Hirschbach Motor Lines says it will deploy 500 Aurora autonomous trucks

Aurora/Hirshbach out of H -town has been running without drivers on I-10 thru Tejas for a few years now.

 

7 to 10 years this industry will be a shel of itself. The technology is only going to continue to improve.

Think about it, a fleets two biggest cost are driver pay/benefits and fuel. If they can eliminate one of those it makes sense to do so.

Don’t keep your heads buried in the sand, like many did when it came to elogs (oh it’s never going to happen, blah blah) it’s coming, and it can’t and won’t be stopped.

 

If you think about it this stuff has been being tested for the last 20 years. Every car and truck has had the tech installed a component at a time and everyone that has bought a new vehicle has been the guinea pig and lab mouse to test it. GPS, Electric steering boxes, self assist parking, lane awareness, automatic braking, etc, etc, all being tested in the real world on the buyers dime.

 

None of that matters until it gets seriously tested in the courts. If I was a tort lawyer I would be salivating at the prospect of suing the owners of autonomous trucks. The only thing better than suing someone who has the deck stacked against them in advance is suing someone who wasn't even there but is still liable.

 

Lawsuits won’t matter when the guvment is behind the idea and the tech. Besides aurora/ hirshbach have been running these trucks for at least 5 maybe 6 years now without an accident. I bet they can’t say that for their human piloted trucks. I’m against the tech. So much i saw it coming as far back as 2005 and vowed to never ever buy another new vehicle to be a test dummy to put me out of a job. The paccar digital dash and smart wheels and the gadgets in all the volvas and crapcadias over the years is just one more step towards your retirement.

 

One thing nobody is wanting to think about or admit is these autonomous trucks are covered with cameras. They follow the traffic laws of the road to the t. There is no gray area of human error. They do not speed. They yield and merge smoothly and correctly.and most important of all is they f’n do not drive with the me first mentality. It is going to be incredibly hard to find one at fault.

 

My advice is move to the country an enjoy the tree change.

I did and its far far better then the city. I also got into trucking and on the cusp of buying an E-truck to pull 45t. Might be wrong. But given there are limited roads with white lines or perimeters for self driving trucks to work from in the country, I can't see a take over outside of non interstate major routes anytime soon. I can see driverless platoon interstate haulage on straight wide open roads, but struggle on lesser roads that are narrower, marker less, undulating etc.

Its a funny ol world though. Be a sad-sweet kind of day when sizable trucking company looking at driverless trucks, replaces management with AI. Reckon the value of a tyre fitter, mechanic or auto electrician will double if not triple.

 

Dispatchers and fleet management too. All those jobs gone. So lot of unemployment

 

Yes when all the little kings live happily in their castles on the hill. I wonder if they will feel safe enough to step outside.