Autonomous (self driving) trucks is inevitable

I might have 10 more years of driving remaining, so I don't care. As long as I get mine right?

As for the robo trucks, for them to work effectively, all vehicles will have to be autonomous so they can communicate with each other. This is where the "internet of things" and 5G come in, but I'm skeptical, as they can't even keep the lines painted and pot holes filled on the current roads.

Am I the only one who is taking notice that the country is literally falling apart, infrastructure speaking of course? There are other things to worry about right now and autonomous trucks is not one of them.

 

Everyone knows it's inevitable. We also know it's not happening any time soon. Like I said earlier, automating the truck is the easy part.

 

So is colonization of the moon and Mars. But as everyone has pointed out. It won't be in our lifetime. Might not even be in our kid's lifetime.

 

Sorta like having a headline "You're gonna die"...which is true, eventually.

 

I already heard that diatribe when computers came out many years ago, promising things like making junk-mail obsolete and improving our lives (note the obesity rates). I'll tell you exactly how this works.

For one thing, a need for something doesn't guarantee that a proposed solution will succeed. The failed assumption that it will is illustrated time and time again in history. There are an immense number of unknowns that come up when people try to solve these kinds of problems using technology. These unknowns usually don't surface at first because they need time to materialize, but later they become big problems. For automated trucks to create a better overall scenario in the shipping industry, humans themselves need to adapt and maintain an overall increase in moral, ethical and rational behavior.

The big problem with a technological takeover of trucking will not be in the actual truck or machinery—at least not at first. When selling the idea to large trucking companies, naturally the developers aren't going to be very interested in telling them about objections or potential problems in a long-term scaling into automation. Doing that doesn't make the sale. Investigating these issues doesn't help sales. It's going to be the human element that will eventually foul up automated trucking.

As for the problems with the equipment, dry runs with brand-new equipment are used in these runs, and they're done in places a gorilla could drive a truck, like the Southwest desert. As equipment begins to age, and tandems start to stick, what makes you think that trucking companies will be any more interested in keeping the equipment maintained just because a machine is using it instead of a driver? Will they use the money they saved to maintain a better fleet? In theory they would, in reality, they won't at all. So now, after a few years, you have stopped trucks all over the place needing maintenance, and a shortage of people willing to drive around fixing flat tires and putting on tire chains.

Here's an eternal truth about humans, and you best learn it: The closer a person gets to a solution, the more desperate they get to become closer still. This also applies to groups and governments. For example, when injury accident rates halved over 50 years between 1960 and 2010, fines for dangerous behaviors doubled—even accounting for inflation. Constitutional rights also began to be denied in the battle against accidents, and people were constantly told by media that accident rates were in the increase, not decrease. What this translates into, in trucking, is that missing fine money municipalities rely heavily on from truckers, and drivers overall, will have to come from somewhere. They won't just give up on it. They'll be suing the hell out of tech companies until they have to put drivers back in the things just to have someone to blame.

Leftist politics will attack, and obliterate the automated trucking industry as well, either directly, or indirectly. As the national deficit comes to fruition, supply will outstrip demand, and many expensive trucks will remain parked. You can fire a worker; you can't fire a huge investment that nobody wants any more. When people are sufficiently frustrated, you'll see riots that make the riots of 2020 look small.

Those are my own predictions. You can get mad at me for being so dismal, or you can simply crunch the numbers and observe what our idea of a president is now. Now is not a good time for progress in America, because the people have lost their soul. Good luck with your driverless trucks.