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Why? That's the type of thing I would think computerized trucks would be better at than human drivers.

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Originally posted by JoseyWales2:
When autonomous trucks start having accidents where people are killed (and this will happen), then the reaction of the public will determine if they become accepted as the norm or not. I'm not completely convinced that people will be okay with trucks cruising the highway with no one on board and getting into accidents where deaths occur. With human drivers, it seems more acceptable to the public in my opinion because it's understood that people make mistakes. On the other hand, people expect perfection from computers and when that doesn't happen and someone gets hurt as a result, I wouldn't be too surprised if there was a backlash against autonomous trucks. Imagine an autonomous truck plowing into a line of stopped traffic on the freeway in bad weather. The media would have a field day.

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Originally posted by sigcrazy7:

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Originally posted by BBMW:
Why? That's the type of thing I would think computerized trucks would be better at than human drivers. All physics and reaction time. Dealing with human created problems would be more difficult.

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Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
There won't be auto-trucks from "coast to coast" anytime soon. Just the thought of these things going up and down many of the mountain passes out west without a driver is ridiculous.

The truck has to bleed its energy before it starts the downgrade. The AI will have to know about this ahead of time. Are we going to use signage? What about when that sign is unreadable. Sensors? Every large grade will need them, and they will need to be maintained. Maybe you could use mapping.

All of this sounds great. However, there does come a point where installing enough infrastructure is more costly than the driver.

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Originally posted by JoseyWales2:
When autonomous trucks start having accidents where people are killed (and this will happen), then the reaction of the public will determine if they become accepted as the norm or not. I'm not completely convinced that people will be okay with trucks cruising the highway with no one on board and getting into accidents where deaths occur. With human drivers, it seems more acceptable to the public in my opinion because it's understood that people make mistakes. On the other hand, people expect perfection from computers and when that doesn't happen and someone gets hurt as a result, I wouldn't be too surprised if there was a backlash against autonomous trucks. Imagine an autonomous truck plowing into a line of stopped traffic on the freeway in bad weather. The media would have a field day.

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Originally posted by BBMW:
You don't think they haven't thought of this.

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Originally posted by BBMW:
You don't think they haven't thought of this. The elevation of roads don't change The computer will have a detailed 3D map of the entire country in it's memory. Any construction changes will be tracked. This is probably done already. This is an easier problem.

The bigger problems are the instant, dynamic ones. What happens when another truck jackknifes in the rain right in front of it. But they plan for that also. These are not rinky dink operations. Hundreds of millions of dollars are going into this. And they're testing them for millions of miles. I'm pretty sure any situation you can think of, or have experienced, they've dealt with.

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Originally posted by sigcrazy7:

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Originally posted by BBMW:
Why? That's the type of thing I would think computerized trucks would be better at than human drivers. All physics and reaction time. Dealing with human created problems would be more difficult.

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Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
There won't be auto-trucks from "coast to coast" anytime soon. Just the thought of these things going up and down many of the mountain passes out west without a driver is ridiculous.

The truck has to bleed its energy before it starts the downgrade. The AI will have to know about this ahead of time. Are we going to use signage? What about when that sign is unreadable. Sensors? Every large grade will need them, and they will need to be maintained. Maybe you could use mapping.

All of this sounds great. However, there does come a point where installing enough infrastructure is more costly than the driver.

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Originally posted by sigcrazy7:

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Originally posted by BBMW:
You don't think they haven't thought of this.

I see you've got an answer for everything. Having spent 20 years on the road, however, I can tell you that there are many unforeseen circumstances. UNFORESEEN. You cannot plan for all of them. You have to adapt. Perhaps we will get to the point that A.I. will be able to adapt to every circumstance. Great. When that happens, we will basically have sentience robotics. However, I can tell you from experience that you cannot plan ahead for every contingency.

