A self-driving truck delivered butter from California to Pennsylvania in three days

Santa Cruz Sentinel ^ | December 10, 2019 | LEVI SUMAGAYSAY

[Drango]

The truck, which traveled on interstates 15 and 70 right before Thanksgiving, had to take scheduled breaks but drove mostly autonomously

Goofy.

[neverevergiveup]

As long as there is a driver there, who is awake, I’m semi OK with it (no pun intended).

[perfect_rovian_storm]

had to take scheduled breaks but drove mostly autonomously.

Yawn.

[b4me]

yeah, and when the safety driver isn’t aboard and some thing goes wrong? or the safety driver gets so lax since it’s auto driven and falls asleep, or distracted with phone games or such? people drivers are bad enough, I don’t think auto-driven will be any better.

[Ouchthatonehurt]

Thank God! I’ve heard that there’s no butter in Pennsylvania ;-)

[bert]

the word on the street is that California butter is a carcinogen.

[dp0622]

Well I assume someone still had to sit behind the wheel and you need a stretch every now and again.

Question. Who do we give the finger to when these things cut us off in a few years?

[Rennes Templar]

I’d like to see it navigate the Montana and Idaho mountain passes in the winter.

[KarlInOhio]

But can it drive from Atlanta to Texarkana, pick up 400 cases of Coors beer, and transport it back to Atlanta in 28 hours or less?

[KarlInOhio]

I’d like to see it navigate the Montana and Idaho mountain passes in the winter.

Ice Robot Truckers

[catnipman]

ROTFLOL!

this truck included a driver the entire time! i would hardly call that a “self-driving” vehicle ...

what they did was exactly what piloted commercial aircraft do every day: running on autopilot most of the time, but manually piloted during crucial periods and when things go wrong or plans change due to weather and other conditions ...

in terms of moment-by-moment decision-making complexity, flying a commercial airliner from point A to point B is massively simpler than simply driving across a large city during morning or evening rush-hour commute, with changing traffic, other-driver behavior, weather,and light conditions, and yet no airline in their right mind is ready to turn all of their commercial flights into pilotless drones ...

[DownInFlames]

The safety driver has to work under DOT log book regulations. He is behind the wheel and is limited to Federal regulation of 11 hours driving in a 14 hr day. After either of the above are met he must take a 10 hour break.

[Does so]

As long as there is a driver there, who is awake, I’m semi OK with it (no pun intended).

I need this ride. What would it cost me to be the "safety driver"? (One-way).

[Alberta's Child]

If there has to be a driver on board, then adopting self-driving trucks is kind of pointless, isn’t it?

[Zhang Fei]

[The truck, which traveled on interstates 15 and 70 right before Thanksgiving, had to take scheduled breaks but drove mostly autonomously

Goofy. ]

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My guess is that we will eventually get to the point that multiple trucks are operated remotely by a single human driver, much as pilots fly multiple drones. His job will be to monitor the trucks’ sensors to make sure than they’re not about to get into a multi-vehicle pileup. The beauty of this arrangement is that the work will be less stressful for the drivers, given that they can do this from home or a local office, and bathroom breaks would merely involve a temporary hand-off to some other human operator rather looking for a rest stop. And the trucks could be operated 24 hours a day by different human operators working in shifts vs the current 11 hours on, 10 hours off.

[billorites]

"an autonomous truck"

Truck stop hookers hardest hit.

[ptsal]

Who installs the chains?

[US_MilitaryRules]

And who is going to fuel up these driverless trucks?

[US_MilitaryRules]

lol!

[Kirkwood]

That’s what they used to say about elevators.