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The Economic Consequences of Self-Driving Trucks
An anonymous reader writes: Last week we learned that self-driving big-rig trucks were finally being deployed on public roads in Nevada for testing purposes. Experts consider trucking to be ripe for replacement with AI because of the sheer volume of trucks on the road, and the relative simplicity of their routes. But the eventual replacement of truck drivers with autonomous driving systems will have a huge impact on the U.S. economy: there are 3.5 million professional truck drivers, and millions more are employed to support and coordinate them. Yet more people rely on truckers to stay in business — gas stations, motels, and restaurants along trucking routes, to name a few.
Now, that's not to say moving forward with autonomous driving is a bad idea — in 2012, roughly 4,000 people died in accidents with large trucks, and almost all of the accidents were caused by driver error. Saving most of those lives (and countless injuries) is important. But we need to start thinking about how to handle the 10 million people looking for work when the (human) trucking industry falls off a cliff. It's likely we'll see another wave of ghost towns spread across the poor parts of the country, as happened when the interstate highway system changed how long-range transportation worked in the U.S.
Now, that's not to say moving forward with autonomous driving is a bad idea — in 2012, roughly 4,000 people died in accidents with large trucks, and almost all of the accidents were caused by driver error. Saving most of those lives (and countless injuries) is important. But we need to start thinking about how to handle the 10 million people looking for work when the (human) trucking industry falls off a cliff. It's likely we'll see another wave of ghost towns spread across the poor parts of the country, as happened when the interstate highway system changed how long-range transportation worked in the U.S.
As the republicans would say: let the markets sort themselves out.
Some of those unemployed will just kill themselves (some of these will jump in front of an automated truck and hope the AI is as good as a person in not avoiding them). Others will sabotage the trucks, then go to prison (the social system that the republicans approve of). A bunch might start businesses around those trucks. Another bunch will spill into other low-paying markets, like plumbing, cleaning, babysitting, which are already oversubscribed. Some will go on killing sprees targeted towards the managers and owners of those companies that laid them off. The less aggressive and less suicidal bunch will probably go onto some social program (that is not prison) that the republicans disapprove of on grounds of "socialism".
tl;dr; Only a small amount will actually go into business for themselves. The rest will flood other markets (which are already overflowing), and the end result will be socialism and/or violence.
Import millions more unskilled people who will work for low wages. Unemployed citizens and legal residents: "let them eat cake!"
Nobody has anything to worry about.
Except those who try to eat a 16 lb steak. Only three people have succeeded in that. Tony Randall, Red Barclay, and Daenerys Targaryen.
The summary says "in 2012, roughly 4,000 people died in accidents with large trucks, and almost all of the accidents were caused by driver error. Saving most of those lives (and countless injuries) is important." My brother is a truck driver, and from what he has told me, and also what I have seen reported multiple times, and what I have seen myself, the vast majority of accidents involving trucks are caused by car drivers misbehaving around truck. They pull stunts like pulling in front of them at merges then hitting the brakes. An autonomous truck will hit such a car just like a manned truck, so I think the claim that automating the trucks will save most of those lives is wrong.
In NJ, you aren't allowed to pump your own gas so that you will keep the guy who pumps it employed. They *could* have employed him dong something useful--thing TVA-type programs where he's doing a job to improve the environment, for example--but this is what they picked. There will be pushback against automated trucks in a similar fashion, although of course they're so much more proficient that they will prevail in the end.
There are a lot of trucks where liability or small tasks that still require human judgment will keep with human drivers for a good long while yet. Fuel Trucks delivering to local gas stations, septic trucks and heating oil trucks that have to find a port in every person's yard, etc...
I do wonder whether the amount of stuff that falls off the back of the truck will go up or down. Less oversight of the stuff, but less chance for a driver to be in collusion with the people who fall things off the back of trucks.
And taxi drivers. Stop uber!
I've already encountered address errors where due to the GPS having erroneous data the driver was unwilling to accept he was not at the right place. How do you handle a robot that KNOWS it is droppng its load on you and it is wrong? A human can have the sign on the bulding and the street sign pointed out to them to prove they are wrong. How do you reason with the software?
How many loads redirected by hackers before they need men to "ride shotgun" on the load?
I can't imagine that even with trucks driving themselves, that we wouldn't want or need someone being with the truck. For interactions with people for delivery, to handle mechanical problems or unexpected issues that would arise.
I just don't think it'll be the employment collapse everyone is imagining, I just think we'll move from truck driver to truck manager.
"If we allow tractors and other labor-saving farm equipment, at least 65 percent of the population will become unemployable!"
- The 1870's
But the eventual replacement of truck drivers with autonomous driving systems will have a huge impact on the U.S. economy: there are 3.5 million professional truck drivers, and millions more are employed to support and coordinate them.
Who said anything about replacing truck drivers with autonomous driving systems? Airplanes have autopilot, but they still require TWO pilots. Autonomous trucking systems will be no different. Somebody will have to drive it in city traffic and park it at the freight terminal, and take over when the autonomous system doesn't know how to handle a situation. The difference is that in a plane you usually have seconds or minutes to take over the system, whereas on a road with cars mere feet away, a trucker will have fractions of a second to respond and take over to a situation.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I, for one, welcome our new autonomous overlords. I'm not kidding. The problem with the transportation system is drivers.
(||) Nehmo (||)
Also, refueling? En route maintenance. Stuff like that?