Let's take lumber hauling, for example. Sometimes, no matter how well it's strapped, lumber works out of the middle bunk. Who will deal with that? So it's snowing. Who is going to put on the chains. Are we going to station personnel on every mountain to chain trucks, like Donner pass in a snowstorm? What about the pass that gets only one truck all day, like Hwy 9 between Fairplay and Frisco, CO? What about, after the chains are installed, they need to be tightened after the first mile? Got people for that too? But, auto-Chains!! Great, get all 49 states to legalize them. That would save our current truckers a ton of trouble.

There are hundreds of little things that a driver does throughout a trip that will need attending to, in some way or another. You may create AI truck "rest stops" where crews can go over them. But then there's the regulatory hill to climb, where the driver is legally responsible for the load. In the former example, lumber falling from the truck is the legal responsibility of the driver. He/she could even go to jail for causing harm to another motorist. In your soon-to-be AI trucking world, who gets to do the jail time? The shipper? They won't take the liability, no matter the savings. The receiver? They have nothing to do with it. The truck service providers? The load was fine when it left the rest stop. The truck owner? They weren't there. They simply own the thing. You are talking about upending the whole entire logistics chain in the whole world, along with our legal and regulatory system for assigning liability. You show me the affordable insurance company that will insure AI trucks. I'm not talking about large pilot programs using self-insured carriers. I mean the insurance that 95% of the industry uses. It doesn't exist.

You are thinking that we will add in-route truck servicing, loaders at every shipper to secure and tarp, receivers at every customer to unstrap and untarp, people to tighten straps in route (sounds like the RR), air up tires, swap trailers, remove snow from trailer tops, check brakes, add oil and coolant, etc, etc, etc. Current regulations require all hazmat trucks to stop every three hours for driver inspections. Who will do that? It sounds somewhat expensive to have multiple people doing what one person normally does. This doesn't factor the additional people to maintain the AI system itself. All those technicians will have to be distributed all over the whole system.

Will trucking be autonomous one day? I'd say yes, but it isn't going to be in ten years. If the process is rushed, and as soon as someone gets killed, the process will slow way down. Automating box van terminal-to-terminal freight is one thing. You'll mainly be competing with RR inter-modal. But the whole trucking industry? You've got a mountain to climb to do that, and you're just out of base camp. To my original point, the one that prompted my initial post, is that constantly stating that AI will replace truckers is one factor in keeping new entrants out and is exasperating the driver shortage. It's not helpful.

I know you probably have faith that "they've thought of everything." Well, they haven't. The AI programmers need more experience trying to wrestle a D9 CAT onto an RGN before they figure out how to get AI to do it. I'd love to see how current AI will adjust for bridge height when it's reduced by a few inches of snow on the road. Will it get out of the cab and measure it? Maybe there will be a special road snow measuring sensor, for an additional $10,000, of course. It breaks down every few months, and it must be cleaned after road spray, but hey, they've thought of it!

The people who really need to worry about AI is not the truckers. It's the road construction crews.

In the early 80s, the Jarvik-7 artificial heart was installed at the University of Utah. We were told that within a decade, heart transplants would be obsolete. Today, we still have artificial hearts, mainly used as bridges to transplants, but we still do heart transplants. I believe autonomous-everything is similar. It will progress and improve, but it will be a long time before it will replace the human. In the meantime, it will be used to improve the human's performance. This was true for heart transplants, and it will apply to other human endeavors as well. Including surface transportation.

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Originally posted by sigcrazy7:

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Originally posted by BBMW:
You don't think they haven't thought of this.

I see you've got an answer for everything. Having spent 20 years on the road, however, I can tell you that there are many unforeseen circumstances. UNFORESEEN. You cannot plan for all of them. You have to adapt. Perhaps we will get to the point that A.I. will be able to adapt to every circumstance. Great. When that happens, we will basically have sentience robotics. However, I can tell you from experience that you cannot plan ahead for every contingency.

