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.
Automated consumers have been around for a while. Started in the pharmacy, but these days you can get just about anything sent on a predetermined schedule.
So my neighbor who drives cross country all the time and who works his butt off to make $65,000 per year is being cheated out of most of what they book as labor cost ?
I had a neighbor who was a Teamster.
He would have delighted in sabotaging scab robots!
Thankfully, light rail, which only goes back and forth on a set of tracks will NEVER have driverless trains.
Can you imagine the HUGE disaster if someone began promoting that idea?
The Affirmative Action Employees would go on strike forever.
We're closing in on the goal..
True. The whole idea of decreasing available hours for drivers is to increase hiring. TPTB is trying to create jobs.
Yes and of course none of these driverless trucks will be hijacked
Cat has more than 20 250-ton DRIVERLESS mining trucks running 24 hours a day at a large iron mine in Australia.
Caterpillar’s Mining Automation Journey (Extended Edition)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMw5G8FSbdI&index=20&list=PLF70F7538D7201CD8
24 minutes
They are expanding the fleet to 50 trucks.
first they replaced many American drivers with Mexicans at lower wages
now they plan to replace the Mexicans with robots
makes business sense.
but, as usual, there are the inconvenient externalities...
1. unemployed Americans in USA
2. unemployed Mexicans in USA
Call me a Luddite if you want, but driverless vehicles bring it out in me. Throwing so many people out of work, especially considering that driving a truck is one of the few fallbacks, when so many already are out of work, it’s just unconscionable. We’re already living with the transportation costs, and it’s not as if there aren’t costs to be borne by taxpayers to support hundreds of thousands of former truck drivers if they no longer have work.
I’ve said it countless time, they better be building robots to by stuff too.
In the early 70’s they wanted to build a transit system here in Pittsburgh called Skybus. It was an early prototype rubber-wheeled vehicle that ran on an elevated track, and was driven completely by an onboard computer (no driver).
It was a HUGELY controversial political issue, and was eventually killed-off by the Mayor of Pittsburgh. No one came right out and said it, but the fact that it was driverless, and would have put union workers out of a job, was a HUGE factor.
Ironically the transit system today is doing broke due to pension costs. Would not be the case if they had built this thing.
“tried a driverless car in the U.S. they found that the dividing lines and road markings”
You don’t need that stuff. I’m being serious. You can determine your lane by sampling the textures in front of the vehicle to determine what constitutes ‘road’ and restrict a vehicle to remain in an area that would be determined to be a lane. Moreover, it can sample other vehicles on the road and determine that safe area as well.
Anyone who develops any kind of intelligence system that relies on painted road markers to remain safe should not be allowed to develop such a system :-). I mean, what happens when there is a dust storm or snow storm! :-).
Better to automate the RRs. Talk about packet switching....
Coming soon to a rail yard near you. My boy works on a railroad and there's always talk about automating the locomotives at the switching yards.
A nasty, crowded snow covered road with blowing snow coming down at night is a challange.
Trains on wheels taking over the highways, freeways, and where ever else they are sent - liberal dreams coming true - people herded aboard the new bus, the new metro, the new plane, the new train without rails. No more not being able to text and talk on your gadget while traveling, no more speeding tickets, no more drivers license, no more truck or bus drivers, no more no more ...
I don’t believe in it.
Some things need a human in attendance.
“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.”
Don’t think I’ve met a trucker making $60 a year either.
Already invented centuries ago. Just needs tech updating to become super efficient. I find most railcars spend most of their time sitting around due to regulations and slow switching. Plenty of room for improvement of up to 10x.
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