There is more to being a truck driver than just driving.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
It'll be handled through economics. Trucking companies will look at AI trucks and the total cost of maintaining them (it won't be a single use buy, there will be maintenance, regular monitoring, and errors from the AI to account for) versus the salary of a truck driver. If the AI is expensive it won't be adopted, if it's comparable truck driver salaries will go down to accommodate. Plus even the summary makes a valid point; in order for this to take off, refueling stations have to alter their system and processes to accommodate full service refueling, because an AI truck isn't going to grab the pump and put it into the gas tank on it's own.
AI does not replace humans, it adds a new variable to the labor cost equation by creating a capital expenditure vs. labor cost component and the pricing (salaries and capex) adjust accordingly. As it adjusts, some will be out of work and some won't, but it won't be 10 million and it won't happen overnight that's for certain.
Yeah, right.This will never happen. There's a lot going on in the cab of a big rig and every car on the road tries to pass you. Accidents caused by driver error? Prove it. Any problem drivers would be a liability and fired.
I'll keep saying it, but this is just one more step towards the collapse predicted by Technocracy. We have a system of artificial scarcity while at the same time we are able to do the same work with fewer people with automation and robotics. The natural trend would be one person watches the machines while the rest of us are without a job, how do you make money without a job, you can't. That's because we don't need money, and the longer we cling to the idea that the measure of a man is his wealth we will continue to have poverty, suffering, and strife and in increasing amounts despite our capacity to produce more with less.
"in 2012, roughly 4,000 people died in accidents with large trucks, and almost all of the accidents were caused by driver error. Saving most of those lives (and countless injuries) is important."
I've been hired on in the past to give a hand to truckers to unload their rigs, most of the time it involved traveling to a different location. A few times there ended up being a fender bender...and driver error was involved.
The problem is, it wasn't the trucker's error, but some idiot in some small compact, darting in front of the trucker, because the trucker has to leave room to well stop his rig, in case of an emergency stop...so he doesn't crush someone. Yet so many folks are like moths to a flame when it comes to big rigs...and place themselves in harms way just so they might get a few car lengths ahead.
I can see this automated 18-wheeler biz being a huge problem, in big cities...because you'll still have the yahoo's being moths and darting in front of big rigs...hell probably even more so once a lot of drivers become aware of this...and the automated rigs well become big blockades on highways...making gridlock even worse. I mean with a human there is a chance he could be distracted or tired...or what have you...so some folks who wouldn't dare...but if you got an AI, that is always aware and programed to slow down...they will cut in...and the truck will slow...and slow...and slow...till it's more or less just stopped in traffic.
The only real way for automated big rigs to work...is if all the little rigs are automated as well. Otherwise things will just be made worse.
I have been hammering this point for at least a year and daily on Slashdot. Taxi drivers are also about to be eliminated. Fast food workers will rapidly almost vanish. School teachers are even more prone to no longer being employable. After all one Algebra 1 teacher can serve the entire nation. The challenge is not unemployment . Massive unemployment is a given. But as jobs vanish businesses will fold quickly. The REAL CHALLENGE is a complete change in social and economic policies so that people are well payed, not to work. Sales taxes will have to support the system as income taxes will be quite restrained except from the investment sector. If we do not do this quickly we are a dead nation. If we believe in survival of the fit over the weak then what we are seeing is that socialism is fit to survive under conditions that capitalism can not.
http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Navitron_Autodrive_system
There's still lots for people to do with those trucks. People have to load them, drive them between loading/unloading and staging areas, maintain them, fuel them, etc. Sure, a computer can back up a semi to a loading dock, but the logistics are more complicated than that, so humans will be involved. So basically, the effect of having self-driving trucks is that the same people that drive them all around the country can now just live at end and way points, and we can deploy more trucks for them to handle at delivery ends and way points.
Let the 4000 ppl die and save problems for 10m
Don't (at least some) truck drivers own their truck?
Buy an autonomous truck, sit back and rake in the dough.
A good model would be to train some drivers in maintenance and repair. It's like the old automated plane joke - there will be a pilot and a dog, the pilot to make sure nothing goes wrong and the dog to bite the pilot if he touches anything
"Oh, you hate your job? There's a support group for that, it's called everyone, they meet at the bar."
Saving most of those lives (and countless injuries) is important.
Not to sound cruel, but is it?
What's worse, 4000 injuries/deaths a year or a fully automated manufacturing and shipping network.
What has the most negative impact over the long term?
How long until it's American refugees on rafts in the water (metaphoric)
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
This is a challenge that obviously every country will face where there is not enough work for everybody (and ultimately for almost nobody). There are several models that are obvious. One choice is to have the majority of the population sink into poverty and then keep it somehow alive by giving them money for doing nothing. This is obviously stupid and highly unethical, but what capitalists usually want. A variant that may work better is giving them enough money to life reasonably for much less or no work, with the money supplied via taxes. That has the advantage that it avoids the most severe problems associated with widespread poverty, like crime, health issues, social unrest, collapse of the economy, etc. It is a hard sell, because of greed, stupidity and this somehow being "socialism". Historically, another valid alternative is to have a war that gets rid of many of the unemployed by killing them or to just let them starve.
What will not work is "let the market decide". The market will just make thing worse until there is no market left.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
nt
It seems like the first and most obvious step for the trucking industry is to replace trucks on the long haul only. For example, one driver might drive the truck to the highway onramp and send it on its way, then the truck drives itself for hours and hours to where it is at an offramp by another driver who takes it to its final destination.
