Posted on 04/27/2016 12:26:09 PM PDT by JOAT
A convoy of self-driving trucks recently drove across Europe and arrived at the Port of Rotterdam. No technology will automate away more jobs — or drive more economic efficiency — than the driverless truck.
Shipping a full truckload from L.A. to New York costs around $4,500 today, with labor representing 75 percent of that cost. But those labor savings aren’t the only gains to be had from the adoption of driverless trucks.
Where drivers are restricted by law from driving more than 11 hours per day without taking an 8-hour break, a driverless truck can drive nearly 24 hours per day. That means the technology would effectively double the output of the U.S. transportation network at 25 percent of the cost.
And the savings become even more significant when you account for fuel efficiency gains. The optimal cruising speed from a fuel efficiency standpoint is around 45 miles per hour, whereas truckers who are paid by the mile drive much faster. Further fuel efficiencies will be had as the self-driving fleets adopt platooning technologies, like those from Peloton Technology, allowing trucks to draft behind one another in highway trains.
Trucking represents a considerable portion of the cost of all the goods we buy, so consumers everywhere will experience this change as lower prices and higher standards of living.
While the efficiency gains are too real to pass up, the technology will have tremendous adverse effects as well.
In addition, once the technology is mature enough to be rolled out commercially, we will also enjoy considerable safety benefits. This year alone more people will be killed in traffic accidents involving trucks than in all domestic airline crashes in the last 45 years combined. At the same time, more truck drivers were killed on the job, 835, than workers in any other occupation in the U.S.
Even putting aside the direct safety risks, truck driving is a grueling job that young people don’t really want to do. The average age of a commercial driver is 55 (and rising every year), with projected driver shortages that will create yet more incentive to adopt driverless technology in the years to come.
While the efficiency gains are real — too real to pass up — the technology will have tremendous adverse effects as well. There are currently more than 1.6 million Americans working as truck drivers, making it the most common job in 29 states.
The loss of jobs representing 1 percent of the U.S. workforce will be a devastating blow to the economy. And the adverse consequences won’t end there. Gas stations, highway diners, rest stops, motels and other businesses catering to drivers will struggle to survive without them.
The demonstration in Europe shows that driverless trucking is right around the corner. The primary remaining barriers are regulatory. We still need to create on- and off-ramps so human drivers can bring trucks to the freeways where highway autopilot can take over. We may also need dedicated lanes as slow-moving driverless trucks could be a hazard for drivers. These are big projects that can only be done with the active support of government. However, regulators will be understandably reluctant to allow technology with the potential to eliminate so many jobs.
Yet the benefits from adopting it will be so huge that we can’t simply outlaw it. A 400 percent price-performance improvement in ground transportation networks will represent an incredible boost to human well-being. Where would we be if we had banned mechanized agriculture on the grounds that most Americans worked in farming when tractors and harvesters were introduced in the early 20th century?
We often discuss the displacement of jobs by artificial intelligence and robots in the abstract, as something that we’ll have to eventually tackle in the far distant future. But the recent successful demonstration of the self-driving truck shows that we can’t afford to put off the conversation on how we’re going to adapt to this new reality.
...not with new GPS accuracies, high definition map data and LIDAR. I’ve seen it done, the vehicle stays in it’s lane better than a human ever could. Throw in some vehicle-to-vehicle communication and viola! ...they don’t hit each other either!
...not to say there’s no challenges ;) I think construction areas that challenge people on the correct action is one of them. Being an “assertive” driver in dense traffic is another (think rush hour and roundabouts), they tend to do nothing...just constant wait-loop.
Simple, eliminate the jobs for up to half of the people and we'll have the biggest centralized, redistributionist government anyone ever imagined.
I have heard the same song and dance for the past fifty years and have never seen the system changed, the cronies and pols cut out of the loop, or the roads get repaired just because there was plenty of money most of which was siphoned off by corrupt pols and their pals.
Who the Hell said the issue was money, anyway ? The issue is the infrastructure is falling apart. What it takes to change that will probably take more than twenty or thirty years because it's taken more than fifty to get nowhere with everyone saying the real reason things are falling apart isn't a lack of money.
Put them on railway tracks. They could travel in long trains for efficiency, breaking apart to let any one truck out (requiring raised siding area like a road crossing but longer) and then the train could congeal back together. It would revitalize railways and get most of the long haul trucks off of the roads for most of their trip.
Because each “car” of the train has its own engine, the train would not have to be marshaled in any fashion. Just wait along the siding for a train headed its way and join up at the end, but no need to still be at the end when it was time to get off.
Practically speaking, even if they get the driving part down flawless, they’ll have to worry about hijacking of loads.
2776 miles comes up to $1165 at $.42 per mile, which is mid average for long haul.
A full five days of driving is about right at 10 hrs a day of driving, not counting stops.
I’d blow past the car bozo on the right in a heart beat and stay in the right lane where I belong anyway....
