Autonomous Trucks

I guess it would be something like intermodal.
Big yard with autonomous truck arriving, lot of illegals to switch trailers, few half legal to fuel trucks.
I decide to have plan B for the future start looking for politician careers. Lawmaker or lobbyist.

 

There is a lot of requisite technology to be developed first. I've had various radars on trucks I've been driving for years, starting with an eaton-vorad system in an early freightliner century. Now have one in a Cascadia. 15 years, give or take, and this one is no better in the least than the first one I used. I'm not too worried about losing my job. I'd like to retire on 15-20 years. It'll be fine.

 

If the new robot trucks are anything like the VORAD and lane departure systems they have installed in our new trucks,,, no one has anything to worry about! They are nothing but irritating pieces of garbage.
And as I told someone else,, next time you pull up along side a tanker with a 8500 gallon load of 100 octane AvGas doing 70mph, imagine a computer driving it knowing some nerd programed it and your 15 year old can hack it!

 

I know. And a certain talk show pundit with a large audience (Glen Beck) are saying truck drivers will be the next high wage jobs to see huge job cuts due to automation, probably "in the next 10 years".

BS. He's completely clueless to the real-world issues and sees the "success" of Tesla (such as it is in lab testing and very minimal real-world testing) and as such, thinks trucks are no different and becoming fully automated and solo is just around the corner. He's an idiot but he's sure of himself and many of his listeners believe him.

 

How many years have airliners had autopilots? How many years have some airliners had Auto-Land? With all that automation, operating in a MUCH, MUCH simpler environment (minimum of 1,00 feet vertical separation and 3 miles lateral separation, not 6 inches from another vehicle going the opposite direction, airplanes follow electronically designated airways, trucks to follow physical roads that preexisted any GPS guidance) airplanes have changed from 3 flightcrew members to 2 flightcrew. There will be automated trucks operating somewhere but it will be a long time before even 10% of trucks are driverless.

 

All the restrictions you listed are required because the airplane is carrying passengers at 500 mph.

A rolling robot box going 30 mph carrying french fries, not going to be much of a problem.

btw, since you seem to be up on aviation, seen the FAA's Free Flight plan? Air traffic control is getting automated out of existence too.

 

I can't wait for the day the human race automates themselves into extinction.

 

I can't wait for the Stepford Wives concept to become reality and they get the bugs worked out.

Should not be long now and I'll be ordering the deluxe petite model with enhanced breasts and no restrictions and the full, extended warranty.

Did I say that out loud?

 

That's what I've thought.

Autonomous trucks on interstate highways only. Have a little pull off.(weigh inspection station) Switcher guy comes manually parks the truck in the queue. Local driver comes in picks it up....delivers goes home at the end of his day paid hourly wages.

That or someone figures out how go shrink stuff into pill bottles and it be able to expand again. Or we just print everything off the computers.

It'll happen if not in my lifetime sometime down the road.

Just like the autonomous strike zone in baseball. It'll happen one day.

 

You and every other married man.