Self driving trucks and our future

I have no doubt they can make a truck that will drive down an interstate type highway, even perhaps today. But like we say, that's just a tiny fraction of what needs to happen to have a driverless truck eliminate driver jobs. Navigating down a highway is the easy part.

 

Hi MustangMark, Good heavens, I agree with almost everyone (except scythe) The only thing even remotely possible someday, for a driverless truck would be some sort of line haul, between 2 points on an interstate with no stopping or turns. And even that would require a total revamping of our transportation system, and we can't even maintain the system we have. Intermodel comes close, but you still have to get the products to and from the customer. Not to worry, you'll have west coast mirrors and cb antennas on your wheelchair before anything changes, trust me.

 

Sadly, most of these can be worked around once the incentives outweigh the risks. It would cost the companies less to come up with solutions for these problems once driverless trucks are a reality than to pay for someone to be in the trucks all the time. It's hard to say when it will happen, but I'm fairly certain it will happen within the next 20 years or so.

 

Yeah, I can just see somebody in a 4 wheeler getting in between the drivers truck, and the drone trucks. If anything, you might see road trains, like in Australia, 3 or 4 trailers hooked together, all going to centralized drop off point, but this country is just too big to have them going to all the towns and cities. And I'm sorry, I think German drivers are far superior to American drivers. Can you imagine an Autobahn here. These people can't even handle an interstate at 70mph, much less at speeds "reasonable and proper". ( except maybe Montana)

 

I'll just throw this into the mix:
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-07-22/future-of-trucking-big-rigs-become-robot-convoys

 

No way this is gonna happen in 20 tears...not in 220..... OR...at least not for a very , very long time. Way too many variables to be considered , for it to become worth the cost of the infrastructure to support it....for the next several decades technologies will continue to improve , no doubt....but driver less trucks mean a revamp of too many things.....Possibility maybe.....probability...not so much.

 

I know to make it cost effective just put more trailers or tires on the truck. Duh.

 

Its 2014 weren't we supposed to have flying cars by now. All we talked about in school in the 80s and 90s

 

Hi crappie, we do have flying cars, it's a huge government coverup and they are all stored in the Yucca Mountains behind all the nuclear waste, where no one would think of looking for them, Oh oh, excuse me, someones at the door, hey, where are you taking me,,,,,,

 

I think they might be next to the cache of weapons of mass destruction that have yet been turned up....oh #### black helicopters gotta run.....