No human truck drivers in 10 years?

There will always be humans driving(For now).All commercial planes fly by themselves they even land themselves but you still have to have a pilot and co-pilot on the plane in case something goes wrong.What you are talking about is hundreds of years away the only way that would be possible is if you had seperate roads where just unmanned cars drove by themselves on that road only.(whos gonna spend money for that)The liability would be to great if people were killed by the machines driving themselves on open roads.NOT GONNA HAPPEN AT LEAST WHILE US OR OUR GREAT GRAND CHILDREN ARE HERE.IT WILL BUT NO TIME SOON DONT WORRY YOU WILL HAVE A JOB TRUCKERS ARENT GOING NOWHERE.

 

Thanks. But I think your post actually brought up a very good point as well. A big part of the hurdle with self driving cars becoming commercially viable is going to be the resistance of people to accept and embrace the technology. You are certainly not alone in your viewpoint that you would rather drive yourself than be driven by a computer.

I am quite sure all of the major auto makers have had teams of psychologists on the payroll studying this issue and devising ways to successfully overcome it for quite some time now. My hunch is that the best way to do it is to get people to accept little bits of the technology at a time. Baby steps and all that. And I believe we are already seeing that in play. There are already cars on the market which can park themselves i.e. drive themselves some of the time. Its a baby step and it helps to change the perception of the general public.

We're also starting to see collision avoidance systems come into play. There seem to be issues with some of those systems and it makes me wonder if some of those issues are almost intentional. You bring the systems online with issues so the public gets used to the idea of the systems themselves but also sees that it doesn't quite work very well. Then you fix the issues and thus teach the public that these sorts of complex systems will work if you give the engineers time to prefect them. I realize this is getting into conspiracy theory territory (which I don't often do) but it really wouldn't shock me if there isn't at least some truth to it.

 

You should read up on the google car. There will be no need for separate roads. The google car has already logged several hundred thousand miles on the open road among real world traffic and people with zero incidents attributed to the technology.

As for the planes, as a former commercial pilot I can tell you that's a whole different beast. Yes airliners are quite capable of flying and landing themselves (better than humans actually). But planes are regulated by the FAA. And the FAA is very proud of the fact that they tend to move slower than the speed of evolution when it comes to making new technologies legal. This is why most piston aircraft still use magneto technology from the 1930's while your typical Home Depot grade basic lawn mower switched to electronic ignition control almost 15 years ago. And what I wrote in my previous post applies to this point as well. Its one thing to get people to accept cars that drive themselves when they will (presumably) be able to push a button and take over complete control of the driving at any moment should they feel the need to do so. Its something else entirely to get the public to accept (and buy tickets for) an airliner that will fly itself with no qualified human being on board when the public themselves would not be able to successfully control much less land said airliner manually if they needed to do so.

 

Actually I could see how it could work in real life. A local driver would get loaded , navigate through busy streets and bring a fueled, roadready unit to the area close to open highway from where it would be controlled by computer till it hits a point close to destination where another local driver will take over to deliver.
Either way 10 years is plenty of time for me. Dont get me wrong- I like my job, but sometimes I am ready to retire tomorrow

 

This is a perfect example and planes are much easier to automate due the lower number of hazards

 

You have obviously never flown an airplane. Lower number of hazards? I'll drive a truck even if I'm not confident that the engine will keep running until I get where I'm going. In a plane? No way. I'll drive a truck through a level 5 thunderstorm any day of the week. In a plane? No way.

 

I was just thinking the same thing. I used to fly a helicopter ans being on the ground is sure a lot safer. Since a helicopter is not a stable machine to start with. We used to tell people a helicopter has 10,000 moving parts that want to crash. Also coming in for a landing and having an aircraft from the opposite direction can cause for some excitment as well. Gets your hard going quickly.

 

Its gonna be schweet!!Im gonna name my robot james!!Im gonna constantly yell at it from the sleeper.
"Slow your azs down James!!You trying to get us killed?" Then I will go back to sleep,but only after chuggin
a few beers.
Eventually I will get too lazy to even yell from the sleeper.Then I plan on sub contracting to illegal aliens,and
eventually build my trucking empire,only to have it fail a few weeks later by complaints here in the "report a bad
trucking company".

