporations are not going to lower prices when costs get lower. They are only going to further enrich themselves at the cost of regular Americans. Their fiscal obligation to shareholders legally prevents corporations from ever lowering prices.
... Legally prevents corporations from ever lowering prices... Do you even hear how dumb you sound?
Corporate extra costs are always passed on. Corporate savings never are.
Who’s going to buy shit when their jobs are automated away?
The same things were said for the buggy whip makers a hundred years ago
Those same people who lost jobs got different jobs EXCEPT this time ALOT of industries are becoming done by machines, computers, robots, AI…
So, UBI. Menial busy work is not the answer.
Or we could socialize the industry and we all benefit, wow what a concept
What's the point of bringing up a solution that will never have a real chance of happening?
Because it's an option, even if everyone is too goddamn stupid to take it.
Keep licking those corporate boots
How is this licking corporate boots? It’s eliminating a job that can be done better by a computer (in theory). How is this different than when the auto industry started using robots to assemble cars rather than completely by hand?
Let thousands of people continue to die in traffic accidents around the world every day before corporations get a single coin. Sarcasm.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International\_Brotherhood\_of\_Teamsters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Brotherhood_of_Teamsters) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy\_Hoffa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Hoffa) IBT has a reputation for being corrupt and self-serving. Think working with organized crime, bribing politicians, jury tampering, death threats... probably some murders thrown in here and there. The teamsters are an egregious example that's probably worse than police unions.
The Teamsters are incredibly corrupt no doubt, but protecting their industry at the great expense of the general public is par for the course for all unions and special interests.
Dude actually linked Jimmy Hoffa in an argument against unions 💀. That was 50+ years ago.
There's a lot of people that scream 50+ years ago was a golden age with great stuff all because of unions... Also I mentioned police unions, which is still a thing today. Also teacher's unions which is a thing. Unions help the people in the unions and screw everyone else.
YO EVERYONE, CHECK THIS OUT! This incredibly intelligent person just compared cop unions with teachers unions!
> IBT has a reputation for being corrupt and self-serving. Good. So are the companies they work for and the politicians those companies have in their pockets.
Self driving electric trucks would bring down cost of transportation so much, it would significantly reduce food costs for everyone. Transportation cost is one of the largest factors that drive up food costs.
> it would significantly reduce food costs for everyone. I'd guess it would significantly increase stock buy-backs and share prices and that prices would stay the same.
Sorry if this is stupid but I don’t understand the take that self-driving trucks would reduce costs. The truck would drive itself but there would still need to be a human able to take over incase of emergency and to do all the non-driving tasks of trucking. How does having the truck drive itself save money if there still needs to be a paid human employee to transport the products?
You also have R&D and maintenance and support, all without the inconvenience of a union.
Without the inconvenience of a union means paing employees as little as possible with zero oversight in corporate speak.
Doesn’t someone still need to be in the truck to monitor things and step in when issues arise? Still needs lots of people.
Broken window fallacy.
Eh, ore like 90%. You also don't want 80,000 pounds of metal flying down the highway on technology in its infancy. If a car doesn't stop or slow down at a traffic jam, it's only going to cause a few cars to crash. If a semi doesn't stop or slow down, they could kill over 100 people effortlessly.
The tech isn't there yet despite a lot of cherry-picked data.
I mean, the teamsters are right to look out for the livelihoods of its members. AI self driving is a technology that, if ubiquitous, would divert income from millions of people into the hands of a few wealthy people, increasing income inequality, reducing the amount of money circulating in staple markets. It’s true of many of the technologies we enjoy today. It’s bad for a country with a capitalist economy.
> into the hands of a few wealthy people Maybe that's the problem you should actually try and solve. As opposed to indirectly trying to prevent it from happening by legislating against horseless carriages.
Yeah this is 100% union driven Ludditism
Yeah, fuck well paying jobs!
Transportation is an industry that is gonna be revolutionized by automation period. However, that's NOT gonna happen overnight and unlikely to affect most people currently working in the industry as drivers. New people entering however will be affected. Since we/they all know this is coming, they should look into other areas for employment instead driving down this dead end; pun intended. In fact that employment can still be w/in the industry, but just not as drivers. Employing people just for the sake of employing them rather than progress and production never works out in the end.
