Will self-driving trucks be an issue for truckers

It turns out there are automatic tire chains around today. It looks like they’ve been out for years. I think by the time drivers are taken off the seat (if ever), it will take a long time. Apparently driverless tech will come out in stages. Freightliner will be releasing some of that tech on their newest truck in a year or two. It’s been announced already.

 

The auto tire chains have been out for years, and are great for defeating the chain laws, especially if you are running fenders, BUT you will never see them on a truck that needs chains. They do work very well for the times you almost need chains.

 

You're right, it's a bad investment overall. I went down that road. I didn't spend that much on education, but a lot of my peers did. It's a bit of a crap shoot. If you can do the "dirty jobs" most people just aren't willing to do, you'd stand to profit the best. I don't regret my time spent at college, but financially it hasn't really paid dividends. Just in my first year I went from a negative net worth to around 50k because I am not spending most of it. The guy I drove with last week I was also training how to do the account I'm working commented on my wardrobe... "Makes 2,000 a week, wears 12.00 Walmart shoes." I said you're #### right. LoL

Automation is coming but I don't see it coming soon. There's too many issues that still need to be hammered out. You got a decade, at least, imo. Come on in and start driving. Save as much as you can and set yourself up well for your future. If you are still driving when automation kicks you off the road, you'll have money saved up and no student loan debt. Even if I lost my job next year to automation, I am still well ahead of where I was a year ago and if I didn't drive, I probably wouldn't be as ahead as I am now.

Learn how to work the market, buy some property and rent it out... etc. Get the most out of your time on the road as you possibly can

 

Anyone recall the title of the old post apocalyptic sci-fi movie where the locomotive-sized, black, automated freight trucks with a huge jet engine intake on the front go screaming from city to city across the wasteland? On paved roads nonetheless. The 'heroes' needed supplies or transportation and stopped one to get what the wanted. They led a cow onto the road and the truck stopped for it and they climbed on. But not until after previous truck flattened the guy's unoccupied motorcycle, which he'd parked in the road to try to stop it.

That's right but worse things will happen. I got bashed on the head by a library robot while working on it for 'erratic operation'. Big cabinet full of digital tape cartridges where the robot would pick one from a slot and put it in a tape drive. The robot's power was locked off but an intermittent short circuit in a hidden part of the wiring harness powered it up when the wiring was disturbed. Totally a factory defect and out of warranty! The thing had run for 4 years before any problem showed up. Fortunately the short only supplied the motor driver with 8 Volts instead of the usual 24. Robots are stupid and don't care. Can't care. Can't reason. Don't "think" in any sense of the word. An amoeba is smarter than a robot. 3 laws my 455. The public thinks one thing but reality is very different. "Our machines feed the furnace, if they take us they will burn us"

Control, subjugation, surveillance.

Very simple from a technical aspect. Logistically a challenge to do elegantly without trace due to some layers of security and fault tolerance.
A crude approach might work like someone keying up his 2000 watt CB, or a real jammer, next to one of those things full of low-bidder electronics and making the steering servo go nuts at 70MPH?

Uber corporate was not charged with a crime and apparently neither has the driver. Lots of excuses and crocodile tears.

Pneumatic tubes are cool but have their own problems with maybe unpleasant things like eels being sent through them. They were used a lot in the past.

Let's just keep good ol' truck drivers.

 

I'm an ex trucker. Trucking is more of a regular career now, and i think the "good old days" of trucking are over. Drivers used to be responsible for their trucks, but now the companies don't think of the driver as the captain of his ship. They will hire anyone to grab the wheel, but most drivers don't feel much pride in what they are doing. Couple that with the fact that the old school dispatchers have disappeared with the old school drivers, and i can't recommend trucking to anyone anymore.

 

You could get these trucks on the road in 5 years. Create dedicated lanes with barriers and the truck runs long haul across the country. in the protected lanes. They would never come into contact with cars and trucks around them. The teck to do this is probably already upon us and the plan would need federal funding to build the modified lanes..

 

And those long haul freeways are now down to one lane for 80% of their length. Any guess how long that will last before 4 wheelers force them to open the second lane back up?

If you want dedicated lanes, it's going to take a lot longer than 5 years to put a third lane in. Even then there will be protest as all the tax money wasted on self driving trucks....

 

You're going to have to have a hell of a barrier wall to keep an automagic truck out of the manual driving lanes when it's onboard collision detection system decides to freak out due to the shadow of a bridge.

 

Bingo.

 

Federal funding? Does that equate to more taxes? I will say yet again what is the obvious. Our present infrastructure is crumbling, 97% of every bridge in this country failed inspection last year, states (and federal government) don’t have the money to update let alone build new highways. Yet people think recreating a whole industry from scratch is feasible, only Bernie could come up with this.