Impact of automated driving on Trucking industry

OH an a couple other bullet-pointable issues that never seem to get mentioned by anyone regarding this sort of technology:

• The cost of developing this technology is huge, and I mean huge with an H. Who would be incentivized to pay for this sort of thing? Certainly, Prime, Schneider, CRE, CRST ect-ect aren't going to pay for the development of this. They have a great thing going with milling out 20-30 new drivers a week to replace the old ones they had bent over the barrel.
• The cost of developing the routes and programing them into a database for pick up and deliveries would be very costly too, and given what the software industry enjoys doing to vendors and end license users; it's likely that individual shippers/receivers would have to pay a very high cost just to have an automated truck roll onto their property.
• Security risks are very high in the scheme of having such a vehicle left unguarded by a sentient being.

At the end of the day, it's a lot of work with very little payoff.

The real threat to the trucking industry, as it stands, is railroads.
They are playing the endgame of what automated trucking would mean: Drivers drop recently loaded trailers on a rail head, pickup previously loaded ones coming off their journey on rails, making the delivery and reload it only to take it back to the rail head.

WHY would anyone want to, quite literally, pay hundreds of billions of dollars to develop, implement and maintain an automated trucking system; when we have a modern system of screwing drivers ten ways to Sunday already?
From a financial standpoint alone, this technology is doomed to be nothing more than a proof of concept.

 

With someone sitting next to the 'bot. The liability of an automated truck with no operator will keep you employed for a long time driver.

So you're really worried about this? Get out of your truck and look it over... check to see how much maintenance hasn't been done because of whatever reason. Now think to yourself what will happen if the "brain" of this new driver-eliminating robotic truck is allowed to go unmaintained... and think about how likely an outfit like SNI who does the absolute minimum to maintain their current fleet would be to not provide proper maintenance. You need not worry about your paycheck over this one.

 

Actually, it's closer to 300,000 miles.
Google dumps quite literally tens millions of dollars of technology into this, but the general consensus is that it's going to end up being a fruitless venture.
Plus all of the Google driver-less cars have a human, in them, ready to override at a moments notice. What's more the overrides are very frequent.


These are proof of concept ideas, engineers and tech people do this for many reasons- the biggest of which is design meshing for creating better products, or making good products great.
I'm not saying that the advent of a semi going down the road without having a 300 lb ulcerated pile of stink and cotton in it, isn't going to happen, I'm saying it's a long way off, IF it is going to happen. Certainly out of the realm of 5 years. Especially with commercial vehicles.

 

I will prolly get scolded for this by management but.........If the Gov. has anything to do with it,chances are it will be a Charlie/Foxtrot.

 

What's that, `ya say? A C/F? Lordy no- don't you know all things the federal government does, are for your own good! Even if you don't know it!

 

I believe it was Mercedes that was, or is, marketing a collision avoidance system for there cars. This system gas the ability to keep the car from rear ending the vehicle in front of it and alerting the driver if he drifts out if his lane. This is reality. The fully autonomous vehicle roaming our highways is a long way away.

The railroads are a bigger threat to the industry.

 

Perhaps you should read a pertinent article to this discussion, involving one Mssr. ChickenLittle.

There are only two autonomous vehicles in operation today. One is called "Spirit" and the other is "Opportunity." They're both on Mars. Their gross aggregate daily miles is something south of 1. Neither has to contend with the traffic hazards here on Terra.