and who filled their fuel tanks???
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.
Because geometry exists. To do that you’d need the trailer to get longer during the turn.
Thank God for the endless supply of money from the taxpayers. That pension fund will never go broke, and will only run short of money on paper.
Everyone will get their full pension, and on time.
It may be practicable way before it is practical — legal problems would be foremost among the difficulties. Who’s to blame when the robot malfunctions? To the tune of how much? Existing insurance law won’t be any guide — that covers human drivers.
A set of extendable rear wheels would fix that.
One of the problems I’ve read about driverless cars recently is merging into traffic...interpreting when another driver is signalling to let them in. And other cars rear-ending them because they don’t complete the merge when the human driver expects them to...the robot car is being too cautious.
All these are bugs that will eventually be worked out though. Human drivers don’t have a perfect safety record either, so the standard probably won’t be 100% perfection.
The legislature will eventually work out the liability issues.
We should keep an eye on in which room Japan decides to let their humanoid robots go to the bathroom.
and who filled their fuel tanks???
Because we need more of these.
-PJ
Actually we already have existing insurance laws that handle that kind of thing, they just aren’t part of auto insurance. Homeowners and renters insurance already deals with some of this. And as our police forces get more lazy and more and more are refusing to assign blame unless somebody gets seriously hurt or killed auto insurance is learning to become a lot less blame oriented. I live in a city (Tucson) that’s functionally no fault on auto accidents now (like you can’t even get the cops to show up to accidents anymore unless there’s an injury or a car needs to be towed) and honestly it’s worked out better. Having been in accidents before we became no fault and after the whole process is way faster now. I had a friend wait 2 months for his insurance company and the other guy’s couldn’t decide how to divvy responsibility, then it was a couple of weeks to get the check. Now the insurance companies just cover their own people and don’t really worry about it, the only question in my accident in November was if I was in the clear enough for them to waive my deductible (they did), 3 weeks from accident to check, and it would have probably been less if Thanksgiving hadn’t happened, and I could proceed with enough certainty to buy a car 4 days after the accident (I knew I was getting $4G, so I went from there and the “extra” $500 just went into saving).
So really there is a model to proceed on already in place for people who live in places with officially lazy police forces. And Ford, Google and Uber have joined forces on the lobbying effort, and with this being an election/bribe year, I expect things will start dropping into place on the legal front next year.
Spielberg’s first film.
Driverless semis and every other idiot on the road texting while driving. What could possibly go wrong?
It would be kind of cool to watch a truck do that. Completely pointless technology, and probably a lot slower, but it would look cool.
Once again:
“The vehicle performs all safety-critical functions for the entire trip, with the driver not expected to control the vehicle at any time. As this vehicle would control all functions from start to stop, including all parking functions, it could include unoccupied cars.”
Tesla doesn’t come close...and the Google project is the poster child for s demonstration project. Take the drivers out of them and it will be real, but not before.
I am an automated test engineer, and for all the wonderful technology that displaces lower end jobs you need to hire people to program and maintain all these sophisticated systems.
The real crime is they want us to do it on a truck drivers wages.
Don’t worry, nobody will hack their systems. Honest....
I’ve not in the crowd that is bemoaning the lost jobs...just pointing out economic and technical hurdles. And your comment about paying programmers truck driver wages actually re-enforces my point - I don’t see a huge savings in converting to driverless trucks. Even more so if the programmers are in a different wage zone.
There are huge hurdles.
I face them daily.
Not true....many companies have direct rail access.
Auto insurance firms will have skin in the game too since they have to account for these new risks. What happens when the robot doesn’t yield the right of way?
I think you sound like you’re smoking wacky weed of irrational optimism. To travel on a specially prepared track is one thing. To mingle with human drivers, who will not instantly give up their cars, is quite another.
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