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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.
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.
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.
We won't have a truck manager on every truck. We'll have truck managers responsible for a region of maybe a couple hours' drive. When a truck gets sick, the local truck manager drives out to where it is and fixes it. So we're replacing a couple million jobs with a couple thousand.
Sensors and computers will provide evidence it was the texting fucker in the car that caused accident.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Wrong. The solution is, and has always been, the complete elimination of the now useless people. There will be paradise on earth, one day, but only for the One Percenters. The world is being remade by, and for, the Ruling Elite. If you're not part of it now you will never be and neither will any of your descendants. You're part of the surplus populace scheduled for eradication. Sorry.
the autonomous control systems the autotruck could react thousands of times faster and more effectively than a human being truck driver.
If a truck's stopping distance is 2/3 of a mile, and a car comes to a complete stop in 1/4 of a mile directly in front of the truck, it does not matter how fast the truck's reaction time is. That car is going to have a bad day.
That won't help. The problem with trucks isn't human reaction speed, it's the sheer amount of kinetic energy that needs to be dissipated for one to stop. A 60-ton truck going at 50 mph has 29 MJ of kinetic energy. For it to stop, every single joule needs to go somewhere, and with current technology that means they'll turn to heat. And that means it's going to take a while as that heat dissipates - the brakes will literally melt if you try to brute-force a shorter braking distance, for example by increasing braking system pressure.
Alternatively, just consider how much damage is caused by a truck crash. Physics don't care if it's another car's rear or the truck's own brakes it's pushing against; any object that tries to stop its motion in a hurry is going to be hit by those same forces.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
If there's that much difference in stopping distance then the truck is criminally poorly maintained.
No, the fact a truck going the same speed as a car can take three times the distance to stop is physics. See this chart.. The car weighs around 3000 lbs, and the truck is 40,000-80,000 lbs. The car has a lot more rubber per pound on the road so stops faster. And no matter which driver caused it, when a 40 ton truck hits a 1 to 2 ton car, the car loses. It is the same problem with many motorcycles being able to stop faster than a car.
First of all, let's be honest: if someone is frail enough to require a walker, in many cases they're probably not healthy enough to be operating a vehicle in the first place. In an emergency, how are they going to press the brake pedal hard enough to actually stop effectively (i.e., hard enough that the ABS would kick in)?
Second, in the entire Metro Atlanta area I've only ever noticed one gas station that advertized full service. So how do disabled people around here get gas? Simple! Every staffed gas station, including self-service ones, is required by law to have the attendant pump gas for disabled people, rendering the whole thing a non-issue. (By the way, that's a Federal law -- the Americans with Disabilities Act -- so don't pretend as if it wouldn't apply in New Jersey and Oregon too!)
The bottom line is this: Why should able-bodied people be treated like drooling morons -- and have to pay more -- just so that some minimum-wage worker can pretend that he's useful? The answer is, no goddamn reason at all!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Other things that are cheaper: food, fuel, clothing, entertainment. If you measure the price by "how many hours would the average person have to work to buy it", then almost everything is cheaper.