Self-driving will certainly reduce the work available for truckers, but it will be a really long time before it eliminates them. Tractor trailers are not only difficult to maneuver, but often require very difficult maneuvers to park where they can be unloaded or unhitched. One way to look at it is that, in the near future, the computers will just be handling the boring part of the drive.
And automation does promise to reduce accidents significantly, and it can seriously reduce fuel use (and pollution) by allowing lines of trucks to coordinate their movements tightly, staying close to each other's slip streams. And self-driving trucks will certainly be more patient with each other--as in less likely to block traffic with a +2mph pass of another truck while going uphill--because they won't require such stringent timelines, which will make the roads a better place for everyone.
there is no point in discussing whether we should implement this new technologies or not. this is like war escalation i guess. even if you don't, your neighbour will. so you are somehow forced to keep going just to stay on top.
I see this every time a new technology that comes along that could replace human laborers, technology means millions will lose their jobs. What always happens is that these people all seem to be capable of finding other work. The work I do in computers did not exist before computers existed. Before the electronic computers existed there was a job description called "computer". Had I lived in an earlier age I'd probably be employed as one of those computers.
Another reason that truck drivers won't find themselves out of a job tomorrow is that I've seen what a truck driver does. Working at UPS I saw that a truck driver will drive the truck and then have to load or unload the truck. They are also responsible for common maintenance, like fill the truck with fuel, check tire pressure, make sure lights are clear of mud and snow, clear the air lines of moisture, and more. When I was growing up on the farm the truck drivers were expected to back a truck up to a sorting gate and then chase steers onto the truck. They'd then drive to the auction house, chase them off. After the auction they'd chase another load of steers onto the truck, then haul them to a packing plant. Let's find a robot that can navigate all of that, chase steers, and not run over stupid farm kids that should not have been running around the parking lot in the first place
Then there are truck drivers that deliver frozen foods and other items to homes, that takes a skill set that robots have not yet reached. I'll hear an ice cream truck drive through the neighborhood occasionally, those people are still "truck drivers", no? Then there's all the other occupations that required skilled drivers, school buses, city transit buses, taxi and limo drivers, charter buses. We might put a robot in charge of moving cargo but I don't see anyone putting school children on a bus without someone to watch them, that person doesn't have to drive necessarily but they will be there.
That may even be true for cargo trucking. A person may not drive but they will ride along with the cargo to maintain the truck, load/unload cargo, handle paperwork, and put out fires. I mean real fires, ever seen a truck pulled off the road that's been blackened from brakes that over heated and started the tires on fire? Who's going to put out a fire on an driverless truck?
I can see this technology being adopted slowly. It will make the number of truck drivers shrink. If it means a truck driver can get a truck on the road, set the "autopilot" and then take a nap, then it could mean a reduction of as many as two out of three long haul drivers but those don't count for all professional drivers. People still need to drive buses, ice cream trucks, doorstep delivery, etc.
In other words, move along, nothing to see here.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
The solution for the "problem" of not having enough (badly paid, exploitative, inhumane) jobs for everybody is simply to get rid of the notion that everybody has to have a job: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...
If I was living in some remote rural town, say in southeast Utah that was 100 miles from the nearest Walmart and suddenly they start offering free delivery via self driving car on everything in the store, I think that would be kind of cool.
What about having a self driving camper with satellite wifi? You could sit in the back and do your digital nomad thing while the self driving car figured everything else and drove you all sorts of cool places.
All these people who know nothing about trucking logistics spouting off about free markets and whatnot when nobody is even asking the bigger question, can it be done?
Leaving out the basics of piloting a high profile high weight vehicle during various weather conditions and in a defensive manner, anybody who has used a GPS knows automated trip planning is lacking even basic information on roads, much less current overpass heights and road weight limits which are often not recorded anywhere but on the local signage, add to that the complexities of call ahead loads, loads that can't unload at the exact time of arrival but won't let you park on premises, multiple stop loads where you have to supervise unloaders, terrible dock conditions and a myriad of other things this just becomes an impossible task for a computer.
IF autonomous trucks become common they will likely fill a train like roll moving over much simpler highways to depots for local delivery but then you've just INCREASED the facilities and manpower needed to deliver goods so no replacing the national logistics chain with computers and autonomous trucks is just not going to happen any time soon or even possibly at all.
That's an odd choice to add to the list. Truck drivers usually live in their cabs.
All those truck drivers are feeding the roadside prostitution industry too. Once they're gone, the prostitutes will also be in trouble. And their pimps. It will cascade into chaos.
If you step back a bit and think about it, truck driving is kind of a strange profession. The long distance truck driver is actually, really essential for in-city driving and for unexpected events (like breakdowns). But the vast majority of their time is spent on the highway, and staying in a lane on a highway, likely convoying with other trucks, requires no human skill whatsoever.
The first phase will be for the AI to take over for this time, requiring the driver to be in the cab "on call" on a few minute notice. This is similar to the situation where trucks go onto trains, and the driver have nothing to do until it's time to unload. However, among truck drivers, even this is met with massive resistance. Perhaps they genuinely enjoy sitting behind the wheel for hours at a time? Or is it just that they see the writing on the wall, because the second phase will be to eliminate their jobs?
But truck driving - on the highway - is a low skill job. Free people to do something else. Seems like a great concept, but what about those people who currently have no other skills? Buggy whip makers all over again...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
...I was a trucker long before I was a geek.