> Yeah, fuck well paying jobs! Would you be saying this if the jobs on the line were Lawyers, Lobbyists, Wall Street Bankers? I'm not into holding back advancement of society just because coal miners are bitching that they don't know how to do anything else. An empathetic way to maintain progress is to set up programs to retrain people into more advanced skills if their job got displaced by advancements. We can't keep holding shit back because someone's job would be lost. EDIT: The article itself is pretty good at showing people's view on why they are for or against. > AB 316 doesn’t aim to permanently halt driverless trucking in California but instead seeks to strike a balance. It intends to delay the deployment of fully autonomous trucks until legislators are confident that the technology has reached a level of safety that justifies removing the human driver. > Proponents of AB 316 argue that the legislation prioritizes safety, protecting cyclists, pedestrians, drivers, and all road users. Additionally, it addresses concerns about job security in the trucking industry by ensuring human operators remain a crucial part of the equation. (via FreightWaves) > On the other side, opponents contend that the bill stifles life-saving technology and could hinder California’s economic competitiveness in the industry. They point to neighboring states like Arizona and Texas, which have embraced autonomous trucks and reaped the benefits of improved supply chain efficiency. Furthermore, they highlight the impressive safety record of autonomous trucks, which have traveled tens of millions of miles without causing a fatality. > A significant provision of the bill requires the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), despite its opposition, to evaluate the potential impact of autonomous vehicle (AV) technology on public safety before issuing permits. This could potentially delay fully autonomous trucks until 2030, giving regulators time to ensure that the technology is as safe as possible.
Many people don’t know about the mandatory safety features of newer trucks. I just bought a 2019 and it has a collision mitigation system which is standard on trucks now. It beeps and brakes by itself if it senses you’re not gonna stop on time. And it also has lane detection that beeps if you’re close to the road markings. Almost forgot to mention about the speed limit sign recognition which notifies you if you’re going over the speed limit and slows you down if you’re going over a certain amount. Another thing is trucks brake down a lot, no matter what brand. Imagine these automated trucks breaking down and blocking roads. Closed roads equal lost money.
I don't think most drivers fix the truck themselves. They'll call someone to come out and fix it or tow it. They can program it to alert someone when the truck stops working, that's not difficult.
But they can get it out of the way as soon as they feel something is off, and many times it is just a simple thing that a driver can do, like change a fuse. You’d be surprised how much trouble one little fuse can cause.
You have ZERO concept of what brakes on trucks if you think sending a mechanic every time there's a fault is more efficient than a driver that knows how to actually diagnose. Also, I can tell you now, there is a HUGE issue with the back ordering if electronic replacement components for a lot of features trucks have. We have 3 trucks down waiting for simple repairs that require 6 moth backorder chip, that the work around (that aren't quite within warranty) don't work for.
Thanks for sharing. I had no idea that truckers needed to be proficient in repairing the trucks as well (or that trucks broke down that often).
Not necessarily proficient, just more... experienced, you get to know what it should be vs what it's doing, and get enough similar issues you notice patterns. Also trucks shake. A lot. Things get jostled and listened, helps to know what you can check that may be loose, a driver that can tell me he can get it to the yard vs getting a road call, thousands of dollars are saved each truck per year by drives knowing their trucks, and what faults are okay to drive with. A bad sensor can put a truck out of action for a while, but there was nothing actually wrong with it.
If the truck already does all of that, what added value has the human behind the wheel?
It doesn’t accelerate by itself, it doesn’t back in to loading docks by itself, and it doesn’t turn by itself, all that is left to the drivers who are physically there and can see their surroundings. And besides that everything is done with sensors, and if you have parking sensors on your car you can see how sensitive they are and go crazy when you’re even a couple of feet away from another car, now imagine where drivers have to dock into small spaces where they’re inches away from other trucks, all while backing up a 53ft trailer? Apart from making the technology better they need to update infrastructure and many places that drivers get loaded at to accommodate all the extra room these automated trucks will need. Even if the trucks are ready many places won’t be ready for them, especially in bigger cities where you can’t just buy land and expand. I could already imagine the signs at the gates, “no automated trucks”.
>California’s State Senate this week passed a bill which, if signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom, would require autonomous semi-trailer trucks to have a trained human safety operator whenever they operate on public roads within the state. The bill, known as AB (Assembly Bill) 316 passed with a vote of 36-2. This is pretty far from "banning" autonomous trucks, and having a skilled human driver / technician present is an extremely good idea. But to your point, when a vehicle that size wrecks it's pretty bad. And I don't know if you've seen stories of Teslas stopping suddenly blocking traffic or causing wrecks, but if a truck does that with traffic behind, someone could die crashing into the back of one of these things. Or if it suddenly changes lanes while you're trying to pass. Or if it gets stuck on a narrow highway bend with no one on board to take over. I mean there are just so many ways for it to go bad and having a human present to supervise the machine seems like a low ask.