“Pity the fool following the truck... “
Or the automated truck following it. Or the one behind it. Or the one behind it...
I think the following distances will be so necessarily large for safety purposes that manual drivers will take full advantage of them. These things are gonna be cut off left and right, braking and slowing, over and over, until they are doing 20 in the right lane, jacking up traffic even worse than it is now.
The term luddite very much applies when the people are spouting anti-technology hokum.
There actually already is such technology, and it’s getting better. Driverless vehicles have already logged millions of miles in America. It is available in consumer vehicles (Tesla).
If you spread lies about the tech trying to keep it from happening then yes you’re a luddite.
The article plays fast with the math. Gee there’s a surprise. Doesn’t mean the tech doesn’t already exist.
The problem with the train comparison is that trains don’t go door to door. They need trucks at both ends. Self driving truck can go door to door, thus beating the train.
They aren’t necessarily using LIDAR, or cellular networks. There’s many ways to solve the puzzles, and various companies are using various approaches.
Actually it IS being extensively used in mining and farming. We have many strip mining operations happening in America today with just a few employees mostly sitting in a control tower watching the automated vehicles dance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_mining
And the farms aren’t far behind:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driverless_tractor
Automated vehicles are not just the future. They are the present. We have more than enough computing power (your average smartphone has much more computing power than BigBlue had), it’s really just a matter of working the algorithm and data inputs.
If they are so hellbent on automating jobs as the population rises, how are a bunch of unemployed people going to buy their products?
I doubt that. If a driver makes $60,000 per year, that’s $1,100 per week and it doesn’t take a week to make that run.
75 % of $4,500 is $3,375 to make that run...
$3,375 minus diesel fuel, federal taxes, state taxes, tolls, meals, showers, laundry fees...
Who do you thinks pays for all that if you are an independent trucker?
Stop by a local truck stop near where you live and talk to a few of them
Locally here a shower cost $13.00 a pop...
LA to NY is 2,450 miles....average MPG diesel Tractor trailer is 10 MPG...at best
That's 245 gallons @ $2.15 = $525.00 just in fuel...one way..
Do you know how LIDAR works?
I do...its used at my workplace. And oddly, we can’t use it effectively in driving rain, blowing dust, falling snow, etc. Please think about that the next time you see a demonstration of a self driving car in sunny south California.
This is the problem with most ‘alternative fuel’ vehicles - the consumer expects a car to be available all the time, with no range anxiety, etc. The same problem will hold for a driverless car. There will be absolutely zero consumer demand, if there is a risk that bad weather will leave you stranded.
I’m on the side of freedom, but freedom rarely wins against the nanny state when the math is there to justify the power grab.
From a pure math perspective, the only sane choice is to ban all drivers once the technology is there. Driving is dangerous, people die. Driving has been defined as a privilege rather than a right... Do you honestly see this going any other way long term?
Before I get flamed, I don’t want this to happen... but working in health/safety/environmental for many years has taught me to recognize the exact pattern/mindset that will bring it about.
So many variables that have to be considered by automated trucking, that example is one where someone suddenly stops in the middle of a highway or stops short. There’s things you have to foresee well in advance. For example driving down a side street and you see kids playing on the sidewalk, naturally you would slow down in case one darts into the street. Can an automated truck or car take that into consideration? I use to drive a taxi in New York city, probably one of the most hazardous places to drive. Alll the time drunks would jump out in front of me at night, I even had one case where I saw a mass in the street that looked like a garbage bag and as I got closer I saw it was a drunk guy laying in the street. He looked JUST like a hefty bag, green coat and he was in a fetal position in the middle of the street and you couldn’t drive around him. So what is an automated car going to do? Drive over him assuming it was a bag or sit there until it moves?
From the pure math perspective banning all drivers would be stupid, and impossible. I see us eventually phasing out self driving, I don’t see us banning it. For one thing it would just #$%^ people off and the legislature that proposed it would find himself out of a job. For another there’s the whole legacy vehicle problem, we’re simply not going to push 100,000 cars OFF the road.
When OnStar first started people made similar predictions, it and things like it would be universal, not having it would be outlawed, they’d use it to turn off your vehicle for various social mechanical reasons... 20 years later none of the above has happened.
Oops. Missed 3 zeroes. That was supposed to be 100 MILLION cars not thousand.
The trucks will be “talking” to each other over radio data links, so as soon as the front truck begins the braking process, every truck behind it will also do so virtually simultaneously, and perform exactly the same brake inputs. It’s only when the truck has to react to a vehicle that it isn’t linked to over its network does it have to use external sensors like cameras and laser rangefinding.
Once this gets out of the testing phase, I would be concerned about the numerous ways to mess up with the signals. Everything from laser pens to sat/wifi/cell jamming devices to fake paint markings on the road and road signs (think Wile E. Coyote “Free Bird Seed”). Ifthe trucks talk to each other it gets worse.
Spoofing has been a cottage industry for a while now.
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