In a promotional video published to YouTube on Tuesday, Uber showed how its self-driving trucks are already hauling freight in partnership with traditional trucks. This scene of harmony showed two truckers gainfully employed, one assisted by autonomous driving technology. But according to the head of Uber Advanced Technologies Group (ATG), that may not be Uber’s ideal future.
The video, which is embedded below, shows two truckers who meet up at a point near Topock, Arizona. The self-driving truck, operated by Larry, originated in the Midwest. Larry is met by Mark, a trucker based out of Los Angeles. They meet near the California/Arizona border and swap trailers, then head back the way they came.
According to Uber, this isn’t just a possible future use of technology – it’s already happening. Currently, the self-driving truck still needs an operator like Larry at the wheel at all times, but Uber hopes that will change.
Uber ATG product lead Alden Woodrow confirmed that the company is “focused on a system to take the driver out of the vehicle” – at least for highway driving. Then the autonomous truck would pull into a facility where it could switch trailers with a traditional driver-operated truck to complete the trip.
It’s not the fully-autonomous goal that many tech companies are aiming for, but it’s far closer to the reality of where autonomous technology is today. And for Woodrow, who says highway driving is “likely to be our focus for a long time,” that’s good enough for now.
Source: gobytrucknews, usatoday, truckinginfo, overdrive, nytimes, wired
So, one truck it to the Uber queer truck, then another truck to deliver it the last miles in the city? 3 trucks to do 1 truck’s job? Wow, talk about lowering pollution and congestion on the roads. Wonder why they didn’t debut the truck’s capability in a northern state with snow and ice?
Great points
They are? Have you guys never heard of line-haul switches?
Sure have. Does it make sense for it to drive the 11 hours with a safety operator and take it to a warehouse for yet a third driver to pull? So you depend on three separate vehicles to be dependable and on time, to take care of equipment, and not have issues? Uber isn’t talking LTL, they are delivering truckload. I would want it to be with the one truck the entire time, it’s not time sensitive freight, so this idea is beyond stupid. Then again, most people pushing useless technology don’t let stupidity stop them.
Lol …. they’re going to have to make new stripes.. and New Roads and new ..everything to make these things work.. don’t hold your breath..
It’s really sad that you have to resort to a homophobic slur, just because the autonomous truck emasculates you. Tsk tsk.
I’ll be impressed when someone builds a diesel over electric drive train for a truck like trains have but smaller.not only would it climb mountain and maintain any speed you want, it would produce less pollution and probably get 20 mpg.but that would be too simple. If a train engine set up can pull fifty 200,000 lb cars surely a scaled down version could pull a 53 ft trailer full of paper up hill with ease. It im just a dumb trucker.
30 years ago you will never thought having a FaceTime phone it was true only on fiction movies now you using it without asking a question and what about WIFI THINK AGAIN BRO THEY HAVE WAY BETTER TECHNOLOGY NOTHING IS NEW UNDER THE SUN
too bad uber wont sell its tech to carriers
Really, it would be a shame if people are gainfully employed and not living off government hand outs, wouldn’t it
So … It’s a more expensive alternative to intermodal, one trailer at a time?
Lol
Exactly
Wizards!
Uber and all the rest of the self-driving cr o as can go screw themselves
That was supposed to read self-driving crowd can go screw themselves…..this hi-tech phone can’t even post what is written, how can a hi-tech car be infallible?
This is just the beginning. They will refine it & pretty soon AI will refine itself and leave humanity in the dust and we will enter the age of TERMINATOR.
So your greed is more important than the 10’s of thousands of people lives that WILL be saved when all vehicles are automated? Gotcha. Not too unlike the mega carriers, when it comes to making a buck at any cost. 🙂
Now that is BS! Their is absolutely No Proof these things will be any safer than human driven vehicles.
I wanna see what happens to the automated truck when a sudden dust storm kicks up.
Let’s see how it handles on snow and ice.
Better yet when there is an unexpected road closure due to a natural gas leak.
When the road has been closed due to a fatal and traffic needs diverted to an alternate route.
Autonomous maybe able to stay on the roads yes, but what happens when a car flips in front of them?
