Will Self-Driving Trucks Replace Us?

Definitely not a steering wheel holder

 

I can't see it happening. Besides, how are the injury lawyers going to make money when one crashes if there isn't a driver to try and sue?

 

These kind of things happen in a gradual progression. The cruise control on my truck will slow the truck (and brake if necessary) if it approaches slower vehicles. The technology exists. But it will take years of testing and cost control to bring it to market.
Will happen in stages over a long time.

 

They could......But that'd cut into the profits of the most profitable companies in the world.

They could also make their trucks more durable and longer lasting...but then no one would buy another truck

 

Unlikely. Too much of a risk. Autopilot-like trucks that still require a driver could be in the future. Don't recall seeing any unmanned spaceships making deliveries in "The Jetsons" either.

 

It will probably eliminate the need for team drivers but that's it. You still need someone to take tight corners and back into docks. You need a driver to fuel up, call for a mechanical breakdown, do pre and post trips, check into a shipper/receiver, load and or unload, navigate tight city streets. This will be great for those long hauls down the interstate where we can take a nap or play on our phone instead of hold onto a steering wheel. That's about it. The ONLY way this will 100% replace drivers is when a computer can think and see just like a human. Like, a cyborg. That's decades away, or it might never happen. Don't worry too much about this, it's just to make our roads safer, and it will definitely do that.

 

I think in time mostly everything on the road will be computer driven. Most commercial planes take off, fly and land themselves right. I can see it.

 

So why do we still pay pilots?

 

True. But they don't pay them much nomore. Guess they need to be there in the event of a emergency. Maybe we'll still be behind the steering wheel and be making 25,000 a year too.

 

Me and my brother Gene both drove trucks for about forty years. We were talking about this same subject one time and Gene says," You know, if we stay out here long enough they'll be hauling freight to the moon in a solar powered vehicle and me and you will be driving one of them things." He said, "You'd just put the freight in that thing. push a button, the wheels would pop up, and it'd take off." "Why it'd be there in three or four hours." I said, "You know, they was a feller invented one of them things one time." He said, "Naw !" I said, " Yeah, he called it a air-o-plane." Gene said, "I musta missed that." I said, Yeah, they said it would run two,three hundred miles an hour." He said, "That's the reason I missed it, come by too fast."

 

trains run on rails and they still have someone to drive them...