Autonomous trucks will still need fuel, most truckers don't sleep in hotels and I can't speak for anybody else but when I was a driver I ate one sit-down meal a day when I stopped for fuel.
Will be interested to see how AI deals with a mountain pass or city traffic; I think autonomous trucks will need human assistance for at least the foreseeable future.
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
This fool wants to keep makework jobs where people pretend they're useful just so they can have a bullshit job.
That isn't going to give you a healthy economy.
Do we need to worry about how people are going to get work? Yep.
But you do that by getting them competitive jobs that robots don't do better than them.
Did holding back automation save the manufacturing jobs in the rust belt? Nope. All the work went to china instead. So good work. Instead of losing 50 percent of the jobs in the factory you lost 100 percent. Genius.
This is a tech site... embrace the technology or I don't even want to hear your stupid whining Luddite ass.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Sooner or later trucks have to leave the interstates and major highways. Ever watch an 18-wheeler going through a small city? Ever notice how much skill is involved making those tight turns? Sometimes the trucks have to move over into the left lane just to get turned to the right. Will a computer-controlled rig do that? And sometimes even the most skilled driver gets his rig into a spot where he has to back up several times and try again and again. Can a computer even come close to that kind of skill? Can a computer back a truck into the dock behind your local supermarket when space is barely available to maneuver? Even some truck drivers wince at doing that.
No, I'm not a truck driver, but I do have over 2 million miles of driving experience. I've just about seen it all. I get the notion that whoever comes up with these hair-brained ideas hasn't.
There won't be an "on/off switch" 5 years from now, when all current OTR drivers are suddenly out of work. This will be phased in slowly.
Maybe they can hire on at Amazon as drone pilots. (That's a joke!)
Like in Star Trek, the future will be without money. Three things that will be the downfall of money. One being all jobs will be replaced with autonomous systems. You don't need a person to drive a truck or do your taxes or repair roads. Secondly is the cure for aging. It'll happen, and much sooner than you think. Imagine a person who looks 20 but is 100. Do we let those people stay retired or force them to work? Finally you have the future of abundance. At some point energy and food will be plentiful to the point there's no reason to work. The machines are doing all the work and they run off renewable energy.
Definitely will be the biggest and last class war the world will ever see in the future. I don't about flying around in space ships but we'll definitely be like a Star Trek economy in the future. Don't know about a food synthesizer though.
stop repeating this nonsense about technology not disrupting peoples lives. Yes, over the course of several decades the economy replaced those jobs. In the meantime millions were without work. There's a reason why the Luddites existed. That word has meaning beyond an insult. There was nearly 60 years of joblessness following the industrial revolution before other tech caught up. Google it. Read some history. Jeez.
I agree the solution isn't to go back on technology though. It's socialism. Plain 'ole socialism. When we don't need these people to work we don't just let them starve while we all take turns seeing who can make the 1% the happiest. And btw, I said _socialism_, not communism. And not a fascist dictatorship that occasionally publishes a pamphlet with something written by Karl Marx either...
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The trucking industry USED to be pretty well regarded for having top notch drivers. I don't think this is the case today. Some of the trucking schools were caught red-handed passing students who had "stand ins" taking the exams for them, for example. And all too often, long-haul drivers are pressed to drive so many hours at a time that they're really not that safe and alert at the wheel some of the time.
The drivers I saw hired at a manufacturing place I used to work for were not exactly pillars of society either. Many had previous criminal records and we had to place GPS tracking systems on the trucks and keep constant watch on where the went, since people tended to use the trucks for non work-related activities otherwise and bill the company for the fuel. That doesn't mean they lacked driving skills ... but it does mean I wouldn't trust them not to misrepresent the truth if they were involved in an accident.
I don't doubt that the majority of accidents involving large truck are still the fault of passenger vehicle drivers -- but I suspect the "big rig" drivers aren't really all that superior of drivers themselves, as often as not. (I've seen some of the guys around here who can barely get the trucks around traffic circles without tearing things up, and who knock down traffic signals going around corners.)
Any vehicle with airbags in it has a data recorder so that the manufacturer can determine under what conditions the air bag did or didn't go off.
So even if you don't have a dash cam, if you're in an accident, get the data from the other vehicle. Depending on the make & model, you might need to make sure that the vehicle doesn't get driven before the data's been read out.
I was once driving home on Thanksgiving day a few years ago -- taking I66 to the DC Beltway. It wasn't rush hour, so I waited until the sign came up that marked that it was now an exit lane (the shoulder is an extra lane during rush hour). It seems that there was some guy *flying* down the lane ... and so he must've considered me to have cut him off.
Once we got to the exit (which had two lanes), he shot around me, then pulled into my lane and slammed on his brakes. When I stopped without hitting him, he gunned his engine, we both got back up to speed ... then he stopped again. I had to stand on my brakes this time.
I kinda wished that I *had* hit him, as I could've proved that it was his fault for wreckless driving. (although a dash cam would've have hurt -- show that he had no reason for braking, as the road was clear, and that he had intentionally gotten in front of me to try to cause an accident).
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
What if we solve two problems at the same time by legislating that for some number of years self driving rigs have to have human co-pilots aboard (bear with me)... We'd still get most of the benefits of improved safety and 24 hour schedules and the humans could even do other work while on-board but they'd ostensibly be there to monitor the rig and take over in crazy situations (e.g. flat tire, fire, unexpected weather).