It way more dangerous than what the media is telling you.
…and what happens when a tire goes flat, wheel bearing burns up, U-joint goes bad, engine starts making noise, brakes catch fire, or trailer lights quit working in the middle of the night? Can a Autonomous driver throw chains? What will an autonomous driverless truck do if it whacks a cow or elk, and loses a couple of it’s sensors? What would it do if an unavoidable elk/deer jumps out in it’s lane and a car full of kids is in the lane next to it?
Maybe I’m antiquated, but I don’t understand the sick fetish that some have to replace humans.
Moma Pineapple
I don’t believe that anyone or company can ever take the drivers out of the drivers seat because as shown whose going to raise and lower landing gear, whose going to chisel ice from spacers, whose going to put snow chains on tires, whose going to keep the general public safe as Teresa said above, and OMG whose going to keep all of the Pilots, Bucees, Flying J, Love’s, Speedy, and TA operating, because without truckers there’s no one to buy there merchandise and I don’t think there going out of business without a fight. So Uber ain’t going to put not one trucker out of business.
NHSTA fatality statistics do not agree with your inflated claims, professor.
Alex lives won’t be saved and people love their cars why do you think they spend so much money on them. You cannot take people out of the loop. This autonomous shit ain’t cost effective and it ain’t cheap neither. Weigh what it cost to move freight now and what it will cost to move freight with the driverless trucks and maintain maintenance who you gonna get to fix and repair the truck when it breaks down on the road and it will break down. Who you gonna send to the rescue.
They need MONEY!
ALL of it!!
Lol
Big carriers will”buy” into this and then buy the votes in congress to either force everyone else into this or your forced out. Ok Uber, got job for 15 million people or do you expect the government to support them? That’s how many you will unemploy with your technology. Anyone else see this coming?
Yes. The trucking industry is not the only industry that will be affected by the employment of AI & robotics.
Oh and as for the unemployed.
In California they’re already testing out a “universal basic income” where people receive $500 a month. Also from California there have been hearings held in Washington DC on confiscating 401k’s and redistributing them as ‘guaranteed’ $600 monthly payments.
The elites are working hard on a: everyone is dirt poor utopia except for us, the elites.
I absolutely see unemployment rising when the greedy trucking companies decide to replace actual workers with this. I’m curious to see how many drivers actually want to finish the last or first few miles. Since most companies pay by the mile I don’t see why drivers who want full time work would be interested in this. BTW what happens when there’s a mechanical breakdown ? Is the truck programed to get itself off the roadway and shoot a message to breakdown , and how long will that load sit until they’re able to find a tech who can figure these trucks out . I see a long list of cons in this
If truck breakdown it will call mechanic automatically and he will fix it automatically. You don’t even have to stop it’s just gets fixed automatically.
Sarcasm
Have you seen the new Walmart video of their aero big rig pulling a carbon fiber trailer? Tesla electric big rigs are hauling in Nevada and California. Waymo is GOOGL and after 9 years of invention have a fully autonomous Chrysler Pacifica driving in Arizona and California. The Waymo technology can see around corners and in front of parked vehicles on the side of the road.
10 to 15 years from now trucking will be vastly different than what we currently know. I imagine many layoffs, and low wages being the future. We had better begin to prepare ourselves to either move into different areas within logistics or a different field all together. The train has left the caboose and it has a definite end, that end being completely autonomous tractors.
Boycott Uber!!
Im not too worried about it taking over the industry for a long time to come. Pretty sure only the biggest companies could afford some of this tech and pretty sure it would be expensive to customers to employ Uber to haul it. I think there is a partial need for the tech though since the industry is still short of drivers needed to haul it all.
And since this industry is a revolving door with all the accidents on peoples records, and the fact that future generations dont see a road career as favorable, its only a matter of time before this becomes used more often.
The company I work for is small compared to most other companies and they still have Tesla trucks on order…
You can’t have to many computer drivers on the road at the same time we all know computers have glitches and they fail make it what about the safety of the systems make it easy for hijacking trucks but the technology could be helpful to drivers it the use it that way the technology is not flawless.
The industry is short of drivers because the big companies are big on promises but fail to deliver.