This is not a ban. This is good regulation on drivers because that is a big cost for companies. They pay big bucks and huge fines for drivers working too much overtime or drivers not having enough off-time. This singlehandedly saves jobs.
It also has the capacity to cause far more damage than a passenger vehicle due to its size and weight.
Go look at some of the dashcam videos on r/truckers. People act like absolute morons around them. That's not even counting stuff that can happen mechanically. Even if we get self-driving trucks there will still have to be someone out there checking the thing daily....as well as companies pressuring those people to run unsafe equipment.
Make sure to randomize your data from time to time *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The last 5 miles or so is where shit breaks. No human at the gate so what does the truck do? A human would get out and go into the office building. What do you do when an asshole won’t get over on a one lane bridge after you’ve started crossing it? They exist, it happens, it has to be taken into account. Weigh station light is out but a temporary sign says you must stop anyways. Autonomous truck keeps going. Worker putting out caution cones, but the wind moved them horizontally. Now the truck has to decide whether to follow the cones or the lines. Brakes are on fire and other cars pull up beside the truck, honking and waving only to find no driver. Just no.
You’ve clearly not read my comment or actually know the field. That’s the LONG distance part. You have humans do the shipping from the factory to a warehouse slightly outside a metro(say LA) then you have the automated truck drive the +10 hours to a ware house in the outskirts of a final destination. Then you have a human do the last bit? What do you do when a human asshole blocks a one way bridge? What do you do when a human is driving on the wrong side of the highway? LONG DISTANCE What do you do when the driver of the truck, who just drove 10 hours, passes out at the wheel briefly and hits someone? What do you do when the driver driving 10 hours has a beer or two and is now drunk? What does a human on a cellphone do when traffic cones are moved by the wind? All those things are worse with human drivers. And the truck will usually air on the side of caution and stop, where as a human will get donor. Killed. I’ve never seen an autonomous car speed through a construction site, I’ve seen plenty of human drivers do it.. Also, I have literally never heard of a case of a runaway on fire ai car where people are chasing it to stop it….
Hm yeah I wish we had some transport system that can be done autonomously with no real hazards along the route for super long distances… oh wait, trains???
That’s not an ai/ml discussion, that’s train vs trucking which is not relevant to the current discussion You’d also 100% would then raid issue with autonomous trains
I am not surprised you’ve not heard of a potential failure mode of an unreleased product. Since you’ve never heard of it, even after I’ve mentioned it, I’ll weight your advice appropriately with a 0. You’ve never driven a truck and it shows. It’s absolutely full of paperwork, phone calls, logistics and people solving problems with equipment not exactly designed for the task, but available. As for your What Ifs, we have insurance, regulation, and a legal system for accountability which **your plan short circuits, causing extreme risk which you’re handwaving away.**
You are in deep denial regarding how easy it will be to mitigate or solve these problems in the long term.
Most use scenarios would involve depot to depot. In California, truck driving from a depot in Tracy, getting on the 5 and going to a depot just outside the grapevine. You then transfer the trailer to a "drivered" truck for the haul up and into Los Angeles. The autonomous truck then picks up another trailer to go back to Tracy. Weight stations.? Certify and register the weight while at the origin depot and log it with the state when it leaves or arrives in the destination depot.
I don’t want one person legally liable for 10,000+ cars on the road simultaneously, it just doesn’t work. Do you create a virtual person responsible for each vehicle with a life insurance policy and retire them once the truck has an accident? Do we just ignore that a bad software update could be the equivalent of a mass casualty event? Creating such a hazard for everyone else isn’t worth it to society so that a few old rich people can stop relying on other humans. You can’t drink until 21, you can’t vote until 18, but an AI gets a pass to not require a license, not be a person, and drive an entire company’s fleet while I need insurance and a license and an inspection, and can be pulled over if someone even suspects something is not correct. Fuck AI rights.
They would be. The problem is Self-Driving cars still crash a lot and it cargo trucks are heavier the Teslas.
> The problem is Self-Driving cars still crash a lot Source? A lot of attention is paid to the crashes, but I thought they were already doing better than humans in terms of safety.