 

Yup, we were supposed to have flying cars by the year 2000 according to '50s films... also, we were all supposed to have this do-it-all robot that took care of the house.

Does that mean I think driving will never become automated? No. Will it happen in 10 years? Not on your life. 20? Still no.

It's one thing for ONE of these things to prove a concept, it's a whole other situation to implement a large number of these vehicles on even a regional or city-wide scale. And, I don't necesarilly say that from a technical perspective, the rate at which aircraft proliferated within the first 20 years of man achieving powered flight is mind-boggling to say the least.

The problem with a lot of the self-driving technology is the myriad of what-ifs that come along with it. I don't really give two ##### about whether or not Google's car has had whatever number of miles shown without an accident, what if it DOES get in an accident? What if two of these vehicles get in an accident? Who is at fault? What are the legal rammifications? Does the crash and damage to property in any way effect the two owners? WHO carries the liability in these sorts of situations? How do we determine who is at fault?

For that matter, let's assume that driverless cars become a common occurence. We'll dismiss the infrastructure argument regarding the roads. The infrastructure argument I'm interested in is standardization of information. There will inevitably be competitors if this were to become a reality. Well, will it be required that all manufacturers utilize the same GPS and navigational systems ofr the sake of standardization and safety so one car doesn't show an intersection as open and another does and a wreck of some sort occurs? But, doesn't that create a traffic problem insofar as all of the navigation systems are using the same underlying information thus meaning, if there are 5,000 cars starting from relatively the same point and arriving at relatively the same point (say, getting from the northern edge of a city and the southern edge of a city) will utilize the exact same route? Well, let's assume that the routing information is traffic-intelligent and receives updates constantly on current traffic routes and thus can reroute itself. At this point we ARE back to a question of infrastructure: Does our current infrastructure really support the amount of traffic travelling it period? In other words, does the driverless car really represent any greater ability at reducing traffic congestion or is it limited by the parameters under which it will have to operate?

But, that question brings me back to my original point regarding liability: If they are all using the exact same GPS and navigation information, and a crash does occur, who is at fault? The owners? The manufacturers? Providers of GPS and navigation information? What about property damage? What about blow-outs? I'm sure the car could have a central tire pressure monitoring system, but, that doesn't do a whole lot of good when you roll over a piece of sharp metal (this, is, of course, begging the question, how accurate are the cameras, how small can an obstacle be that it can see and avoid? Will it be able to see nails or screws?)? What about servicing? Will the vehicle automatically take itself in for servicing? Will it not allow itself to drive if tires get to a certain point, etc.?

What about magnesium chloride? Obviously there will be a lot of circuitry in these driverless vehicles, how long will the vehicle last before magnesium chloride, road salt, and just road grime in general eat away at components? And what are the prices to replace these sort of things? Does this vehicle represent a signifcant saving to me over my current vehicle?

So, here's the question that underlines it all: Will a driverless car/ truck/ motorcycle necessitate the sort of regulation and oversight that, say, the FAA necessitates on air-craft regarding operation and maintenance? And, the ancillary, and perhaps more important question is: will the average citizen be willing to submit to those sorts of regulations and oversight simply for their personal vehicle?

The greatest obstacle I see any driverless vehicle on public roads facing is, at least regarding personal vehicles, we enjoy a relative degree of freedom and autonomy when operating our vehicles, how much of that are we willing to give up so that we don't actually have to drive anymore?

 

I fly. You can't compare flying with driving. There is lots of room for a plane to move around in. A truck you have a matter of feet and you are off the road. Too much risk and not enough reward. I mean look at the Swift trucks. Do you really think they have a truck driver in them now?

Every time you hit a pot hole, think about turning truck safety over to the DOT to maintain whatever systems you would have to put into place for that.

Pilots deal with NOTAM's. These are notices to airmen that are posted as soon as something at an airport quits working. The pilot then makes the call as to the safety of using that airport. You would have to have someone at every place a truck goes ready to update the data if computers took over the trucks.

I believe it will happen someday. I believe that Obama will see it through. I believe in the Tooth Fairy. But most of all, I believe I should win the Last Post contest under fun and games.