Most pay 20-50 a day.
Now who can feed a family on that?
The average fleet spends over $60,000 per driver annually (this includes employer paid taxes, SS, benefits). The average fleet truck runs just a bit over 3 years before being replaced.
By replacing the driver, they can save nearly $200,000 per unit lifetime…that will buy a lot of technology.
It’s coming. Just not as fast as the Tech giants want you to believe.
The tech is only going to cost between 30,000 and 50,000 to outfit one truck. One years salary to never have to pay a truck driver, vacation, workers compensation claim. Sounds like pretty easy math to me. To everyone that keeps saying it will never happen, look around, we are testing the technology right now for them. Keep telling yourself it won’t ever happen when you are in the unemployment line
My semi-autonomous 2018 Cascadia hit a deer, and even with a $2,000 cow plow on the front, the deer head managed to hit the bumper and took out one of the 2 radar sensors, knocking out my adaptive cruise control and adaptive braking system.
It took 7 weeks to get it fixed.
Fully autonomous vehicles WILL NOT WORK.
Yes, they will. It’s only a matter of time.
AI & robotics will eliminate almost all the jobs on earth. Then AI will eliminate humanity.
The future will be as portrayed in THE TERMINATOR.
Yeah it happened to one of ours a few days ago also. But the thing I hate most about it other than it’s going to put a lot drivers out work is the truck try’s to to stop it self for no reason. Just the other day 3 lane interstate nothing close in front of me nothing around the truck bang collision warning truck starts breaking hard engine brakes come on the works. Had it been raining I most likely would had a jackknifed situation happening I’m super uncomfortable driving this truck sometimes. But if there’s no driver at all behind the wheel then I guess you don’t have to worry about killing him just the general people in the four wheelers would probably end up getting killed. Yeah great technology Uber keep up with the good work but like the other guy said it’s going to take people getting killed by these driver busters from not being put in use hopefully I will be retired by then. Truck safe my brother and sisters.
My last truck, a Volvo had the anti-collision braking. Besides being annoying it would also occasionally jam them on when approaching bridges. I think it was mistaking them for vehicles.
‘Driver busters’
I like THAT!!
Hahaha
Good thing it was only a dear and not a child chasing a ball. This can work, but never ever safely at all. Never!
Not counting the infrastructure that’s damn near destroyed… Stripes passing Lanes all that has to be fixed before these things going to work right it’s a pipe dream…
What part of semi-autonomous did you not understand? This system is supposed to supplement your reaction time, not avoid everything by itself. My Volvo S60 has the City Safe feature to prevent rear end and pedestrian collisions. I’m still going to go for the brake, but hopefully the system has already got most of the work of stopping started.
So either the deer came faster than it could react (also meaning faster than a human could react) or it didn’t detect at all (the system isn’t perfect, but they still are better overall vs human reactions) and you just sat there (or maybe you were watching something on your phone while driving) and let the truck strike thinking that it was supposed to stop all on it’s own.
I actually had a deer run if front of me was left of the drivers door, then got spooked did a flip and ran right in to my wheel.
How does anyone prevent that?
Would the a fully autonomous truck know to pull over? Check the steer for damages or the wheel well?
Oh, you drive a Volvo, that explains your attitude.
Probably a Silicon Valley idiot here to defend “his or her” position. Could Alex blindside in a dock, adjust brakes, slide tandems, come within a few inches of hitting a vehicle to get into a spot, swap a turbo on a roadside, blow a tire up on a bead with ether, etc? No, probably not, ever. But Alex can talk about the virtues of unnecessary and unproven technology at length.
People who typically buy cars like your Volvo are expecting the car to bail them out because you lack the skill to drive correctly. The same can be said for peop,e who think technology is the answer, they typically aren’t capable of solving problems and lack the mechanical wherewithal. Do you take your car to AutoZone when the check engine light is on so they can tighten the gas cap?
Will the DOT ticket the truck then for violations lol, can you imagine miles of autonomous trucks going 65 mph on the interstate lol. What a gridlock, no wonder nobody wants to touch this industry anymore and I dont blame them. One benefit tho is the new trucks wont throw out piss jugs or wear flip flops lololol…..