The flip side is that the public gets a (somewhat irrational but real) feeling of safety knowing that humans are on board... in the same way that I feel better about flying in a mostly auto-piloted aircraft because I know two people fully trained in the systems are trusting their lives to it.
So truck drivers turn into truck co-pilots for a few years, get an easier / safer job, and some of them retire during that time while we all get used to self-driving trucks on the road.
There's lots of unemployed, especially in Mexico. How do the big rigs carrying cars make it up here. Could it be that that if you highjack a few of these you wind up dead, fast? Don't screw with the rich. You can do whatever you want to the poor and middle class, but if you steal from the wealthy you will die. If all else fails the American military will step in and carpet bomb you with drones.
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Bernie Sanders. Alan Greyson. Al Franken. We might not have a lot of 'em, but we've got a few. Hell, Bernie openly admits to being a socialist. In America that's like saying your a Nazi Pedophile Hipster who drinks lite beer.
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If you've ever been around trucks in the retail and wholesale delivery to retail markets, you know that the drivers also do double duty as payload handlers. Think of the gas truck pulling into a station to fill the station tanks; there is a human making the hook-ups and monitoring the transfer. Furniture delivery trucks, even when self-driving, will still need handlers to take the furniture in. (Or, for Salvation Army trucks, to take the furniture out to the truck.) Also, how are self-driving trucks going to handle some of the really wild truck docks? There will be a reduction with long-haul drivers, granted, but trailer-trains have been taking some of that market already.
Making sure gay couples can use the government to bully religious business owners. The good of the other 98+% or the population is irrelevant as long as these religious people remain free to choose who they will or won't bake wedding cakes for.
While not ideologically opposed to automation displacing workers, I'm not usually really enthused about it, especially when it seems to be over fairly modest economic gains.
And I am very impressed with the driving skill of some truck drivers who can negotiate spaces I probably couldn't safely drive a compact car through.
However, I don't see truck driving, or the related services, as being fulfilling careers that people need to get worked up over, and a lot of truck drivers have significant challenges in maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
I think it would be helpful to think more in terms of compromises that would result. Self-driving trucks might have a lot of advantages but then taken completely off the roads in for example poor weather. (Of course that happens now if the weather is severe enough, so it's a difference of degree.)
The real problem is not that driverless trucks will destroy jobs. It's capitalistic system where man has to get a job to get money. We now have robots everywhere. In factories, in home and on the road. Is it paradise, where man at last doesn't have to work? No, it's a hell where man can't get a job. What nonsense.
Motorcycles DO NOT stop faster than cars. Two wheeled vehicles take longer to stop. Weight isn't the only factor in stopping a vehicle.
Yeah its not like we are counting the 90 million who have left the workforce over the last couple years and the turning to H1B visas. ...
The big problem I see for autonomous trucks is responsibility. A truck driver picking up a load must sign a bill or lading testifying to the effect that everything was loaded in good condition as stated on the manifest. Without an actual driver to witness the goods being loaded all the AI could testify to is "this amount of weight was placed in the truck and it took that weight from point A to point B". This would make things really easy for smugglers transporting contraband as there would be plenty of reasonable doubt for the jury as what the load really was. All it would take would be a police EMP weapon to fry the AI, stop the truck, and jack the load. So was that load of expensive plasma TV's really stolen, or were they never loaded in the first place and something else was?
Taxis, buses, professional drivers, insurance claims, body shops, traffic cops...
Those individuals will be just as affected. And this technology will advance regardless of whether people like it or not. Either we're prepared to accept a future where labor is no longer as important as it once was and we move to allow all people to pursue other interests (work week reductions as well), we're just going to have larger and larger prisons or social as people won't just accept not eating, or the less fortunate will revolt and there will be blood in the streets.
I think there's more peaceful ways to do make the transition but I doubt the elite will necessarily approve. For some reason, re-training will continue to be a fantasy solution in their eyes.
Thousands of speed dealers will go bankrupt as well.
'saving most of those lives (and countless injuries) is important." So now you want to put all the doctors out of a job as well?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
>But the eventual replacement of truck drivers with autonomous driving systems
Yeah, not going to happen. There has been nothing stopping us from making trains/subways completely autonomous (a much easier task) for nearly 20 years but we still have human operators.
We got free trade and they said that our higher technology would mean less menial work and better pay jobs here at home. Then they shipped the technology overseas and most of manufacturing with it and they touted the great new service economy. Now with drones and self drive trucks, online shopping, automated fast food restaurants and an app for everything, we are losing the service jobs too. So, when does it stop? What do we do for work when the service jobs are all gone too? Shouldn't business be about employing people just as much as it is about bring profit to the invest class?
Homer was riding on the hood. The black box does all the work already geesh
They're just trying to keep it secret
"But we need to start thinking about how to handle the 10 million people looking for work when the (human) trucking industry falls off a cliff."
It's the driver's fault. If they had had the foresight to get into hedge fund management or IT security 20 years ago, they wouldn't be out of a job now.
damn lazy poor people.
(that's sarcasm, in anyone can't tell)
Semi-autonomous trucks will be able to drive in close formation, saving gasoline.
Eventually we're just going to have to get away from societies that depend on "working for a living" as there is less and less actual work to be done. We're already starting to see that with all the layoffs in manufacturing over the years, the reductions in workforce at many companies, and the elimination of all but the lowest paying jobs as till operators and stock clerks.
