USXpress tested autonomous trucks

If I had to sit there waiting to take over in case of a glitch for miles and miles, I'd die of a heart attack. Talk about being on edge. It's like watching Amazon trying to back in next to you, but turned up to eleven!

 

More like you would get bored, start fiddling on your cell phone to keep from falling asleep (or simply fall asleep) and the truck will kill someone (else) and you'd go to jail.
Let's not sugar coat this. All the "driver" is there for is to take the liability from the company that made the self-driving module and for no other reason.

 

Absolutely right. They need a scapegoat in the cab.

 

I might be a bit old school, but you’re never going to convince me these new trucks are safe to start with, let alone one driving itself. You are not DIRECTLY connected to the engine, transmission or brakes, in my mind it’s out of control as soon as the maxi’s come off. YOU are not in control of that vehicle, you’re just sitting in it. With the way computers consistently #### things up I don’t know why this #### is even being considered. Well I do, but some suits bonus isn’t that important to me. Forty tons at 100’/sec out of control on a highway Im trying to use sure is though.

 

The driver is just a crash dummy liability soak. If computers don't make mistakes then the person who built that little bit of code that caused the crash is responsible for the accident. There are a lot more people in the line of fire for a lawsuit with autonomous vehicles if you don't have a crash dummy to blame the accident on.

 

My God that was an excellent and completely accurate description of this situation!!!!

 

The scariest part of the story is realizing that a U.S. Xpress driver would be the one waiting to take over for the autonomous truck.

 

the funny part about all these autonomous companies, they lose alot of money ... alot... atleast the public ones, that have access to financial records... tusimple is operating at a multimillion dollar loss every year since existence... they are essentially just a trucking company but with an enormous amount of expenses compared to a regular trucking company, and are running for the same rates as everyone else.... i wonder how long they will hold on if the market turns and rates go down...i wonder how will they structure their company in the future? are they going to sell these trucks to big companies? or are they going to operate as an autonomous trucking company? if this is the case they wont have any competitive advantage for a very very long time . and these companies will go out of business in that time frame, because they dont turn a profit... far from it.. how long can that last before investors pull out? especially if they say there is a recession right around the corner?

for whats its worth tusimple, has about 70 trucks and is estimating revenue this year will be 5-7 million. that is less than 100k per truck... and will come close to 500 million in expenses... let that sink in for a moment....