Good point lol
The truck attendant will still throw them out because his autonomous truck won’t stop to let him piss. Lol
LOL
That’s funny. This is about the rich getting richer, not safety or shortage of drivers, etc. Trucking is at an all time low; that’s why less people want to drive. There are too many reguations, high turnover and nowhere near as much money to be made, across the board, for drivers. I know several drivers who’s made roughly the same annual income for a decade or more (give or take a good year or two); all while being away from home in the process. It sucks!
Um, trucks already go 65 in these area, just like cars. I don’t see the point here.?
Cars are rude and cut off trucks regardless our speed we can’t stop like cars! See the point now?
Uber put this news here to learn from truckers comments , good luck to the 4 wheelers And RVs drivers because if this autonomus truck decide to stop because is a alligator in the road or a deer croosing
Wait for a rear end
Ussually trucker take the suicide get out the road and kill they self trying no kill anybody in emergency stop or switch lane to let the traffic merge
FMCSUber own this bussiness
Now 4 wheelers are showing a middle finger to a empty truck lol
As a business owner and a one man operation truck driver. Ill say it once more people say elds will never happen well it did. And the self driving trucks will happen to. Think about the big carriers they wont have to put up with us any more so those so called drivers who didnt fight againest the elds here you go this is what happens when there isnt any actions. Our four fathers would be kicking our butts for not standing up for what’s right. Actions speak louder then words
I personally thought we had a driver eres system. Government supported and all. Called the railroad. I’ve being hearing how we are all going to become intermodal drivers for 30 years. I agree as for the led.
I don’t know a single driver who didn’t fight against HoS or ELDs. Has the opinion of the driver ever counted for anything, except when it is used to hold him to blame?
Are you suggesting a shutdown, which will only increase the motivation to replace us with computers? Do you have a suggestion for some *useful* action to take?
Few nasty accidents on TV and people will be afraid to drive near a truck.
And it will happen sooner than later.
I suggest to put those fabulous truck in congested city’s at rush hours or nasty weather and everyone life it’s at risk.
Amen
I can see this as a good thing. Only one company Comes to mind thou….
Swift.
Yup they’d benefit greatly, no more accidents or far fewer than they do now. FedEx is another one
Well if Uber gets this done, the airlines might as well get the pilots out of the planes also. Planes can take off, fly, and land themselves, they would just need ground grew there to put the them in the gates or run ways. This country is not going to be happy until there are no jobs.
People should be very scared of this happening. I love the fact they don’t test this out in 40 MPH winds with sheet of ice and 10 inches of snow on the ground. Google already had their auto driven car hit a bus and that was on dry roads. People in this country better wake up, if this goes thru, gun control will be the least of their worries.
There is already FAA regulation to permit airborne drones, autonomous or remotely-operated. They have been in the air for some time, now. Before that, pilots were hired out of places like Brazil, to keep costs down. You don’t have to be a citizen of the country that you fly to; just have a valid passport. Autonomous drones don’t even need the passport.
Planes have been landing themselves since the 70’s. My recently retired brother flew for Delta, and previous to that United since he got out of the military in 1974. He was part of the pilot program that fine tuned the planes to ‘fly by wire’ and land with the pilot simply sitting there ready to take over if something failed. Happens thousands of time every day without an incident.
This autonomous truck driving is no different.
Uber already screwed the car drivers as most of them dont know the actual cost per mile and average less than 4$ a hour they only want to drive down wages and turn driving into a unskilled job
May as well take drivers out. It don’t pay enough to do the job any more
And this will only make the driver shortage worse. Self driving trucks = fewer miles available for drivers. Fewer miles = less money. Since this would be used to drive down costs, there won’t be an increase in driver pay. Why would anyone want to drive if they can’t make a living at it?
I pray they know why they are doin because with flatbeds they should find a technology that will throw the straps over a load an tighten itself an drive to do the extra work that way when truckers don’t have to work we can get higher social security pay for filing against the system that they thought would work
Well that may put many California drivers in the yard jockey position. The insurance guru’s are salivating at the price of insurance premiums, which I am sure will be passed on to you and I. Will the swap driver get paid to drop and hook both trailers or get the driver to do it for free? For free for sure, because they say the alternative is driving in congested 55 mph California.!
