Those worried about self-driving trucks taking your jobs, don't!

Not a ####ing chance will I ever get into a self-driving vehicle. I've got no use for that pipe dream.

 

99% of the robot truck hype was meant to use the media as a way to make a splash and attract more venture capital investors. The stories always have some expert at the robot truck company talking to some idiot reporter that knows nothing about trucking in general and the reporter ask no tough questions. The media stories are little more than a sales pitch that has been perfected with many many attempts. It is always the persons with the least connection to real-life trucking that are the most certain robot trucks will work and that estimate they will be taking everyone's job very soon.

 

Autopilot computers handling the flights most of the distance Hasn’t lowered the salaries of human airline pilots ,

 

Just get a job hauling oversize loads.
Ain’t no robo-truck ever going to be doing that .

 

I've said it multiple times and I'll say it again. Trying to do autonomous vehicles mixed with human controlled vehicles is a fool's errand. There's simply too much unpredictable behavior by the human drivers, and frankly humans are far better at seeing those situations develop than any camera-driven system will ever be.

The only way autonomy really takes off comes at the point that every vehicle is on a common network and communicating it's location, motion, and intentions. Even then, it would be far better if that information went to a control system that issued instructions to the vehicles rather than the vehicles themselves handling the decision making. Individually autonomous vehicles do nothing to help traffic flow, whereas a control system could quite easily start rerouting traffic around trouble spots long before a full-blown traffic jam developed.
Think of the insane number of unusual events one would have to try and program an autonomous vehicle to deal with: Stalled vehicles, crashes blocking lanes or closing highways, emergency construction, etc, etc... Think of even simple things like a freeway ramp that you need to give as many lanes to as possible at certain times, yet at other times you can cruise right by in the right lane. Yes, you can program times for certain behaviors, but then you have a vehicle maneuvering to avoid situations that might not exist. A human can easily note the amount of traffic on a flyover and what that means for a mile up the road, that's not something a computer can easily handle without specific programming for individual locations. That's easily handled on a short dedicated route in an area with minimal traffic, yet becomes almost an unmanageable task for autonomous OTR.

 

Before you guys write off autonomous technology... Just understand there is trucks out there currently doing it... Regardless if there is a babysitter in the driver seat... That driver is only interfeering in certain situations....so to say the tech wont ever be there is just pure ignorance or living in denial. Because it is already happening, and will only continue to improve.

 

My truck is equipped with collision avoidance. In fact every truck I’ve driven since I’ve came into trucking has that on it. About six times a year it’ll go off for no reason. They can’t even get that right. Imagine the self driving trucks flying down the freeway and deciding that the shadow, or the curve it’s going around with the car on the side of the road, or whatever million other things that it thinks it sees that it’s ready to smash into and it just locks the brakes up. It’ll cause accidents no doubt. Also, the human eye and brain as truck drivers can anticipate things that a computer is not going to anticipate. Sometimes you just get a six sense, and you know the idiot is about ready to pull out in front of you. Lol or you see things developing five cars in front of you that’s going to cause a slow down.

 

The technology has been around for less than 10 years.... Where were cell phones at , 10 years after invention? Compared to where they are now ? The main point I am making, is the technology will continue to improve.. Anybody who doesn't get that is either living in ignorance or denial.