A new group has formed called the Partnership for Transportation Innovation and Opportunity. Made up of auto manufacturers, trucking groups, and tech companies, PTIO wants to examine how autonomous vehicles will impact American workers. But one of its goals is also to help workers find new career opportunities in an “autonomous-vehicle-enabled economy” – presumably once their old jobs disappear.
PTIO members include the American Trucking Association, Waymo, Lyft, Uber, Volvo, Daimler, Ford, and more. The group says that since automated vehicle technology has the potential to have such a huge impact on the economy, they have decided to study how it will affect workers.
Goals for the first six months of operation are:
- begin to develop a well-rounded and data-based understanding of the impact and implications of autonomous vehicles on the future of work,
- solicit the expertise, concerns, and aspirations of a variety of interested parties, and
- begin to foster awareness of existing and near-term career opportunities for workers during the transition to a new autonomous vehicle-enabled economy.
According to AAA, autonomous vehicles are expected to leave at least 1 million service drivers unemployed.
The future of commercial truck drivers is also uncertain. Federal regulators seem ready to accept autonomous vehicles with open arms. FMCSA Administrator Ray Martinez praised the technology as “one of the tools that will lead us to safer roadways.”
“As with any prior technological revolution, the transition from traditional to autonomous vehicles will not happen overnight,” said Maureen Westphal, PTIO executive director. “This evolution should allow adequate time for us to understand how autonomous vehicles may change the way we live and work and implement policies and programs to respond proactively to, and allow all Americans benefits from, those changes.”
Source: truckinginfo, ttnews, theverge, engadget, venturebeat
I totally trust these people to look out for my best interests. If they combine their years of non-trucking experience to hypothesize about the industry, only good will come. Go morons, go morons!!!!
Hackers are going to have a ball LOL the infrastructure about highways will drastically change our president wants to take us back two T-Model age that means the only jobs left is cleaning out the trailers LOL but I am all for it I love progress good luck drivers the rich oligarchs is in control
They said Cyberdyne was a good idea too…. Look what happened there…. Lol 😀
Our infrastructure can hardly handle the volume, weight, and habits of trucks as is, what makes them think auto driving ones can? You’ll always need a human at the wheel, whether there or remotely, to made on the spot decisions where many non-standard issues are faced. Like, how would a self driving truck handle construction zones where there are no lines or guidance? Or if the road is completely covered in snow and the truck is too, covering sensors and whatnot? Or if the load is heavy and you’re trying to climb Donner’s pass? Or if the technology just plain screws up and dumps a load into the ditch for no reason? Humans aren’t perfect, but neither is automated technology designed by humans.
I do like some of the assistance things that has come out of this push though. Like my adaptive cruise control and braking. I’m essentially an iconic steering wheel holder at this point, no matter what traffic does in front of me. Takes allot of stress out of it, as you just drive. Everyone road rages at the guy in front of you who can’t seem to make up their mind how fast they want to go. Not me. I’m paid by the hour and my truck will keep you 3.6s away.
Its also interesting to note that all members of moron study group stand to gain the most from this tech being developed. Gee, I wonder if the findings will be overwhelming in favor?
I am sure this same group developing self driving technology will factor in anticipation, thought, reasoning and experience into the software as they more forward
“and allow all Americans benefits from, those changes.”
“According to AAA, autonomous vehicles are expected to leave at least 1 million service drivers unemployed.”
Yup, the benefits just keep stacking up. We’ll just port these millions over to being, oh I don’t know, maybe doctors? These fools probably take the bus to work. And how come we haven’t heard any plans to put computers in charge of driving buses?
Sucks that Daimler is on there just ruined a good stop for me. Already can’t stand going to Tesla. My company is probably a member of the ATA anyway…..,When we’re all outa work we should party in the desert and shoot out autonomous truck tires as they go by. Just think of it, 1 million people, that’s a good size army.
Why don’t they fuc# each other n study that instead of trying to screw the rest of us hard working people? Anyone that pushes to take jobs away is evil I hope whoever is pushing for this lose all their jobs 🖕
In all my 35 years working in transport, I have never seen as much hubris as I have seen from Elon Musk, the ATA (love child of Thomas Donahue), tech-jags like Uber, and others not to be named here. You folks on top, you know, the ones with too much money who-think-you-robotize-everything, what do you think will happen to you when all these decent paying jobs are automated? It won’t be long when one of these highly touted long-haul drones mysteriously ends up in a ditch.
Seriously, I’d like to see a drone handle port or railroad terminal situations. No way!!!
If this automatic none human running machine kills someone the good side is no driver at fault. but the bad side could be do we need to fund for new highways. Are the repairs more expensive? Is this remote control ? Who gets the ticket? Does it stop at lights intersections and stop signs? Does it yield? how does it refuel and do pre trips? I just want to know does it do logs? Does it put in HOS ?
Ikr I’m wondering the same things driver.
Over the past 20 years I have seen how many great company’s has gone down and how many people have become lazy due to being unemployed because they have lost their jobs …..their homes …their families …a great part of these things happend because of government interference..American pride was created and built on hand and knee hard work…but as the passing years has gone comes another threat to the American way …I hope that when these autonomous trucks are in action that I will be six feet under …. if it’s a safer truck that you want on the road …then you should start with the driver …these machines have to go over a lot of rough terraine …but it’s not the machine that is dangerous it is the driver …the government should put emphasis on drivers education
We will start a cargo theft ring! Think about it, these are going to be driverless trucks. We can spike their tires then when they pull over to get them fixed it will leave us plenty of time to pick apart the trailer! Whose with me?