Self Driving Trucks ARE HERE... Licensed in Nevada.

At least the horse and buggy drivers where given something else to drive. They where not simple discarded as no longer useful. The new emerging industries took care of the people who worked making buggies and breeding/training all them horses. What emerging technologies do you foresee that will employ and provide livelihoods for all the people idled by this technology. And when I'm unemployed, how would I buy anything transported on the robot trucks that took my job. Our concerns are completely justified.

 

You are the definition of a Luddite. trucking is the only job you can possibly do? If trucking goes away, go learn a new skill, find a new challenge, go on the next adventure.

OTR truck drivers die young on average (57 years0, have a very unsafe job, are away from friends and family for long stretches of time. Do we really want to go out and stop technology to save those jobs?

 

and airplanes still have pilots/co pilots/navigators.....trains still have engineers.....they will always need drivers

 

It doesn't matter if it's the only job I can do. It's the one I've chosen to do. And it isn't right for anyone else to take that away from me or anyone else. But to answer your question better, yeah, I could go work in factory back home for 11.50 an hour. Doing the same repetitious boring stuff 40 hrs a week. No thanks. Oh, and a Luddite rioted and destroyed the technology they were opposed to. Find a different inaccurate insult. That one doesn't work. I don't fit the definition.

 

While you are an accidental trucker, I chose this for several good reasons. And I actually like my job, at least, most of the time. Everyone has a bad day once in a while. All this technology many of you people are so enamored with should be directed at improving people's lives. Not stealing their livelyhood for no good reason. People are more important than profit sometimes.

 

The technology is improving people's lives. It is reducing the cost of goods, reducing the price of stuff at Walmart, the cost of houses, furniture, etc.

In a capitalist society, the world beats a path to your door if you invent a better mouse trap. Those who improve, win, those who don't improve, fail.

There's no right to choose something to do for a living and making a guaranteed living as long as you want.
That's a communist / socialist attitude, not a capitalist one.

Why would you think Luddite is an insult? Are you not opposed to the technology, and willing to destroy it through legislation?

 

The legislation of which you speak will come from the other direction. They won't be able to sell this crap on its own merits. So they will play the payola game, and get govt to mandate us buying it. So much for your capitalism having anything to do with this issue.
And, may I ask, exactly what has technology made cheaper for anyone? Not one darn thing. The cost of living has increased in every single country in the world. And there is no end in sight. Technology. Hogwash....replacing people for nothing and then telling us it's for our own good. Keep drinking the cool-aid. It helps keep you from seeing what's really happening. When they use this wonderful technology to replace or marginalize us, what jobs do you think they will set sights on next. At some point, enough is enough. At some point, and I think we are there, there will not be enough new emerging industries to employ everyone technology lays off. Each new industry will be designed around previous technologies, making people more and more obsolete. There are already computers that can write code for new programs. Even that won't need people much longer. You know, Hollywood is wonderful at telling stories. They have a great imagination. And there are dozens if not hundreds of movies that are cautionary tales about technology screwing stuff up. The reason there aren't movies about technological utopias isn't because they'd be boring and not sell. It's because even Hollywood can't envision a technological utopia. There will never be one. People are what makes this world worth living in. People with a job and a purpose.

 

Trucks won't be the only ones that go "robot". They are actively working on this with cargo ships. And those say it won't happen? Rolls-Royce isn't in business to make cool videos and pipe-dreams. This IS the future of maritime shipping and trucking won't be far behind either. At first they will still have skeleton crews on the ships same as the trucks will still have "drivers" but at some point, they will eliminate all full-time on-board crew.

Unmanned remote-location controlled cargo ships- Coming soon!
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Rolls-Royce presents a vision of a future land-based control centre in which a small crew of 7 to 14 people monitor and control a fleet of remote controlled and autonomous vessels across the world. The crew uses interactive smart screens, voice recognition systems, holograms and surveillance drones to monitor what is happening both on board and around the ship.
Remote and autonomous ships are one of three elements of the company’s innovative Ship Intelligence strategy, which will enable customers to transform their marine businesses by harnessing the power of big data.
The film marks the final stage of research that will inform the design and construction of an effective remote operations centre which is essential to the company’s plans to develop autonomous and remote controlled vessels.
The film is the latest in a series to present Rolls-Royce’s vision of future shipping known as the ‘oX’ operator experience concept and introduced in 2014. Previous studies have looked at the user experience of future command bridges on Platform Supply Vessels, container ships and tugs
The research was undertaken by VTT and University of Tampere research centre TAUCHI (Tampere Unit for Computer Human Interaction) in collaboration with Rolls-Royce. It explored the lessons learned from other industries where remote operation is commonplace, such as aviation, energy, defence, and space exploration.

 

The railroads used to have much larger crews... For example, in the days of steam (and up to the 1960's/70's) there would have been an engineer, fireman, & a brakeman upfront in the locomotive. And in the caboose there was another brakeman and the conductor. There are commuter trains (dedicated tracks, no vehicle crossings) and airport shuttle trains that are 100% automated... No crew on-board at all.

Nowadays, almost all trains you see on a mainline have a crew of 2: Engineer and conductor in the cab of the lead locomotive. That's all. In rail yards all across North America, they operate switcher locomotives by remote control, no engineer in the cab at all. Cabooses are almost only seen in museums, an ETD with a flashing red-light is all you see on the end of most trains now.

Airlines & Aviation? Same thing. They used to have a crew of 4 or 5 on those big jets. But they cut them out as the planes became more advanced. Remember flight engineers?

Maritime & Ships? Also the same, 40 years ago we had a crew of 35-40 on-board cargo ships.
Now we see the same ships being manned, at most with a crew of less than half that. Some new ships in Europe have a crew of 6-8, again where they would have had a crew of 30 less than 30 years ago. Radio operators? Long gone. Wiped out an entire rank of officers on-board ships who were not qualified for any other job at sea. No one seemed to give a BLEEP about them. And now lot's of other jobs getting slashed as well.

Those who want to stick their heads in the proverbial sand are more than welcome to. Just don't be surprised when the world passes you by. We have almost no solidarity in the OTR trucking industry in the USA and it seems like NO solidarity between transportation workers in the USA- OTR truckers vs Local/LTL drivers, truckers against rail, maritime against trucking, aviation doing it's own thing... If the working class were truly united we could stand firm with one voice to protect decent paying jobs with benefits as a right for all Americans, instead we cut each-others throats and gloat when we get $2 dollars more on our paychecks than someone else... The same smug self-interested attitudes will ensure the companies can continue to screw us all over till we don't have any decent jobs left. And for those say we need to retrain, well, great idea- Except how many joy-stick jockies will they need to replace a dozen drivers or a hundred sailors? Not many and most of us probably won't have the "skills" to get those jobs.