Posted on 05/26/2014 3:15:22 PM PDT by Kaslin
In August of 2013 I wrote Message to 5.7 Million Truck Drivers "No Drivers Needed" Your Job is About to Vanish.
The key word in that sentence is "about". I did not mean immediately, but I did mean a lot sooner than truck drivers and the general public expect. Most protested. I received many emails saying this would not happen for decades.
Many truck drivers thought it would never happen. Most mentioned insurance issues. Yes, there are problems, but time has marched on even quicker than I thought.
TechCrunch reports California Will Start Granting Licenses For Driverless Cars In September.
Come September, the California Department of Motor Vehicles will begin granting licenses to select driverless cars and their human co-pilots, which will make it a bit less legally iffy as to whether or not they’re actually allowed to be on a public road.
The good news: The license will only cost $150 a pop, and that covers 10 vehicles and up to 20 test drivers.
The bad (but probably actually good) news: You probably can’t get one, so don’t go trying to make your own Googlecar just yet.
Stiff License Terms
Yes, the terms of the license are stiff including $5,000,000 insurance against personal injury, death, or property damage. And a test driver has to be able to take immediate control of the car at all times.
Nonetheless, the licensing is a big step forward. Totally driverless cars are but a single step away. All that needs to happen is for California to eliminate the requirement that someone has to be in the car at all times to take control.
A big issue is that radar can detect size and shape of objects, but it does not have human judgement regarding danger. For example, a balloon blowing across the road is a much different thing from a hunk of metal the same size sitting in the road.
Such difficulties will be overcome.
Incentives and Implications
The implications on the shipping business are staggering. A full-time truck driver might cost as much as $100,000 a year. The incentive to get rid of millions of full-time drivers is massive.
A July 2013 Truckers Report headline reads ATA: Self-Driving Trucks Are “Close To Inevitable”
However, the article itself dismissed the idea totally.
“People come up with these grandiose ideas,” says Bob Esler, a commercial trucker for almost 50 years. “How are you going to get the truck into a dock or fuel it?”
And then there’s loading and unloading. Pre-trip inspections. Signing for drop-offs and pickups. Making sure cargo is properly secured. Making sure the cargo that’s being loaded actually gets loaded. The list just keeps going on and on.
The Last Mile
Many of the objections in the above article have to do with the last mile. Let's assume someone has to load the truck. Let's also assume an actual skilled driver has to dock the truck and make the final delivery (arguably a bad assumption).
Yet, even if those assumptions are true, nothing stops a trucking company from having distribution facilities right off an interstate near major cities, where local drivers deliver the goods the last mile.
Why can't all but the last few miles be driverless even if a skilled driver is needed some step of the way for safety reasons?
Technology marches on at a breathtaking pace. We might actually see commercial driverless vehicles on the roads within a few years.
bottom line is maybe this can work for cars, i wouldn’t want it on trucks. imagine the cost of consumer goods going up to cover the extra liability. that cost gets passed onto consumers. nothing good will come of it. unemployment. more stupid unnecessary avoidable deaths. higher costs.
When you are asleep in the back and your van is in the middle of nowhere on I-whatever,
I guess it will send you an e-mail and alert you that you are almost out of gas.
Oh, but you are asleep, so never-mind.
Maybe it will post your dilemma to your Facebook account or twitter...
Whoa! You sleep a lot better than me.
We aren't getting younger, and at some point we will be unable to drive safely. Robot cars will make our lives fuller. This will be one of major reasons for adoption of autonomous vehicles, as older people are more likely to have money to buy such a car. Youngsters, of course, will not want to hear about these robots.
If they are programmed wrong, and accidentally go 40 in a 35, how will it know to pull over for Barney Fife?
When robocop shoots the tires out from under it, I guess?
No way I could ever just trust a computer.
Imagine setting in the pass anger seat at 70mph or driving through a very busy city. I wouldn’t feel so comfortable. Maybe not the first 5-7 years of them using them.
I travel a lot. I would love to take a nap on a long drive. Maybe it will happen one day.
How much does a year's worth of human cost?
Please include base salary, driver insurance, certifications, healthcare, paid vacations, time lost for mandatory rest, per mile charges and other things you as a trained professional skilled in the industry would know, that I don't.
There will be hackers hacking them in no time.
And shortly thereafter, people claiming the car decided to wreck itself, so no fault of their own in the accident.
The first time gps or google map fails and it goes through a house, people will understand
That actually makes things so much better; the drivers can end up resting and keeping an eye on the maintenance and paperwork and handle unloading and loading.
Exactly; I wonder how much of this is a desire to travel better, or a desire to abdicate responsibility for operating a machine.
It would be ideal for the elderly who are unable to move as quickly.
Would you want to share the road with 100,000 lbs of truck on autopilot?
But is it possible to program one to anticipate the boundless stupidity of other drivers? If that doesn't happen, I see dead people.
Meanwhile we kill about 50000 a year the good old fashioned way with idiots driving drunk, texting and just plain old stupid.
I’m far more worried about the idiot who HAS to check Facebook on the freeway or the illegal drunk driver weaving home in the lawn care truck ....
Ping.
The Navy is landing aircraft on carriers with fully automated systems, several orders of magnitude more difficult. Keeping a truck going down a lane is childsplay in comparison.
Under the ‘if you know, you know’ category.....
Old ‘story’ in early space days about all the ‘firsts’ and one of them was a human accompanying a monkey on a space flight.
The person kept asking ‘Houston’ what he should do and after 3 days of sitting there observing the monkey do all the work, word from Houston came down
“FEED THE MONKEY”
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