“Taking the driver out is the holy grail of this technology.” Gatik CEO Gautam Narang

Thats what these smart people dont get. They think all truck drivers do is drive down the road. Its almost comical of how ignorant they are to the reality of our job

 

Amazing how ignorant they are!

I do a lot more than just drive the truck. Imagine when those cameras that allow the truck to "see" get dirty, covered in snow, and such, and the trucks all crash into a big pile up.

Its not uncommon to have to clear 2' of snow off the truck in the morning, and chain up just to get out of the yard.

 

I keep on repeating: as long as there are manned trains, there will be no driverless trucks.
Remote controlled trains do work locally but not on "long haul". Trains are separated from the public traffic on their own infrastructure and still require human input.

 

Driver Shortage = Congress using that bs to ram through Driverless Truck laws.

anyone who says winter, snow, and rain bs isn’t realizing one thing. What happens when this tech is deployed let’s say the state of Arizona since it see less snow and rain. Now what happens to the drivers in AZ who only know how to drive? They will move to another state and take up driving jobs there. Further reducing pay for other drivers.

For the people who say, driverless trucks, can’t tarp, can’t do flat bed OS/OW. Yes they can’t to a degree. Imagine a flatbed trailer already loaded and tarped and ready for power only? Imagine a OS/OW load following the Pole Car?


Now imagine platooning where one driver is taking 5 trucks across the US?


Many many many possibilities where it will be adapted in anyway possible to reduce the driver to nothing.

if the gooberments role is to get you on its payroll then their ultimate job is to push you off your job.

Remember by 2030 you will not own anything and you will like it.


It’s still cost effective to pay $25k insurance on a driverless truck to pay for the millions in lawsuits then pay $60k salary.

 

You'd have to have cameras up on all corners and as someone who likes to fly drones, it's much more difficult to judge distance from a camera and there's no get out and look or move stuff out of the way. That said drone trucks may be an intermediate step

 

Lol platooning using a lead truck as a command center is great until electronics fail.

They do it for drone shows and while glitches are rare they're hilariously bad when they do.

Now imagine that going down donner or in the Bronx

 

A caution on those saying automated trucks cant handle snow/ice etc.

Theres an interesting parrallel with ai machine learning in face recognition software, a year and a half ago much hullaballo was made about not letting police departments use facial recognition because it was 95% accurate on white people, but exceptionally bad at black people (10%). The grounds for the pushback was all about how its not good to have an ai falsely accuse people because they were black.
That was the wrong way to go, the software guys have just pivoted to improving facial recognition for black people. The software is no longer racist, so now we should deploy the surveillance apparatus everywhere?

Snow and ice are not the focus of the robot problem solvers.... YET. they must walk before they can run. I have no crystal ball for it, but if you told a 30year old in 1970 about smartphones today, theyd think you were crazy

 

I agree it’s going to happen, just the issue is when.

I predict small stages at first.

 

I agree with driverless trucks - there is a niche in the market to fill in places where the roads and weather are good enough for a driverless truck to work.

There is certain no touch freight where this would thrive.

BUT there is also a HUGE part of the market where driverless trucks won’t work.

Bring it on, realistically speaking wages will go up for skilled truck drivers as driverless trucks force steering wheel holders out of the seats.