What Do You Think of Autonomous Trucks?

I recently rented a car with adaptive cruise control. It was great as long as traffic was light. When I got it on I95 it kept slowing down to maintain the gap to car in front. Of course other cars seeing that gap in traffic kept changing lanes into it so the car had to slow down more. At one point I was going 45 mph in a 65 zone and still slowing down so I gave up on it.

If those autonomous trucks ever hit the roads that is exactly what will happen until the trucks come a standstill.

 

Also, where is the return on investment for the autonomous truck? You need to completely remove the driver for it to have a roi. The added computers on the truck will cost more to buy the truck, and it still needs to be supervised, or will drivers wages decrease? Fat chance. Drivers are largely not the brightest bulbs but they do know when they can get any other job and not be in the scrutiny of the law and away from home for a decent pay. Add to that, in order to completely remove the human, the computing power required is huge, again way more expensive.

I feel there is nothing to worry about for the foreseeable future.

 

.... but nooooo....investors cannot be told that.

The sales pitch revolves around "inter-connected" vehicles.

These vehicles will "talk/ping" each other whether on interstate proper or on entry lanes, and automatically yield/speed up or down/ merge like zippers....lol

And then... the Russian hackers get a go at it....LMAO

 

Russian hackers ain't got nothing on Milt and Joyce weaving across the country with their travel trailer. Those two have a knack of hobbling a truck's progress that Fancybear and Cozybear can only dream about.

 

Also to take a shot at the random cars without computer control. Mix them into traffic as already described in the 95 scenario.

My Tahoe has nothing much for control thankfully, hardly no tech in it other than a little bit of ABS and a touch of hard wired circuitry for injection and ignition. I can raise all kinds of hell messing with robot trucks, maybe put a propane tanker into a impossible situation perhaps. That's a bit terrorist, but you have to consider these things.

At the auction house I started running into the newer cars that refused to do anything because its in a parking lot, first to go is the ability to rev the engine. It's ridicilous.

 

Electronics can and will go wrong. So they will always need a driver in that rig to regain control. So they still will need drivers and anyone worth his salt won't work for 10/hr being away from home so long....maybe the foreigners.

 

Aaaaahhh....the usual scapegoat...lmao

You know its the "foreigners" that are also smart enough to get the jobs to maintain these autonomous rigs. They have more education in science and IT.

 

Dey take our jerbs!

 

I posted before. Roads must meet a certain criteria for the autonomous vehicles to be able to work right. Too many roads aren't. In Saudi Arabia. They're building brand new city. Part of the reason is that autonomous vehicles can't work in their cities. They can't tear all the roads up and rebuild all of them.
On the more serious side. It isn't the autonomous vehicles to worry about. It's the autonomous robots programmed to kill.

 

LooooooooL!