Truck platoon good or bad?

What happens if the first truck crashes? The rest follow and can't stop. The reason why they still have pilots, no system is fail proof. Planes can take off, land, fly point to point with little to no interaction. Throw in bad weather, and ILS that is down or flakey, wind sheer, and all of the sudden you need someone who knows how to deal with it to take over. Tesla had another accident last week, even their autopilot is unable to avoid collisions. If you need something to go by train, send it by train, that is why they have intermodel.

 

Yeah! And we could have a walkway that would allow nude baristas to move from truck to truck and serve coffee and other (cough) stuff !

 

What happens when the first truck blows a tire and sends a 50lb piece of rubber through the radiator of number two? I've seen it happen.

 

Lazy don't get it lord above if you don't wanna drive don't be a four wheeler
kittypower

 

Foregetaboutit.

Let's say Im a terrorist. Ive got 10 of you packed in train plat with me. All of us are going downtown to the stadium. See what Im doing with this?

OR worse. I sneeze and grab for the coffee that fell off. That rig jerks to the side grabs the ditch. All of the plats are going to do the exact same thing probably at that exact spot. The resulting carnage will close the highway a while.

Running Cabbage in a snow storm. Im on chain as a lead truck. two or three are not on chain back there, spin out and destroying the plat. Maybe even slide off the mountain forcing other plats to wreck. That will probably close that hill for half a day.

Let's say you are NE of baltimore rolling south on 95. Suddenly all 5 lanes stop dead in front of you leaving you with no place to put it. You stop pretty quick. But since the platted train with you have different weights, different vehicle behavior maybe worse brakes than you do Those 5 lanes are going to be deaths and injuries.

If you really want 5 or 10 trailer loads to go somewhere as one, borrow techonology from Aussies and road train them. Boom. One driver being paid 5.00 a mile to mind 10 trailers on his tractor via 5th wheels. I advocate the road train concept this way.

Platting can be done. But it's beyond stupid. I can think of more problems now I am focused on the subject, but rather keep it to myself.

 

In theory, maybe and especially for cars. But for trucks, probably not. Different weights, different power capacities, different braking dynamics. Not to mention the problems of having a 1 mile long vehicle for others to have to deal with. You know some idiot will try and put their 20 foot vehicle in one of those 30 foot gaps and that is not going to have a good outcome for anybody.

 

How ?

 

WiFi can be spooofed, Radar can be misdirected and GPS can be given a error too large to maintain platooning.

They should save themselve the trouble of all that network hooey. Buy two 5th wheels, axles to feed em and dispose of two drivers and two tractors, Hook all three trailers together and go.