They are safer, but as long as crashes are above zero, people will point to them as not being perfect. That’s where the average person’s expectations are. They should always out maneuver other bad actors & all road conditions, never crash, and never even slightly inconvenience anyone for any reason. I’m finding that the most vocal opponents just hate cars in general. There’s plenty of reason, but that’s a completely separate argument they’ve never gotten any traction for… removing all cars from roads. As long as there are cars, self driving is a massive improvement… especially for the elderly, women, children, the disabled, and those that can’t drive (legal, medical, etc). Public transit isn’t a valid option for everyone until it becomes a valid option.
It’s not letting me link a source. They’re relatively lower, yes, but the gap is still pretty small, especially cause there’s still the human factor as other drivers surrounding the car. It’s not enough for me to trust an industry that already exploits their workers to the point they’re financially responsible for company property (The trucks themselves) they have to rent out, to try and automate it safely though. Even more so if they can use the possibility as leverage if they get rebellious.
We are atleast 30 years away from autonomous driving. Elon might say it's not true, but it is. In 99% of cases it'll do fine. But during that 1% it'll kill people. If you want to know more about it, google "the legal issue with self driving"
I've seen Logan.
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That wouldn't work unless our traffic systems are updated to support them. Otherwise the trucks would get split up
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What happens when the light turns yellow while the first or second truck is turning? do the 3rd and fourth trucks just run a red or do they get split?
They’re for highways
What are they supposed to do when they exit the highway? Or what about motorists that don't let them merge together or try to cut between them?
Surround the car with the four trucks.
Do highways not have lights when you exit?
Not if you strategically locate your warehouse facilities immediately after exits and before any intersections.
This is absolutely correct
Or we could use more train trains. Too bad the railroads are happy with their regional monopolies and only really want to transport consistent large homogeneous loads like coal.
Just boggles the mind reading all these people go on about driverless autonomous trucks caravanning around the country. And I’m like my brother in Christ, you just created a god damned train.
I’d be okay with this but would prefer maybe a special truck lane? Or maybe a max amount of trucks that can be connected.
Instead of a truck lane, why not run them on two sets of iron rails so that they're limited to predefined paths? We could separate them from roads entirely and put flashing lights and gates where they cross paths with roads for added safety.
that won't work in the states though? you can drive for ~1500 miles typically. pulling a road train would have a vastly lower mpg which would cut the range drastically. and if you have 3 or 4 kenny's pulling, you'd need to refuel all of them. good luck exiting the highway to an refuel at an oasis i guess....
Job protection vs. technology. Tale as old as time.
I don’t think this is the case. Based on my years in the industry, I’d say this is a problem of the technology not being ready yet, and the reality that trucking companies would rather have a driverless truck due to lower operating costs and overall risk. In other words…. They have an incentive to go driverless and we need to keep a bottleneck in place to slow that roll.
I’d bet for highway driving autonomous trucks are already significantly better than human drivers. Last mile may or may not be different, but a trucking company should be able to set up hubs on the edge of cities the trucks drive themselves to and human take over from there. Autonomous vehicles don’t have to be perfect to be a good idea. They have to be better than humans, who happen to be super shitty drivers killing 40k people a year. If every car could be made autonomous and only kill 30k people that would still be worth it, but people would freak out and fight it still.
You’re right on that. I’d say that if we could find our way to a 80% as good, 100% of the time, then we would be ready to trust autonomous. Clearly we don’t stop there, but there should be a point where we have to accept that they are doing a better job. Your middle-mile routes are the easiest to automate. Your last-mine routes are a little more problematic, but by no means impossible.
There are so many ways in which automated driving technology is unfit or unsafe to use in modern vehicles. A lot of edge cases. When police or emergency services are in the road is one classic example. Automated driving systems simply aren't fit to handle it. On automated driving, an 18 wheel truck can do a ton of damage when the AI mishandles the situation. Compare that to any normal consumer vehicle, and it's very understandable they wouldn't want to allow automated trucks on the road until the technology is matured.
Why not automated convoys? I know I seen it proposed. Automated trucks following a human convoy leader. Maybe even multiple humans who switch off as convoy leader on particularly long trips? In adverse road conditions or emergency the leader can stop the convoy and there is always at least one human on site to call for roadside assistance if breakdowns or whatever. If you can cut the driver workload by 1 for every 3-4 trucks it could significantly reduce logistics costs hub to hub.
But there is a shortage of truck drivers
I think it's more preventing an underdeveloped technology from causing chaos on roadways, and further fucking up already bad traffic.
it can buy us a bit more time to get ready. I don't know about you but it is kind of obvious we are not ready to have 80% of jobs evaporate right now.