We can’t even determine whether an election was hacked. Banks have been hacked, governments have been hacked. Who the hell wants 3 or 4 million autonomous trucks on the road? Ohhh. Thats right. Terrorists do. It’s inevitable. The greatest hack of all time. Like all planes grounded at 911, all trucks will be shut down. That is, the ones that didn’t drive into crowds of people or buildings. Very scary reality. A brain can’t be hacked. Remember all those rest areas we wanted so we could get off the road safely? Well rest assured they’ll be built in a hurry after the first wheel comes off, but they’ll be autonomous vehicle hwy inspection stations. All you mechanics jump on that. Its a good business to start up. There’s hundreds of not thousands of scary scenarios we can all think of.
If you shut down in a lane on the interstate for repair or maintenance four-wheelers will never let those autonomous trucks merge into the one open Lane and you’ll have miles and miles of backed up trucks until one of them has a computer program that will allow them to get a little aggressive someone will get killed and it’ll be a major lawsuit
Yes and with this being Ubers idea they should be held accountable no matter which company owns the truck. This is the dumbest idea I think I have ever seen
Merging accidents at those low speeds are rarely fatal.
I don’t see self driving trucks being used in numbers big enough to affect driver jobs for a very long time, if ever. There are too many variables that can disable the self driving system and kill people. As somebody mentioned about, a deer took out a sensor that made the system useless. You have snow, ice, high winds, blown tires, just hundreds of things can go wrong. If there were special roads or even lanes on the interstates just for self driving vehicles then it could possibly work, but otherwise we humans will make it impossible for them.
Tesla is on the leading edge of this technology and when one of their autonomous cars has an accident, you hear almost nothing about it on the news. Just a few weeks ago on an LA highway, a Tesla in self driving mode ran into the back of a firetruck stopped at a highway emergency going 65 MPH. Now imagine if that had been a fully loaded autonomous truck.
As long as the roads are full of us fast driving flawed humans, large numbers of self driving trucks will just be a pipe dream.
Technology is just that, it’s a tool of sorts, but if it still requires a driver to be there or maybe 2 how is it saving money, it will still require hands on fuel the truck, check fluid levels, visually check for mechanical problems, airing the tires, repairing flats, coupling, setting the landing gear down and up, pull the king pin handle, require someone to sign in to unload, reload, so in the end of all this how is it economical and where is the money saved, it’s just a wishful thinking, the big fleet’s may want it, but they want someone else to pick up the tab like taxpayers to get what they’re not willing to pay for it
Most of that could theoretically be automated as well. Fluid gauges, airing up, almost all of that could be done via onboard sensors and reserve tanks. Maybe not changing tires but if they were equipped with redundant tires, flats could be changed at an automated facility later. Systems could be built in to manage weather better, etc. Maybe it’s not yet. But it’s coming.
And now mark gets payd 10cpm he is not even a driver anymore hope he got good money for the ad
I’m not a driver but I work for a trucking company and work closely, daily, with drivers.
There are definitely issues with autonomous vehicles, no doubt. I’ve always said that once a truck is autonomous what’s to stop organized crime from stopping in front of a driverless truck on 70 in the middle of BFE Kansas, pulling up behind the now stopped truck and popping seals and stealing cargo? I’m not expecting a driver to be Rambo, but they’d at least have the sense to tell the difference between actual road congestion and a stick-up.
That being said, the driver pool is depleting. All companies are starving for drivers and the younger generation just isn’t interested in it. The average age of our fleet is 57. Let’s face it: being a professional driver is a hard life. It’s not the worst, but it certainly isn’t as easy as sitting in a nice comfy office for from 9-5 every day. You bust your ass, you’re gone from home for sometimes months. Best case scenario if you want to make ok money you’re only home 2 days a week- and that’s not even living high on the hog money. The 21+ year olds out there just expect easier lives. They want more for less. It’s really a shame.
