Self driving trucks?

You want to guess what's going to cure the "driver shortage?"

 

I'm pretty confident that no one on this board will be around when self driving trucks start affecting peoples jobs.

 

Yup s.e.p.

 

I already know. They're called "trains."

None of the powers that be will like this because legal liability will be muddy, as in there will be no driver to scapegoat.
If the attendant, or rider, or whatever they call the stooge in the cab of this driverless truck, is responsible for its operation, how do they assign blame to him and for what and to what degree?
Legal morass ensues...

 

Well, let's think this through. Assume the "driverless" mode only works on long stretches of remote interstate (as it should), and correctly assume many drivers currently behind the wheel have no business there ... would you rather a moron be in control of the wheel at 02:00 west of Fort Stockton, or a computer?

Don't sweat it. We're a long way away from this technology actually cutting into driving jobs (if it ever will before Armageddon and we start over from scratch)

 

Am i the only one getting flash backs of that bad ### joker truck in maximum overdrive?

 

Fixed guideways don't show up at the local big box store's unloading dock... they're not flexible, and are more suited to loads much larger than what get's shipped to an individual store.

Transportation companies in the Netherlands have already demanded that their traffic laws be modified to allow autonomous vehicles within 5 years. Y'all think Walmart with the kind of political clout they possess can be ignored? Doubtful, and politicians can be bought.

Don't need a scapegoat.

One of the selling points of the technology will be its superiority to human drivers, and it's doubtful that the system will be totally without human supervision. I listened to the former CEO of Google talk about how their autonomous technology works... he claimed that it was superior in lane tracking than what he could do.

Changed my mind on this over the last couple of months... I'd be willing to lay $20 on a bet that within 5 years we'll begin to see autonomous vehicles in "truck platoons" supervised by a team in a command truck. It'll be some time before it filters down to individual trucks, and especially local delivery. I think that carriers with a large amount of cargo that moves between major hubs will be the first to adopt it. FedX, UPS and the like.

 

Uh... Nope, it would take many great miracles for fully autonomous trucks to take to the road, pickup and deliver loads. There is also the issue of things like fueling and weather as well.
Ok, I guess in a very far fetched point of view this idea could be considered possible in theory. I don't see it happening any time soon

 

I was the same way until I saw four FedX doubles heading up the road one right after another... all being pulled by CRST tractors.

Infrastructure will be a problem, but the industry already has a way of handling it. In NY state, they run turnpike doubles up 'n down the road already. Those trains of two 53' trailers can't be run down local roads (especially up in the Northeast) so if you notice, there are areas at many exits from the turnpike that have trailer handling areas for them. They break the units down before running individual trailers out to their destinations at these locations. Same thing with autonomous trucks... I'd see them running platoons up 'n down the roads to areas like this, and then putting a driver in 'em to get them over the local roads to the dock. Fueling would happen at the same sort of location.

Weather is a problem, but outfits likely to use something like this already have a solution mandated on them. You don't see FedX and UPS running triples in bad weather, because they are banned from doing it by law. Same for a truck platoon.

Now why on earth would regulators be open to doing something like this? First, you have outfits like Google experimenting with autonomous personal vehicles. They're on our roads now, albeit with a required human driver and override system. Evidently the results are good. Second, Europe has already demonstrated an autonomous commercial truck. Third, we're doing it to ourselves. How many more Tracy Morgan accidents do you think it will take for the public to demand something be done about "killer truck drivers" careening wrecklessly down the road? That Walmart truck had the works in what safety advocates are demanding we run with now... crash avoidance system, lane departure system, speed limiter, ELD... and that moron driving it still managed to hit a limo with someone in it who has the clout via celebrity and the animus to cause the industry major problems. Tracy Morgan now has a reason to dislike all truck drivers, and has a reason to be a major safety PIA just like the Mad Mom's who Hate Truck Drivers. Fourth, there's the "driver shortage" - real or not, the people who matter believe it's real. If you listened to some of the interviews during the Dallas truck show this year, the CEOs of major carriers all believe the driver shortage is real... they're having trouble filling seats. From what I've heard, everyone expects the supply of drivers to get even tighter over the next few years.

All of this is pointing to a solution for certain portions of the industry that need to do something about getting more freight down the road despite a perceived lack of drivers. You couple that with a bunch of techno-geeks who are now demonstrating a viable autonomous vehicle, an FMCSA that has the goal of ZERO commercial truck-related deaths, a pack of howling, deranged safety advocates with support in Congress... and you have the necessary elements to recommend the introduction of autonomous vehicles in very specific situations. The technology will be expensive at first... especially when you consider that there is going to have to be some sort of redundancy to allay fears of a 80,000 lb truck running amok because of a blue-screen computer. So where does that fit in with the economy of scale that is required for transportation to be cheap?

Outfits that have a lot of freight to move from one specific location to another... the big LTL carriers that run the same routes day in and day out with a high volume of freight is one area that might suggest itself to this technology. The way we do things in our current society is changing rapidly, and the one thing that seems to be constant is change. While the older generations stand around with their technological thumbs up their arse, the Millennial generation is running down the road adopting everything that comes along as fast as it comes along. Have you heard the trucking talk shows where some old fart is complaining he isn't smart enough to run a smart phone, or a computer? How about the threads on TTR where we have drivers who won't even put a GPS in their trucks to relieve their work load a little? Yet the Millennials who will make these decisions are already sitting in decision-making seats in industry, and are quite at home with technologies that will bring us "self-driving trucks." It won't take that much (maybe enough political dollars applied to the right lawmakers) to move the political arena into the mode where a supposedly "safe, efficient, autonomous commercial vehicle" is the answer to "evil, wreckless truck drivers turning our roads into charnel houses." Not that I'm in any hurry myself to see this happen.

I think its going to come along (slowly at first in specific instances) sooner than we expect. It's not going to displace all truck drivers, but it certainly will affect some.