Driverless trucks, game over?

Not necessarily game over.

I know full well there will be robot trucks running sometime in the future. I would be obselete.

But there will be a hell of a employment gain to be had with a fleet of National Tire Men to fix these Robots and flats. And countless other little things that will come up and the robots are unable to proceed. Remember Robots will not be gentle with a light touch coming around a tight curb with those trailer wheels. They will simply execute the hard right and the outside trailer tires be ######. See where Im going with this?

I see a future where you, me and everyone licensed to drive will sit on our gaming computers on fiber optic connections overseeing these robot trucks around the USA. I for one would not want that kind of work for a living. It's bad enough that some air force pilots have to fly drones into battle while sitting in a nice safe lazy boy 8000 miles from the war.

 

While we're at it, let's not even bother using body armor or helmets, either.... Matter of fact, we should all wear blaze orange and be told to stand directly facing the enemy.
We wouldn't dare want to have any tactical advantage whatsoever......

 

I don't know about the blaze orange.

I once typed 10 years ago while building a gaming computer with my Platoon of about 100 People around the World and told them one day we will be sitting here on our desks at home fighting a war via machines by remote overseas. That was back when the first of the teasing and joking was being raised in the AirForce when the Pentagon first decided that Drone Pilots should now recieve combatant decorations the same as if someone was actually there in battle with boots on the ground and under fire. The Services told the Pentagon to forget about that idea quickly enough.

If I wanted to prosecute a war (And Im sick of it...) I would just scatter a few antimatter non radiation weapons into the heart of the ISIS towns and lay them waste. Because I grew up near NIKE missiles and the cold war nuclear missiles being able to deliver heaven and hell 30 minutes gauranteed by missile. War is not that far away.

It is well that war is a terrible thing, lest we all enjoy playing at it.

 

Exactly

 

Not going to happen....it would be like cruise control on an airplane.....still need a person in the drivers seat.

More likely to see 3 or 4 trucks computer controlled in a tight formation for aerodynamics. Being done in Europe. Still need drivers in each truck. Would be less things for the driver to do while in the formation. Like going from a manual shift to an automatic gear box.

 

Word I hear that might happen soon: two or three rigs, with a driver in the lead rig. The others are fully automated, and follow the lead rig with no driver. This will probably happen sooner, and likely only on LTR, then any "self-driving trucks" will. Still will need drivers for local work, chaining up, but that will still cut into the driver staffing needed. We drivers have already lost much LTR to the railroads already, with Intermodal freight being hauled to hubs across the country, cutting jobs.

.

 

Ain't that the truth?

 

They already use engineer-less trains at many R/R hubs right now. Just drive by most train-yards
and you will see the signs on the fences telling you that, for insurance reasons I suspect. Best to
get into local driving now, since they will not be able to operate trucks on local routes, particularly,
when you are talking about multiple stops and having to unload freight into the customer warehouse.

 

They've had those yard trains for years, maybe 10 or more years,
But they still don't have a self driving long haul train, even though trains have the right of way at all intersections and don't require steering.

 

More then a few. The Google cars are having wrecks ever 18 months . They have 9 cars in the fleet. 5 years of history.