Also, because of the driver shortage you’ve got 90% good quality drivers that you never have to worry about. Dependable, safe, professional drivers. The other 10%… they’re babies. I got a call from one of the 10% because he had to wait almost 2 hours at his bump on the other side of the country. How many of you used to real trucking laugh at a 2 hour wait? These guys call off, they have the dirtiest MVRs, they’re disrespectful, and they annoy the piss out of everyone— and they can keep doing it!
Why? NOT ENOUGH DRIVERS. Autonomous driving isn’t about safety. Professional truck drivers out there aren’t the ones getting into accidents. It’s passenger vehicles that have less miles going forward than you have going backward that’s the safety concern.
Autonomous trucks are coming because we don’t have enough warm bodies to put in the seats AND because of the 10% that are taking advantage of the need for drivers now.
Inventions of. . .
Ships, 2613 BC
Planes,1903
Trains,1804
Trucks,1898.
All of which can operated 100% automated, but will always require pilots, captains, engineers, and drivers. All because a lil word called liability. Truckers do not worry.
Here is a good one for you to ponder about your self driving trucks. You see an accident on the road ahead. Uber trucks drive on the road, but the Police are making everyone drive 10 mph due to the accident and use the mediam to cross over the other side of the highway creating a two lane both direction highway on one side. Will Uber trucks do that. How is this one, Everyone knows their GPS puts you in spots you can not explain to the Police, so what do you do when the road has construction again? Then what?? There are two many variables like when a sign says do not go by your GPS use the street signs. Ever see them? If there is a driver there, then why do we have self driving trucks? It’s already boring enough, you think!!!
The video is a bit vague. Wouldn’t it be wise and more cost effective to put the cargo on a train for the long haul? Less congestion on the highway and less worry of the self-driving truck driving itself off the road or into someone else?
I hate to see less jobs, but Uber still has to have a trucker in the cab to manage it’s haul….So, let the worker just drive the truck!
What about DOT inspections and weigh stations, does the truck pull in?
Really think about it. The e-logs make you tired due to you have no choice but to drive like hell to get to your destination. Will a self driving truck now You won’t be even more tired? Your not a truck driver then if you say no? That is BS and you know it. I know you will sit there and knit a sweater for your cat while in the drivers seat doing nothing. Well duh!
11 hours on paper or 11 hours on a computer is still 11 hours. How do elogs make you drive like heck or drive differently than you may have used to do to get to where your going? Unless you were one of the drivers that forced the government to mandate the elogs in the first place? I think what you meant to say is you can’t fudge (falsify) your logs as easily anymore.
It is somewhat funny to read the comments from some who are upset that they must now actually plan out a trip because the ability to easily creatively write is gone.
To get on topic now. Until every vehicle on the roadway can communicate with each other, (and every large wild animal is tagged. J/k), widespread use of fully autonomous technology is still quite a ways in the future.
Jeff, it’s not somewhat funny to watch someone buy into another one’s greed and not realize they are just making someone else rich.
Because using e-logs will eventually force you into a split shift/night shift situation. If you have ever run produce you would know that. If you have to wait 6 hours for a pick and you have 6 picks you’re telling me your going to wait another 4 hours to complete a ten hour break because the e-log requires it?!
It will take you 2-3 days to get loaded: I will have already done my delivery and be on my next load.
If course this is what the big carriers want; eliminate the competition through regulation, they will run team or relay loads to drive the small businesses out. Next will be speed limiters.
My concern is a cyber attack. Governments around the world can’t keep their most secured servers from being hacked. The US still has people in charge of the actual launch controls for our ballistic missile system because they can’t guarantee it won’t be activated by a cyber attack. How can any of these tech companies keep these autonomous vehicles from being remotely piloted by those who would want to use them to harm others?