Of course that means the few people who *do* have to actually "work" will end up living lives of luxury compared to the general public. With the majority of people living on a stipend instead of an income, who is going to want to go to the effort of training and education for employment as a doctor or nurse, for example?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
"I've been working on the railroad,
All the live long day.
I've been working on the railroad,
Since they took my truck away."
I sing this song to myself sometimes when trying to navigate through the trucks on the Interstate on the way to and from work.
Don't we already have a self driving truck, AKA a train. It seems like autonomus technology is only reliable for highway driving. The last mile has to be driven by people anyhow. How is that different than intermodal freight?
Remember GEEC?
Shouldn't they be totally automated by now?
Speaking as a Canadian, this may solve a problem for our problem with the aging demographic of truckers. Quoting this study, autonomous trucks may happen just in time to balance a coming cliff in trucker availability. Take a look at the graphs in the following - perhaps the same is true for some other countries? ...
http://www.drivershortage.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Understanding-the-Truck-Driver-Supply-and-Demand-Gap1.pdf
* While the overall labour force in Canada is aging, the truck driver population has aged more rapidly. The average age of the truck driver has increased from 40 years in 1996 to over 44 years in 2006.
* There are also relatively few truck drivers under the age of 30. While a quarter of courier and delivery drivers, who are not included as truck drivers, are under the age of 30, only 12 per cent of truck drivers are under 30. The difficulty in attracting younger drivers poses a problem for the industry, especially as older drivers retire.
* Industry leaders have observed an increasing difficulty in recruiting drivers over the past several years and see this trend continuing in the future. Long-haul trucking is generally more difficult to recruit for, particularly when the routes are unscheduled.
There won't be that many jobs coming available, because most of those jobs are already taken.
Yeah, God knows we don't need any of that advanced technology crap!
Next thing you know, they might develop big machines to replace covered wagons and plows. Then where will we be, when all those teamsters and farmers are put out of work?
And what's with these "computer" things? Everyone knows a computer is a (usually) young woman who calculates (by hand) the numbers required by Real Scientists (tm). Replace them with machines? I say no!
I say we just destroy all that automation and go back to the tried and true ways we've always known! Ned Ludd Lives!
This is the stupidest false dichotomy bullshit I've seen in a long time. No one is saying no to automation. What the concern is, how do we plan to introduce automation in the trucking industry while simultaneously handle the 10 +/- million people that will be affected? Do we just introduce automation and let markets self-heal (which is pretty much dog-eat-dog), or do we put in place transition job and training programs to ameliorate the impact of unemployment until the bulk of people is able to transition into other job sectors.
That you miss the gist of the problem shows that you are not as smart as you think you are, or you simply do not care. Don't know which is scarier.
Just pick the trailer off, and put it on a railroad flatcar. At the destination city, pick the trailer off the flatcar, attach it to the truck, and do the last mile. Far, far more efficient economically and energy-wise.
Really? 1% of all Americans including children are truck drivers? There are about 150m Americans in the workforce at the moment so that would be 4.6% of all workers as truck drivers. The article is just another infotainment website and it sources a trucking enthusiast's website for this outrageous figure. Let's get some more reliable figures.
http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_tabl...
Right, so 4.4 million workers in the 'Transportation and Warehousing' sector. That sector includes taxi drivers, stevedores, pilots, travel agents, train drivers, conductors, couriers, the postal service... Does anybody believe there are 3 truckers for every other one of these jobs?
http://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag...
So the actual figure is 823,130 + 54,990 = 879 000 truck drivers.
It took longer to type this post than actually find that information.
...Guaranteed minimum income. It's the most humane way to integrate full automation into an economy without forcing tens of millions into abject poverty. We're going to have to provide them with welfare one way or another. So why not just provide everyone with the basics for living in this world and allow people to work for what they want beyond that? The key is to move beyond the societal stigma of joblessness.
I truly believe we are getting closer to a society where, if everyone want employment, then everyone will have to work fewer hours so as to share the available jobs.
The things stopping this arrival are probably myriad, but one of the key delays may be caused by the earnings difference between the top income brackets enabling political empowerment (money talks!) and the middle/lower income brackets with the consequential non-effective involvment.
Could we limit the income bandwidth?
For instance, a facter of 10 between the top remuneration package (shares/salary/options/retirement benefits etc.) and the lowest (usually just an hourly rate). Perhaps we could encourage directed technological improvement by increasing the mandated differential (carbon/heat neutral energy sources, effective product life and proper recycling -- and all the other things that will make our short evolution/demise on this planet less short).
If the 'Leisure Society' arrives, will this avert the impending crises caused by a share-holder/stakeholder demand for year on year growth, governmental desire for 2~5% inflation, etc.? Would this bring 'zero-growth' economics closer?
How does this affect a global population?
We already have a third world that eyes the riches/priviledges of first and second world populaces. If the playing field were levelled where everyone could enjoy free time, not have to compete for the right to buy food and the other necessities to 'exist', would this spread globally and bring less strife and conflict?
I bet there will still be a human sitting in the cab for emergencies, it not as if its on rails.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
The money pot moves. You move to where it goes. (Maybe read the book "Who Moved my Cheese")? It's called adjustment and change. It's scary at first, but this is the world we live in. Learn more than one skill - save some money for the rough periods and never get fat and lazy doing what you've already been doing. Somebody is going to want your job and will do it for less money, or technology is going to make your current job redundant. Natural selection will cull the dumb ones that can't adjust and we can evolve with life and new realities.