Let's take lumber hauling, for example. Sometimes, no matter how well it's strapped, lumber works out of the middle bunk. Who will deal with that? So it's snowing. Who is going to put on the chains. Are we going to station personnel on every mountain to chain trucks, like Donner pass in a snowstorm? What about the pass that gets only one truck all day, like Hwy 9 between Fairplay and Frisco, CO? What about, after the chains are installed, they need to be tightened after the first mile? Got people for that too? But, auto-Chains!! Great, get all 49 states to legalize them. That would save our current truckers a ton of trouble.

There are hundreds of little things that a driver does throughout a trip that will need attending to, in some way or another. You may create AI truck "rest stops" where crews can go over them. But then there's the regulatory hill to climb, where the driver is legally responsible for the load. In the former example, lumber falling from the truck is the legal responsibility of the driver. He/she could even go to jail for causing harm to another motorist. In your soon-to-be AI trucking world, who gets to do the jail time? The shipper? They won't take the liability, no matter the savings. The receiver? They have nothing to do with it. The truck service providers? The load was fine when it left the rest stop. The truck owner? They weren't there. They simply own the thing. You are talking about upending the whole entire logistics chain in the whole world, along with our legal and regulatory system for assigning liability. You show me the affordable insurance company that will insure AI trucks. I'm not talking about large pilot programs using self-insured carriers. I mean the insurance that 95% of the industry uses. It doesn't exist.

You are thinking that we will add in-route truck servicing, loaders at every shipper to secure and tarp, receivers at every customer to unstrap and untarp, people to tighten straps in route (sounds like the RR), air up tires, swap trailers, remove snow from trailer tops, check brakes, add oil and coolant, etc, etc, etc. Current regulations require all hazmat trucks to stop every three hours for driver inspections. Who will do that? It sounds somewhat expensive to have multiple people doing what one person normally does. This doesn't factor the additional people to maintain the AI system itself. All those technicians will have to be distributed all over the whole system.

Will trucking be autonomous one day? I'd say yes, but it isn't going to be in ten years. If the process is rushed, and as soon as someone gets killed, the process will slow way down. Automating box van terminal-to-terminal freight is one thing. You'll mainly be competing with RR inter-modal. But the whole trucking industry? You've got a mountain to climb to do that, and you're just out of base camp. To my original point, the one that prompted my initial post, is that constantly stating that AI will replace truckers is one factor in keeping new entrants out and is exasperating the driver shortage. It's not helpful.

I know you probably have faith that "they've thought of everything." Well, they haven't. The AI programmers need more experience trying to wrestle a D9 CAT onto an RGN before they figure out how to get AI to do it. I'd love to see how current AI will adjust for bridge height when it's reduced by a few inches of snow on the road. Will it get out of the cab and measure it? Maybe there will be a special road snow measuring sensor, for an additional $10,000, of course. It breaks down every few months, and it must be cleaned after road spray, but hey, they've thought of it!

The people who really need to worry about AI is not the truckers. It's the road construction crews.

In the early 80s, the Jarvik-7 artificial heart was installed at the University of Utah. We were told that within a decade, heart transplants would be obsolete. Today, we still have artificial hearts, mainly used as bridges to transplants, but we still do heart transplants. I believe autonomous-everything is similar. It will progress and improve, but it will be a long time before it will replace the human. In the meantime, it will be used to improve the human's performance. This was true for heart transplants, and it will apply to other human endeavors as well. Including surface transportation.

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Originally posted by BBMW:

And will there be startup problems? Sure. Will they be worked out? Yes. As far as timeframe? Driverless trucks may be on the road hauling commercial loads this year. If not definitely next. And the current shortage of drivers will accelerate this.

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All jobs can be automated out of existence, if it becomes worthwhile to do so

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Originally posted by Aglifter:
I do think maritime will be automated, outside of harbors and canals, pretty soon.

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Originally posted by Expert308:
And, what happens when Skynet finds its way into the autonomous trucks' computers?