Who’s going to do the pre-trip and though post? The only thing I can think of is before the truck leaves the shipper somebody will do a pre-trip and then when it gets to the transfer point whoever the truck driver is switching over the trailers to drive through the city will have to do a post-trip on that truck before I can head back to where it came from. I do believe that we’re going to see a lot more of this on the road in the near future and the excuse is going to be there’s a driver shortage as opposed to seeing if you paid Truckers a wage that they can afford to buy a house and take care of their family there wouldn’t be any shortage
Sure is amazing UBER has pulled most of there selfless driving cars in the Phoenix area due to the number of accidents the cars were getting involved in now since they can’t get that down pat let’s try a 80 thousand pound vehicle let’s see what kind of wreck it can cause with no one behind the wheel bottom line is computers fail 7 days a week 365 days a year and anyone with common fking since would say hmmm do I really want a car or much less a truck going down the road at 70+ mph with no one behind the wheel and it’s CPU system is liable to fail
Interesting, and what do we, as the tax paying public, do with the 1,000,000+ people put out of work? We can’t all just be Uber drivers, or is that in the plan too?
Autonomous vehicles have a time and a place, the time is NOT when we as a nation are still crawling out of a recession (Read Depression) and people already cannot find work. But, by all means America, tank our economy.
The large carriers want autonomous trucks mainly due the the so called “driver shortage”. They have tried to mass produce drivers out of their CDL mills, and we’ve all seen how that’s working out. The only solution they see is to mass produce driverless trucks.
I wouldn’t worry about it. As soon as one kills a family of four the lawsuits that follow will bankrupt uber and that will be that. Besides it will always be more cost effective to buy an 80,000.00 rig and pay for fuel and a driver for ten years than it will be to pay 1,000,000.00 for the autonomous truck and when it breaks down pay another 1,000,000.00 to fix it.and will the truck install its own tire chains to get through an icy mountain pass? Too many variables involved to think its as easy as building a truck that can stay in its own lane.then there’s infrastructure. Who’s paying for that? To go this route would mean a gallon of milk would cost 87.00.good luck with that.
It is time to boycott uber…unless you want a job working at the fast food.. they are taking away your job…BUT…BUT..BUT.. the article said they have all of these humans…give them time and you will be unemployed..
Just heard on the radio the other day
They have an autonomous burger flipper now
Something around 60k for it
There goes at least 3 jobs
Will be retiring in a couple of years would like to be able to drive one of these trucks from home on my computer
It’s really sad to see all of these threatened drivers. They would rather make a buck, instead of embracing a technology that would save 10s of thousands of lives every year. So sad. 🙁
10s of thousands you say there Alex? Last year, trucks were involved in just over 4000 fatal accidents. Estimates from various studies, including the esteemed MIT, put the car at fault typically 80% of the time, so it would save 1200 lives? Not quite the bleeding heart effect your we’re going for, but nice try. By the way, how many do cigarettes kill a year? Is it still in the millions?
Yea…I am very comfortable saying that I don’t want automated driving around. Whether or not it’s saving a buck or not.
And there’s no proof anywhere regarding saving tens of thousands of lives at this point. Technology is fallible and expensive to update. Sounds like Corporate America wants to dwindle the working millions of blue collar workers to line the pockets of the millionaire corporate white collar executives. Hiding under the guise of saving lives.
Wont those trucks be loved by the public when one xant avoid a situation and a bunch of people get killed? Think of the insurance that Uber will have to have for that scenario! Good luck idiots at Uber!
To be honest it can’t be anything worse then the kids coming out of truck driving school now days… or a swift driver or Snyder.. etc you see it everyday in truck stops drop yard’s warehouses. As it sounds from what I have read it seems to be a overpowered cruise control… driver still sitting behind the wheel and should be paying attention to the road and surrounding. This also leads to if something happens accident wise then is it the driver or the trucks fault we all know how that goes. I don’t see drivers going anywhere for a while I’m secure with my place in the logistics line
. Yeah just wait till somebody hack into the system
I would like to see a self drive truck drive 1000 miles in snow and ice during winter months.
The constant adjustments and judgement calls needed to traverse those nasty roads is beyond the capabilities of any self drive system I would think.
And putting on snow chains, that will be have to be done by the driver and wages will have to stay the same – so what’s the point of self drive trucks?
I guess time will tell.
