Until roadways are incredibly safe and cars are far more reliable it doesn’t make sense to allow driverless cars on the road. sure, right now these trucks are new and people are worried about selling more. But as soon as this is allowed the race to the bottom begins and you have a company operating a fleet of unmaintained driverless trucks.
If this were to come to pass, it would be a massive hit to the middle class. Truckers make up a HUGE part of the American middle class work force.
Also consider the economic impact to all of the gas stations and rest stops created primarily to service them, a huge amount of infrastructure exists to service truckers. That said, many could convert for autonomous service needs? I expect it to be a net loss for them also. RIP Loves?
And from a technical point of view, it’s a lesser challenge than generalized self-driving because point A and B are already known for each route, so more of the route could be “hardcoded” (not actually hardcoded but I think you get the concept).
That said, I can’t predict the timeline of when this would be feasible, but when it happens I expect it will cause a lot of anger from truckers.
Anyway, the jist of my comment, this will route a substantial amount of middle class wages from the truckers to the truck owners, increasing inequality even further.
This is the biggest catalyst to sway the public toward a UBI than anything else I can imagine.
Yeah, but think of the amount of damage that happens due to accidents where trucks are involved. If that can be substantially reduced it would be a huge win. We’re talking about thousands of lives saved each year.
I read somewhere that the largest class of jobs in half the US states was truck driver and it’s high in most other places (that article says 600k). They are likely to be the first sector almost wiped out by AI, followed by call centre workers and a lot of the legal profession. Good luck reskilling all those people. Here in the UK, call centres were often opened in areas of low employment, so we’ll see a lot of the already decimated old industrial areas hollowed out.
I’m betting garbage trucks actually end up being first. A half dozen trucks per human monitor sitting back at the station, with two guys in a pickup to run out to any problems.
i would guess these would be last. the garbage cans are not on the highway, they are in potentially hard accessible places, where some maneuvering and judgement may be required.
I once lived in a town that if you want to be an uber driver you also legally needed to be a current taxi driver. Kinda completely missed the point. Though I did like how the taxi drivers couldn’t screw me.
But on the flip side, you also have to consider how much cheaper, well, literally everything, will be when it doesn’t cost $30 an hour to move a product from one place to another?
Everything will cost so much less that Universal Basic Income wouldn’t need to be anywhere near as high as it is right now to be “living wage”.
Like it or not - self driving trucks are coming. We need to find a way to adjust to that. The timeline for when is probably not “when will the tech be ready” but rather “when will society be ready”. I’m pretty sure if you deployed self driving trucks today, pitchforks would come out and those trucks would be blocked by civil disobedience.
Slow it down too much though, and you’ll put your whole economy at a global disadvantage. A first would country could easily become a third world one by refusing to allow autonomous trucks. Autonomous trucks already exist and not just on pristine highways — for example they’re used on mine sites with no roads at all — …com.au/…/bhp-autonomous-trucks-collide-at-jimble…
I’ve been around for quite some time now, and I’ve seen things get pretty damn advanced, but not once have I EVER seen the prices of something go down.
Oh you sweet summer child. There is zero chance that the cost savings will be passed on to consumers. In fact, I’ll bet prices go up after an initial plateau.
At first, profits will rise due to the lack of $30/hr costs - and shareholders will celebrate the innovation.
Then when the migration to self-driving semis is complete and that profit levels out, shareholders will be pissed that the profits don’t continue to rise - so prices will rise again.
“If you’re driving a truck today,” he said, “my expectation is you’re going to be able to retire driving a truck.”
Probably true as it will take a while for them to ramp the numbers up to cover the shortage in truck drivers, and they’ll still need drivers for that last mile (as these trucks work best going between depots on freeways) but how long will being a truck driver be a viable occupation? When it’s one of the biggest areas of employment, can everyone transition to other logistical jobs, as suggested by the article?
They’re usually small but these days some carry 15 tons and you just grab them by a handle and start walking. Often there’s a lifting function (to load cargo onto/off of tall shelves/etc).
You’re not always limited to walking speed, some of them have a platform the operator can stand on to increase the speed.
I could totally see those increasing in size, to the size of a full size shipping container maybe, and having a wireless control system instead of needing to stand right next to it (which could be dangerous). It’d have sensors prevent the operator from running into anything and the control would just be a pair of joysticks. Outside of the loading dock of a building, they’d be able to drive autonomously.
The job of “driver” would be replaced by just a team of people who load / unload the cargo and plan/supervise the truck. And I don’t think it’s far away at all - we’re already seeing it with smaller cargo loads (is 15 ton all that small?).
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