Self driving trucks and our future

I'll be a believer when I see one do a blind-side back, down a 30% down-grade residential drive way off a 1.5 lane road, with 2 wooded blind curves next to it hoping it doesn't get hit by someone texting and driving.
But don't worry, the home business's wife is a truck expert, and she assures it's dispatcher a semi will certainly fit!

This isn't every other day for me or anything... ಠ_ಠ

But the Interstate part of it sounds promising.

 

I think we'll see truck platooning first, but it will be with a carrier that moves a lot of freight between given destinations. Can anyone say "FedX?"

 

FedX? so this truck will be blindly driving through construction zones and cities at 64 mph??

 

Excellent post.

 

You'll only see them on the terminal to terminal runs at first. Truck platooning means there will be a master truck with a full-time driver supervising the master and a number of slave trucks. That should deal with construction. They'll be broken down into individual units the way turnpike doubles are dealt with now at destination cities.

At least that's how I see it starting... and fairly soon. Diamler has already demonstrated an autonomous truck in Germany. European trucking companies have called for the laws in the Netherlands to be changed to incorporate autonomous trucks within five years.

It's coming.

 

Sorry if this has already been mentioned in the thread. I didn't have time to read it but this just made the front page news so I thought it would be appropriate to put this link here. 9/8/14 GM announcement. Truck Driver Shortage ?????? Don't count on it ! https://autos.yahoo.com/blogs/motor...ustry-wants-legal-shield-first-172125123.html

 

I just read the same thing.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29110217

 

This was predicted quite a while ago. We knew self driving cars would become a reality but we also knew that it wasn't enough to just develop the technology, you'd also have to get the buying public to be ok with it. And almost no one is going to be comfortable going directly from a typical car of today right to a car that drives itself completely all the time.

So you have to dribble the technology into existence a little at a time over several model years and to start each stage with only the most expensive models. That's what we're starting to see. The trucks will follow in the same way. A little at a time until eventually truck drivers aren't called 'drivers' anymore and are instead called 'operators'. And the truck operator will be there to monitor the operation of the truck and, much like railroad locomotive operators, they will do almost nothing but push an 'I'm still awake' button every 60 seconds. And once that becomes the standard, we will begin to see trucks with no operator in certain operations. Then that will expand to more and more until eventually only a handful of trucks still require an operator.

Its not a question of if, its only a question of when. I have no doubt there are people alive today who will live to see this come to pass. If I had to guess I'd say kids in their teens will live to see a day when most trucks have no operator.

 

Who knows, maybe that would be better for owner operators, then they could market things as "hand made" and "hand delivered".