It is simple gentleman we are dinosaurs. This is the comet. This is the solution to the driver shortage and retention problem. I am a one truck operator with my own authority. This change is inevitable. I do not like it either. Trucking affords me good income and flexibility. This is the REAL reason for ELD.Auto trucks will for sure take over the OTR aspect of trucking. Why? Because highway driving is easier and less risk to public and carrier. Too many jurisdictions to deal with in city driving. Otr 50 plus the feds. Thats manageable. Short term you will see changes in fmcsa rules, pay benefits, boom in local work and streamlined pickup and delivery. Long term otr trucking is on life support and will become another low paying blue collar job.Once auto trucks clear the inevitable lawsuits and fatal incidents. We will become extinct. Prepare yourself.
Hey I got an idea… Let’s make everything robotic, automatic, and autonomous. Then all of us unemployed, broke humans can just hurry up and kill ourselves so we can get out of the way of the robots’ productivity LMAO. I mean seriously, what’s the end game here?? If there are no jobs, there will be no demand for products and, therefore, no need for transportation. That’s just basic economics, plain and simple. Plus, robots don’t have to eat or provide for a family either. It’s mind-boggling that this technology is actually being developed… Who would want to create artificial competition for themselves? If they put it in trucks, it will be everywhere eventually. This is why I hate modern technology. Seems like everyone wants to live in some kind of fictional dimension instead of reality; actual real life. I don’t know whether to laugh hysterically or cry miserably.
Reminds me of and old movie were trucks come to life and they want to destroy everything. Anyone remember the name of movie?
Yep Stephen King predicted it LOL. “Maximum Overdrive” was the old 80’s movie and “Trucks” was the late 90’s remake. That was back when stuff like that was funny fiction, not an actual business model.
Exactly
new volvo truck 2016. both front wheels came loss, Drive shaft out of PHASE tiring my truck up, Front wheel BEARING NUTS LOSS and more . and were going to have driver less truck B.S.
Let’s say a self driving truck detected a object on the road will it stop .go around the object or stay there . along with the other self driving trucks for hours blocking traffic.accidents.late deliveries.hum.think about that
Thanks
What we’re seeing here is a bigger issue than just the loss of trucking jobs. As technology advances, human beings are becoming less necessary. The fatal flaw of Capitalism is that it places profit as the highest priority. Not the well being of society in general, or of employees in particular. Technology is advancing at a far greater pace than our ability to respond to it’s changes. There will come a day, and it’s not that far off, where human beings are largely unnecessary. We have personal issues, health problems, pay demands, etc. All of these are costs which will be happily avoided by CEO’s every time they eliminate a job formerly performed by a human being. We need to start planning for the kind of society we want. Unrestrained capitalism is not our friend, people. We are a “cost” to be eliminated.
Probably because you’ve been stuck behind a pack of 65 mph trucks, because u are one,!, and by the by quit clogging up the middle lane.
As someone who has worked in Technology for 25 years, but has always been keen to quit their corporate job to hit the open road in a big rig, all I can say is:
This is coming.
No one can predict the future, but a number of key legal questions regarding Automated Driving Systems (ADS) have been resolved by lawmakers over the past couple years, and they keep resolving them as they come up.
This is going to change the transportation industry in ways that no one can imagine. Who could have ever thought that the phrase “Porch Pirates” would enter our vocabulary to describe people who steal packages ordered off the Internet?
Personally, I don’t see mass unemployment amongst truck drivers, but I do see the game changing significantly. I would not invest in a new rig with a sleeper cab as the first loads to go to the machines are going to be long haul.
I do see the need for people who know how to safely load trucks at point of origin and deliver freight to final destinations to continue for quite some time.
The likes of some companies such as Swift and Schneider paying people to attend Truck Driving school will dwindle for a while and at some point stop all together.
I DON’T like Uber or Lyft and this automated, driverless technology period. It takes away jobs and is NOT good for the economy. Whatever happened to good old fashioned hard work?
Also I want to add Uber and Lyft are hurting Bus and Taxi and Limoousine companies with discount bull crap. Personally I would like to see Uber and Lyft cease to exist!!!!
Political fright talk from democrats, it take only one multiple casualties to end this nonsense. Remember accident from Phoenix and it involves car, with semi truck it would be nightmare for Uber.
From day one I have been telling my kids do anuthing but drive a truck. Hopefully I will be long retired before this is fully implemented.