Autonomous Paccar trucks hit the road with FedEx deliveries

Just thinking that a driver less truck would be a lot more prone to being high-jacked for its load then one with a driver. Even if they have cameras all over it and GPS and cell alarms there are jamers for all that stuff. DPS response time will be at least 20-30 min.

 

Somehow we really missed the boat with the railway system

We should have a lot more trains to move freight. Travelers. And workers going to the city

If this would have been built years ago it would have become more normal and practical

 

Agreed, unfortunately rail seems to be some weird political football

 

If we missed the boat on using the rails, the Europeans torpedoed it.
Their vaunted railway system is prioritized for passenger service. Freight is a low priority, so other than bulk commodities, the majority of freight moves by truck throughout the EU. They don't have double stack trains with 300 containers on them like we do. their trains are much shorter in length and height.
You cannot have both systems on the same track, both with efficient outcomes, one of the 2 has to lose. They chose freight, we chose passenger.

 

While we do still move a lot on rail, we have also dramatically reduced rail transport capacity, either by the railroad companies incompetence at maintaining their tracks, or just abandoning them, or through simply more convienient use of trucks (dont need a railyard at a manufacturer, and you can get it tomorrow if you order now)

 

As motivation to build the railroads back in the day, the guberment gave, free, no taxes either, a square mile of land the rails sit on, in checkerboard pattern to the railroads owners.

 

The dummy(s) sitting in the truck not engaged in the driving process are probably more dangerous than no driver at all.

 

It's not a driverless truck if you are still driving it hand.

 

Remember it’s a race to the bottom, with more and more immigrants willing to work for less and less, the normal truck driver is being phased out for the pee bottle producer. Slowly these trucks will be filled with low skilled drivers in teams of 2, 0.15c a mile for doing nothing but to sit.

then comes the remote driver. Tesla’s Starlink for trucks will make sure of that. He will probably add platooning capabilities with cars, so a truck can lead a road train of cars. As well as share road conditions across a chain linked network of trucks and cars.

Tesla’s end goal is having the road conditions information on their system before Self driving vehicle gets there.

 

Correct
But it still decides when it wants to take the wheel which is a huge problem