In the new version, you don't see the driver because there is no driver!
The reason why China has been a major success in industrialising is that it has provided the world with cheaper industrial goods. Everything from clothing and footwear through to furniture.
That's all you needed to read, you can stop right there.
I do not believe there will ever be 'driverless' trucks, any more than there will be 'driverless' cars. The safety risk is too great, especially when you're talking about a vehicle with a combined mass of over 40 tons hurtling down the road at high speeds. The potential for dozens or even hundreds dying because hardware or software went haywire is just too great to ignore. There needs to be someone there to at least hit the brakes.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I see someone has been listening to NPR's Planet Money recently...
Also, you're arguing a metaphor.
Thus, probably unwittingly, cause if your comments on the topic lack anything clearly it is having wits behind them, you go off to hide in your corner from the straw bogeymen coming for your "stuff", clutching at your gun to defend you.
Because, clearly, poor people are getting ready to take everything from you. $1000 today and other nonsense.
Here's the thing boyo...
Can you shoot viruses with them guns of yours? How bout bacteria?
Can you shoot 'lectricity into your wires and oil and water into your pipes?
How about simply shoot some bread on your table?
You know... stuff that will appear suddenly as what amounts to entire nations (there are countries with fewer people than 3.5 million truckers alone) suddenly end up without food or medicine or pot to piss in, and in the long run, without the ground to bury their dead.
Following your "Fuck them I got mine" economic policy.
How many bullets does it take to stop that guy who's off his meds and out of a job but perfectly able to steal a truck, get drunk on stolen booze and go ramming it into other people's cars?
Or simply take HIS gun (You think you're the only one with a peashooter?) and gun you down for no reason cause he's off his meds? You some gun-ninja, with a six sense for danger?
No... not fear. We know you got that covered. DANGER-sense. Like what Spiderman has. No?
Well... no wonder you're shaking in your boots then... you'd have to be shooting at everyone you don't know.
And that's a lot of boo-lets...
How about that other guy who decides to steal the copper out of them power lines and gets both himself electrocuted AND takes out half the local grid in the process?
Are YOU gonna guard all the power lines everywhere by your own lonesome, clutching your pathetic little Saturday night special?
What's that? You're gonna PAY someone to guard them? Will that be $1000, $5000 or more? Lotsa them power lines...
BTW... did you know that you can use transformer oil (from power transformers) to run engines?
Yeah... And they like have these pathetic locks on them. You just kick them a little. Then you drill a hole in the transformer, drain the oil into a can and leave it to rot or catch fire. Someone will come along and strip it of the wiring later.
You're gonna pay that? Oh right... guns... Your gonna shoot the transformer into working. No... wait... you're gonna pay more guards and police...
But fuck that... right... You know what that oil does best? It works GREAT in chainsaws.
Heatin don't come free, you know. But LANDSLIDES do!
You're gonna love those... they take out houses, roads, tear up underground pipes...
You'll be paying that shit too, I know. Right after you shoot that landslide.
But hold on... Them poor people don't have medical or any kind of insurance.
You won't mind them going around all sick and stuff... urinating in your yard... taking shit where ever they can... and eventually dying all around your place.
Right-right... you're gonna shoot that too. Shoot the sick right out of them.
Then shoot the medicine and doctors INTO hospitals to treat YOU when you need them instead of all them poor people swamping the system.
Then you're gonna pay someone to bury/burn the corpses, sanitize everything, give you daily checkups to make sure you didn't catch anything... must be great to be able to afford all that on your private tropical island.
And that's all before your next door neighbor, your huntin/fishin/masturbatin buddy, comes to your door with a plan to shoot himself some stuff.
See... his trucking business went belly up on account of all them self-driving trucks not needing his local services in your neighborhood cause nobody's buying shit there anymore. So... nothing to transport.
You and your ex-billionaire buddy are the only ones there - and you got yourself all the shit you need behind your guns and walls and moats and crocodiles and drawbridges and all that other shit you built around your personal "one-person prison".
Come on... He's your buddy. He's just gonna shoot you a little. And take your crocodiles.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Anybody applied for a job lately at the Lima Locomotive works, or Baldwin. (Maybe ALCO is still hiring)
And think about the people who maintained the water tanks for steam locomotives, jobs gone forever.
Come on guys, this is not going to happen. States are not going to allow driverless trucks operating without a commercial licensed driver at the wheel, whether he is driving or not. Think of the self-driving vehicles like cruise control that can also, in the best of conditions, keep you in the lane and away from other vehicles. Like with cruise control, the vehicle operation will be under control of the human in all but "the best conditions." The legal liability issues alone are overwhelming, even if a totally autonomous vehicle, i.e., no human driver at all, was conceivably on the horizon, which it is not. Get real.
dpa
How ironic that Google and Firefox conspired to display a "truck drivers wanted" ad next to this story. ("Owner Operator Truck Jobs, Better pay, benefits & schedules Increase Time @ Home. Apply Now")
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Maybe a few of the drivers will be smart enough to adapt and learn to maintain the fleet or become one of the regional people who work the local offloading of fuel and material.
The idea that society exists to create a large middle class is more about supporting stable, political incumbency than "social justice". We might be far better off accepting a pyramid shape and innovating comfortable, low cost primate habitats for the unemployed.
