According to the news self driving trucks are about to hit the road with no driver on board.
But according to this book that is not going to happen. The author says that the real purpose is to get rid of the skilled drivers and replace them with underpaid button pushers.
Will they really do that? What’s going to be the situation few years from now?
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
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In that case, would they be paid as skilled drivers or button pushers?
I mean you could do that remotely, but there is a an assurance that someone is putting some meat on the line.
But eventually i think we are going to reach Onicron: Nomads Soul, territory. Where you rent a car service on call, there’s no parking and the cars are always running, and cycled out for cleaning and bullet hole filling.
IMO:
Bare bones skeleton crews, similar to Railroad workers. They will try to strike but then gov’t will make it illegal to do so ASAP.
Staying hopeful though, keep learning and teaching, while being involved at your local community!
My bet, fully automated with localized maintenance workers who can travel around and perform repairs to fix the trucks stuck in their areas.
Just like mercedes ‘full self driving’ this sounds like its on limited routes where there’s been extensive testing. I don’t expect truck driving to go full auto on arbitrary roads in the next few years. The tech is not there yet.
I’m hoping they’ll hit nobody on the road, with somebody on board.
Driverless trucks will get Jesse James’d until they have armed guards.
Just a motivated criminal, a signal jammer, and a driverless truck enter an area with no signal. Just a happy criminal leaves.
If you’ve been injured by a self driving truck call our office right away as you may be entitled to compensation.
Can’t call anyone if you’re a stain on the pavement.
Well if you or someone you don’t like was injured give us a call.
It will likely be a mix. E.g. you might have 10 trucks on a particular run. You put a driver in the lead truck, as a human-in-the-loop safety. The rest play duckling to the mother duck.
What it will do is lower the skill level needed, and lower the stress. A driver having a nap isn’t a problem anymore. They just need to be able to get involved either if the autopilot has issues and has to stop, or if they need to fill out paperwork at the destination.
The duck-duckling model would probably work okay on the highway, but not so well once you arrive in a town or city. You can’t reliably get ten semis through a set of lights in traffic without getting split up. I guess they could have a depot outside of town where human drivers would meet the ducklings for the final leg of the journey.
I believe it’s common to have separate long haul trucks and last leg trucks. If the depot is right next to the motorway/highway, then it provides an obvious place for a handover. It also means drivers can stay in 1 area, and so go home each night.
They’ll keep someone in the truck for maintenance purposes. A self driving truck wouldn’t be able to change a flat tire for example and it would be more efficient to have the human driver change it than wait for someone to come out and change the flat.