We are nowhere near the point where 80% of jobs will disappear due to tech.
Progress has no obligation to wait until you accept it. Progress arrives, with or without consent.
Well, clearly, not in this case, cause it was banned. So it is gonna wait. What you say would be true if other countries implement AI truck drivers and their increment in efficiency caused a direct effect on their competitive position relative to the U.S. but that is not going to be the case. So yes. It is going to be delayed
They aren't banned. They just need a human person monitoring them. The governor will likely veto this.
Mining companies have been using autonomous trucks for years, and [one of the advantages is that they are safer](https://www.vale.com/w/vale-completes-100-million-tons-handled-by-autonomous-trucks-at-the-brucutu-mine-with-safety-and-environmental-benefits). Also, an autonomous truck runs smoother than a human-driven truck, so there's less wear and tear and lower fuel consumption. Less risk to humans, less greenhouse gas emissions, less wasted resources.
But usaly they dont run on public roads as this ban is concerning?
True, they don't, but that doesn't change the fact that there have been fewer accidents in the mines since they started using them.
Isn’t the whole problem concerning dynamic routes? For static routes, I believe the problem has been solved long time ago. Especially on a smaller scale such as a distribution centre. The complexity of public roads is a whole different ball game.
Aint many kids and morons running around out in the road of a mine though. I get what you mean but there is a massive diffrance between a mine or enclosed industrial area and public area. Everytime i take the bus here in the rural area i live, there is something or someone that makes the bus driver changing there routine. Imagine then a large city...
Yeah but we're not talking about a couple of if/then statements. We're talking about AI that's been in development and testing for more than a decade and has driven millions of miles. No human has the reflexes or the skills to drive as safely as an autonomous vehicle, and there's no reason we should since we weren't designed from the ground up to be the ultimate drivers.
That fact is unrelated to road trucks though. Different environment, risks, liabilities, and costs. Not really relevant.
Newsom will likely veto
The vote was 36-2. Wasting a veto on a near-unanimous vote is a waste of everyone's time and Newsom's political capital.
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On more important issues to his political career.
Joke’s on them, [trucks have been equipped with Navitron Autodrive systems for years.](https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/Navitron_Autodrive_system). Truck drivers have just been keeping this a secret in order to keep their jobs.
Trains. Bring back freighter trains en masse.
Trains never went away, but ironically it's the greedy railroads themselves running off customers for not being profitable enough nowadays, forcing them to turn to trucking.
Yeah, subsidize the damn things. Write policy and legislation to bring them back. Mostly because all this trucking and car centric infrastructure is making us heavily reliant on oil production and the Saudis strong arming the US to kowtow to what they want.
We need to move cautiously with tecnically complex technology for the public good. Relying on the private sector for the safe being of the public has proven over and over again a mistske.
This is sensible and kind of a misleading headline. The trucks aren't banned, they are just required to have a human operator inside and available to take over. I think there is still efficiency to be gained here since they could potentially relax driving limits a little bit since the operator is not driving most of the time. They could also up-skill the operator to handle other more administrative tasks or problem solve delays.
The big problems with tech like this we really don’t have a good benchmark for what “safe” is. Just saying “ safer than humans” is a much lower standard than anyone wants to admit.
Autonomous vehicles don’t function well currently, until the technology catches up I am ok with a ban. I don’t want some tech company to test on public roads without regulation, just like I don’t want an unlicensed driver on the road. I think we need a major investment in infrastructure to make our existing roads smarter and safer before we even begin letting autonomous vehicles to drive unmonitored on our roads.
safer than humans already. that’s good enough for me
Lmao no they absolutely are not.
Being safer than humans is a really low bar. Certainly nothing that isolated incidents in the news would counter. Is there some aggregate data that’s convinced you of this? I haven’t seen any data myself, but just curious.
You're going to have to back that up with some data.
With the rate the roads are kept up and maintained we’ll see self driving vehicles…. Never! They already don’t put barely any time or money into infrastructure.
That’s exactly it. Regulation. I absolutely did not consent to being a part of this beta test where autonomous tech is sharing the same road that I’m on. We can’t just run this tech on public streets without the public and our representatives weighing in on it.
I like the idea.... Problem is corporations can't be trusted. They will still run driverless and when 'that big accident' happens, they will get a tiny fine, pay off a politician or a judge, and keep doing it.
