Will industry shortage make automation come sooner

Engineers learned decades ago that people tune out when you make them passive monitors. The nerds love their machines and just define whatever they do as "good". You might as well argue with a teenage girl that her boyfriend is a thug.

 

That's an accurate analogy too.

 

The nerds need to drive a truck before making machines for a truck.

That's why in programming development if you are writing a program for accountants, you have accountant consultants on your development team that use the program as it's being created and giving feedback along the way. That's what makes a million dollar program. It's not just the programmers following a blueprint. It has teams of people in different areas. Some gaming studios have their own orchestras to produce music for their dramatic moments, and the music majors write music to fit the part. They don't know anything about games or programming, but they know music and emotion.

If you are writing a program for physicists, you either have physics there as consultants or you hire programmers that are also physics (yes, those do exist).

Anyway, you get the point. If you want to make something that might help a truck driver, consult with one... consult with one that wasn't an ex-navy Seal.

 

Sorry, but your post isn't close to accurate. All crashes involving autonomous vehicles are reported, whether operated by the computer or the driver. To date in the United States there have been four fatal crashes involving Level 2 autonomous vehicles and one fatal crash involving a Level 3 autonomous vehicle. The Level Three vehicle was the one that struck the pedestrian on the dark road, crossing with a bicycle.

 

That sounds like a great conspiracy theory, EXCEPT...
Examining accident reports involving autonomous vehicles in California

 

What wreck? You, yourself agreed that your braking system has not caused you to have an accident.

 

Worship the tech? No, but I understand that autonomous vehicles are already on our streets. They are coming to cars, trucks, and buses. They are the future. You can rail against the machine, if you wish, but that won't stop it from coming. The fear that many drivers have is that these vehicles will put us out of work.

These things are expensive, far more expensive than a butt in the seat. Yes, there will be some mega carriers that purchase 10 or even a 100 of them, but that same mega carrier will still have a few thousand human driven trucks on the road. Truck driver will become a more technical job, as this progression towards autonomous trucks progresses. It will require more training, and pay more money.

 

The trucking companies are consulting with truck drivers. They hire them to not only help with programing but to ride in the Level 4 trucks.

Humans Wanted: Self-Driving Truck Technology Firms Seek Drivers

Daimler Starts Highway Test of Autonomous Freightliner Truck

 

A Level 3 autonomous vehicle requires a monitor behind the wheel. A Level 4 autonomous vehicle requires a qualified driver on board but the driver is not expected to actively monitor the vehicle or its decisions. The qualified driver is there in the even that the system shuts down. In a Level 4 autonomous vehicle, the driver doesn't even sit behind the wheel.

The vehicles that are currently on the road, not only have a CDL licensed driver on board but also an engineer.

Let’s Not Get Too Excited By Self-Driving Truck Highway Stunts

 

I think we are a long way from unmanned vehicles operating on the roads. I am not sure we have the technical ability to do it. I know we can build robots that can see a hazard and stop. However what about ice, snow as well as rain? It's hard enough as it is now keeping up with the ever-changing dynamics of the road. To make this work we are going to have to build computers that are for all practical purposes sentient, with some of the highest tech possible with sensors and other input-output devices attached.

Yes, today we can play around with some limited stuff. I like the research going on because much like the space program left the US with some great advances in several areas, this will likely do the same.