Autonomous Trucking

Meh... it's coming either way, we can't stop it. Being able to expedite freight without driver payroll will tank the railroads also. Make money while you can, enjoy these last decades of being drivers.

 

Decades? You just know that it is right around the corner, but then again, they still have train crews.

The megas want this ASAP because drivers are a PITA. Perhaps the wages will retrace back some too, you know, for when the truck is driving itself.

 

I'll assume 10-15 years before the tech is strong enough to allow driving in high population areas, just due to lawsuits and liability. A decade beyond that for intermodal and local work.

 

***yawn***

 

Get real driver,autonomous trucks are the least of my worries.
Will an autonomous truck back itself going the wrong way in one way street to get to the dock or pull to the shoulder for a blown tire,pull an oversize load,drive few miles in a dirt road to get to the job side,pull itself out of two feet of snow,adjust tandems,tarp a load,do a midtrip inspection,hoock a tanker lines,save a frozen load when the reefer breaksdown,avoid road debris,refuel itself,the scenarios are endless.
The infrastructure required to make such idea possible is very costly and will never be 100% fail proof,more propaganda to distract us from the real issues at hand:electronic logs and speed limiters.
Special interest groups hiding behind goverment agencies are creating too many battle fronts to stretch us thin so we either loose all fights or concentrate behind a single issue and give up on the rest: a loose loose situation.

 

Ottos are going to be a serious loss all around. When enough of them snarl the JIT structure of our Nation crying out for wreckers, Tiremen, police, fire etc we will see bare shelves.

I for one stand against them. This Nation runs on the blood and treasure of our Drivers. Take the drivers out, you are setting up for a future that is not going to benefit us. If we are taken out by a Otto, who do we sue? The titleholder of the Otto? If we get crushed by a Otto trying to turn downtown, who do we send the medical bills? The Title holder of that Otto?"

Robots started in the Assembly Line decades ago, now they are fixing to get loose among us on the highway already. That is unacceptable to me. Half million dollar Ottos and no drivers to tend them does not a profit make. They would be so easy to steal from, stabotage and so on. What a mess.

And finally but not last... there are road ragers will force a Computer Otto to slam into another car in evasion manuvers on purpose. Just set the vehicle up and race it at the Otto forcing it to manuver very radically and possibly lose everything and roll taking out lives as it goes. that is my ultimate future thought. Not welcome.