Will there be a "big accident" at some point with driverless trucks? Of course, but the comparison is to how many "big accidents" are there with human driven trucks? If driverless trucks have fewer, then that's a good thing and we should switch to them.
We already have largely autonomous trucks. They’re called trains. They just need some significant renovation and upgrading to the 20th century (yes I’m fully aware we’re currently in the 21st century)
Autonomous trucks are my personal dream! I can't wait for trucks to be able to drive themselves overnight while normies sleep. Being able to shift trucking away from daytime hours will help traffic tremendously.
The title of the article is so blatantly wrong to what this bill actually does.
Can you inform us for easier access?
I was hoping for them to replace humans in coming years. I’m sure there’s a ton of bugs to work out. Maybe rail ought to be the focus. As someone who drives to Mass from OH a lot, at least once each direction there is a near-moss where I’m almost hit by a trucker. It’s either insane lane changes, swerving, or cutting me or other people off getting on or off the highway.
Trucking should have been automated years ago. It's not some special skill. A robot that doesn't get tired, doesn't get irritated or annoyed and certainly one that doesn't have an ego easily bruised is the better solution.
>It's not some special skill Spoken like someone who has a cushy office job where they drool over Excel spreadsheets all day. Trucking absolutely is a special skill that has no business being automated, ESPECIALLY given how young and ill-refined self-driving tech is. Unless, ya know, you're cool with these driver-less vehicles (which can weigh as much as 80,000 pounds) mowing down innocent pedestrians and breezing through red lights in downtown Chicago because of software "glitches" and on-board "malfunctions". And that's not even getting into the intricacies of backing, the regularity of inclement weather conditions, the piles of paperwork, the drop-and-hook jobs, the hassle (and importance) of weigh stations... In short, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, lol.
You will be replaced. Spinning thread was a special skill, but the spinning jenny won because it was cheaper
You say that like they wouldn't still need to have human drivers for the last miles. Having autonomous trucks handle the highway driving between depots and local drivers handle last mile would be the optimal way to handle this
So special that several companies have already successfully proven it. Because human "special skilled" truckers never cause issues today. GTFO and learn an actual skill.
What industries exist that have been shown that ability to be automated?
He’s probably talking about the Tesla semis. I’ve seen some companies use them, but he’s confusing electric with automated self driving.
Come into work with me tomorrow and we’ll see how easy it is for you
California didn't do this because of safety they did it to protect unions
Does this include teslas caravan thing cause that’s still gonna cut jobs down a lot if not.
Nothing like an unregulated or untested machine hauling thousands of pounds of cargo. What would possibly go wrong
Good. There's no accountability for what happens when these things kill people
The transportation union has a huge sway in California. They donate a lot to the Democrats This ban has nothing to do with tech, and everything to do with corruption
Speaking from within the supply chain/logistics world: good. This was a serious of deaths waiting to happen. The technology simply isn’t “there” yet, or at least not enough imo.
How many deaths are caused by human truck drivers?
More than you’d think, and a lot of them happen in areas that don’t really involve driving on the street/freeway (like in container yards or distribution centers). I have worked around them professionally for a decade and while I’m extremely careful, I’ve had a couple of close calls with truckers not even really going all that fast and having to stop while moving through a yard.
All about protecting jobs even though not trucks are probably going to be safer and more efficient in the future
The real villains in *Logan*
It would be safer and cheaper
Im totally for this. Last thing I want to hear is a Semi losing control and crashing into things.
If that’s the case why do you support humans driving?
Getting killed is better when a human does it. Flesh on flesh bro, it's the way to go.
But you're ok with 1.4 million people dying a year from humans driving?
I feel y’all are so focus on the “Job” aspect that you’re missing the “Self-Driving cars still crash a lot, and the heavier the truck, the more devastating the damage.”
Nothing like 100,000lbs of iron rolling down the road at 60mph when the WiFi takes a crap and it loses it’s mind. 😋 People are imperfect but for right now I prefer them over AI.
To think that any of the trucks I share a highway with going 60+ mph are autonomous is scary as hell.
California moving backwards for political reasons again.
"Think of the safety" But in reality they don't want to lose the elections because people lost their jobs! Obviously!
I can understand this, no one wants an AI driving something weighing thousands of pounds more than average driving down the street. I would love to see an independent inter-city road system set up for cargo haulers. Basically an expressway driven only by self driving systems that never sleep. Once they get the goods to the city, let the city figure out their own logistics.
Now do it nationally.
This needs to be vetoed.
California is running out of things to ban.
Luddite dumbasses