It's similar to the "wealth inequality" issue. Wealth inequality starts with tax inequality -- the modern IRS was founded circa 1913 with a simple three level formula. Today the agency has over 4,000,000 words of lobbyist purchased, Legislated giveaways, roughly corresponding to the Rise of the Democrats. The agency itself states that the code is unmanageable and has repeatedly issued pleas to We the People for reform.
The Democrats refuse to touch it, the Republicans pledge to but likely won't. An apolitical task force needs to be created -- perhaps something like a "Reverse BRAC" -- to run through all the executive cabinets to remove fraud, waste, abuse, redundancy, and insure that every tax dollar is collected and spent in a reasonable and effective way -- every cabinet should have a list of goals, and validated milestones to accomplish them.
Just ending the fiscal and social nightmare of red ink would likely create a resurgence of innovation and "job creation", the likes of which we haven't seen for decades.
No one has mentioned this. Surely a hefty amount of insurance will be mandatory for all such vehicles, under existing rules that apply to existing freight trucks. I suspect the risk premium ( being unknown at the start of this innovation) will prove to be extremely expensive, maybe as high was $40,000 per year per 125,000 miles of truck travel. Of course the corporations owning the trucks can probably pressure / bribe our esteemed legislators to exempt them from all liability, similar to what the ownership of for-profit nuclear reactors did many years ago. The first mass casualty incident in which a robotic semitruck kills a few dozen people will upset everyone.
Being a truck driver, we dont not cause all those accidents, more often than not we are not at fault. Its people in cars that fail to respect us, our size, our weight, our speed, and our responsibility when they drive around us. I've seen cars cut me off dive right in front of me when I'm braking, tailgating us, or worse get into our safety buffer in front of us just to hit the brakes to get to an off ramp. I've also seen my safety systems in my truck like my Collision Avoidance System suddenly decide the sign over the crest of a hill is in fact stopped traffic and apply full braking power, I dont believe for a second that these systems will be able to fully handle the gravity of driving 80000 lbs of steel, because if it messed up and kill a bus load of orphans, do you see the programmer going to jail because he goofed up?
The average age of a truck driver in the US is on the rise. Young people aren't interested in becoming drivers because it's a difficult and unpleasant life, with long hours and constantly needing to be driving as efficiently and quickly as possible to earn your pay check.
Those who do decide to become a driver have a hard time getting started. A bad driver is a liability, so most people want 2 years experience, before they'll hire. So it's not easy for new people to get into.
What happens when the current generation of truck drivers passes away? We're not trying to replace current drivers, we're replacing the one's that don't exist.
If the driver is only needed during emergencies, they won't be awake enough to do much when the emergency hits. The same is true for cars as well, after sitting in the car for hours doing nothing you'll zone out. Even a short trip you take every day will get ignored.
Besides, in an emergency the two choices are to brake or to try to turn. In a big rig trying to make a fast turn is probably just going to make the situation worse. A computer can hit the brakes just as well as an unprepared human.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
Breakdowns, flattires, hitchings or straps come loose. There's more than just "normal driving" and " turn now or die." Sure, we could detect a lot of these problems and dispatch a service vehicle, but why suffer the down time when we can have a guy right there to handle all the myrid little tasks that crop up. Hell, somebody has to pump the gas!
Demented But Determined.
Loading, unloading, fueling, maintenance, parking, pulling into the tight spaces. Even with mostly automated trucks driers will still be very much needed, their jobs will just be a lot easier to do and they will be able to go for longer stretches, getting freight to location faster thanks to being able to sleep on the highway.
Would still be doing standup. Poor tracy.
What could go wrong? I drive every day where if the drivers aren't up on their game, it's an accident. Traffic stops on a dime. They cut trucks off and normal drivers seem to understand this. If that truck doesn't understand this, they'll roll right on over them.
OTOH, maybe this is a good way to rid ourselves of some idiots. I mean, since they did away with the Duel we have so many now.
"If Engineers built buildings the way Programmers write programs, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization!"
If you think computers would be better than truck drivers, you not only don't know driving, you don't know computers. Computers -can- make mistakes and it does not always cause a crash. Sometimes, it leaves the computer running with corrupted data. Quite aside from bugs in the programs.
This sounds like salesmen and college professors looking for grants.
But it is true that technological changes can cause disruptions in the economy...
We can have attendants at the service stations to pump the gas. If something breaks, the AI can pull over to the side of the road and call for help.
But let's be serious. It doesn't matter whether there's any need for a "driver" in the truck, the Teamsters would demand that a dues paying member be present in each truck.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
Yet more people rely on truckers to stay in business — gas stations, motels, and restaurants along trucking routes, to name a few.
This is mostly scare-mongering. In order:
Gas stations: unless these self-driving trucks are built by Stark Technologies, someone's gonna have to gas them up. And unless someone's going to outfit the country in specialized gas stations, they're probably going to be at the usual spots. (Worst case, your loss in gas station jobs will be balanced by new "refuel the self-driving truck" stations).
Motels: I'm sure the occasional trucker stops in a motel, but there's a reason those big trucks have sleeper berths in the back - margins aren't good enough in long-haul trucking to afford hotel rooms every night.
Restaurants on Trucking Routes: Yeah, they're hooped. But that's just life. Used to be good to be the saloon next to the train station, now it's not.
I never quite got the idea of pumping your own gas, From what i have seen in my country(Call me FES) it just seems more efficient for cars queuing up and one guy quickly pumping and dispatching cars asap.
If there is one pump and one line, that would be true. Usually there are 8-12 pumps and one or two guys manning them all.
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