Trucker's Will soon be a thing of the past

I wonder where the OP got their statistics. According to the federal govt, in an article on page 4 of the Feb Truckers News, in 2010, 33,000 people where killed, and 2 million injured nationwide. While many, myself included, would say that is too many, it is a far lower number than a million killed per year quoted in his post. That million a year must have been referring to numbers globally. As far as the vehicles "seeing everything, and reacting at once", you don't have to drive a truck equipped with VEX (Volvo Enhanced Cruisecontrol), or Eaton Vorad radar systems to see how poor that technology is. As for half the freight going by rail, the railroads will have to do a lot of track laying and railcar building soon for that to happen. I hear news articles pretty regularly about grain sitting because of the insufficient capacity of the rail industry.

 

While I'm inclined to agree with you, all you need to do is look at the history of the industrial age. "People will never fly." "People will never allow the motorized vehicle to replace the horse." "We will never get to the moon." And so on and on.

Yeah, I think they will always have to have a human on board for the stuff a computer just can't do. But what kind of scares me, is that no computer is better than how it is programed. And do we really want to see the time when computers program themselves?

One question here - I want to know how the cars are going to "flip off" each other!

 

take a pic of urself flipping someone off and tape it to all the windows, just to make sure you are covered...

 

Well, at least someone will have to be in the truck, and with this country's labor laws that means whoever is in it is making minimum wage which means a raise for most of us!!!!

 

Polar, seriously, you're due for a drug test.

 

Can i laugh? HAHAHHHHAAA AHHHHAHHHHAAAAA.
computers are unreliable. they cant make decisions that i can make. cant make tight turns by using a computer but i can becuz i know how to do it.
computer truck cant drive against the wind and make sure to keep it from runnin over the idiot beside me.
so much that computer cant do in "real" life situations.

 

I'd rather take a picture of a "full moon" and tape it to all of my windows...

 

I'm in my 40's and assuming I die of old age, I whole heartedly believe I will live to see the day when cars and trucks drive themselves. It will be a while before it happens, but it will most definitely happen. Maybe not all trucks or all types of trucking, but definitely some.

 

That's not really an apples to apples comparison. Its true that we've had unmanned aerial vehicles for years. But they're remotely controlled by people. Unmanned is not the same as punch a destination and let to go on its own. Plus the variables in aviation are far different than driving on the ground. Trucks can and do drive right through thunder storms every day. Airplanes not so much.