News about automated trucks.

I’ve been arguing how childishly naive the idea of a massive switch to self driving trucks is on Mike Shedlock’s blog for five years. He’s famous enough to do reports on Coast to Coast at night.

They’re positive that all trucks will be automated next year because they saw that one Wolverine movie where it happened so it has to be real. They are wealthy White Collars and I’m a dumb trucker, so how could I possibly be right?

Scratch a little under the surface of the limits of their white collar knowledge and they’ve got no answers.

With this story: There are people paid to drive these trucks remotely, right? Who is doing the pretrip on the truck? If a hub seal has no oil, causing a tandem tire to blow and catch fire while it’s driving down the road, what’s to keep it from spreading to the trailer and having a giant 80,000 lb burning disaster moving at 65MPH?

If they’re paying the guy more than a trucker he’ll be monitoring more loads - probably 10-20. Will he really be paying attention to them all or will he be goofing off at the water cooler?

There is an author named Nassim Taleb who writes about risk. He calls people like this Inellectual-Yet-Idiots because they’re drenched in theory and learning divorced from the real world.

 

A group of terrorists in a number of cars can place a robot truck into a no win scenario and force a crash. Or herd a propane tanker into say the Holland Tunnel.

Boom.

 

Not fully, a human has the ability to see danger coming and avoid it. Or elect a non-logical course of action to avoid hurting other people. A machine is all based on logic and percentages.

Think like I-Robot with Will Smith. Logic dictated the robot save him, but a human would have saved the little girl.

 

Come on Heavy, nobody gets into the Holland at speed.

 

First off for any who think these trucks will always have a human have no clue. The companies making these trucks say, human drivers will be temporary.
After they do get many autonomous trucks on the road it will be a matter of time before there will be no more truck drivers. Will truckers do anything about it? Nope, to cowardly to stand up for their jobs and filled with excuses.

But in a way autonomous trucks will be good. To many of these foreigners driving who have no business on the road. They are constantly rolled over, especially Indian drivers. Swerving constantly. If investigated I bet most have no training, no cdl, or an inadequate driving record.

The government wants this. While these idiots are always crashing and hazardous, they can make their case for autonomous trucks.

No complaints when your out of a job though. You have no right to complain when you do nothing to stop it.

 

hackers dream come true, insurance companies won’t assume that much risk.
Maybe in limited scenarios. Like inside ports or Distribution centers. But like you mentioned don’t see wide spread adoption

 

The same companies have been saying that for 10 years now....
We are currently at about level 2.5 on the autonomous driving scale. To get to level 5 will require infrastructure changes. Since we have the same potholes as when I moved here 20 years ago, I don't see rhe required infrastructure changes happening in my lifetime.
We will get stuff like moving around in a port ir railyard sure. We already have that in automotive plants 20 years ago moving parts around.