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A Fleet of Trucks Just Drove Themselves Across Europe (qz.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report on Quartz: About a dozen trucks from major manufacturers like Volvo and Daimler just completed a week of largely autonomous driving across Europe, the first such major exercise on the continent. The trucks set off from their bases in three European countries and completed their journeys in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. One set of trucks, made by the Volkswagen subsidiary Scania, traveled more than 2,000 km and crossed four borders to get there. The trucks were taking part in the European Truck Platooning Challenge, organized by the Dutch government as one of the big events for its 2016 presidency of the European Union. While self-driving cars from Google or Ford get most of the credit for capturing the public imagination, commercial uses for autonomous or nearly autonomous vehicles, like tractors from John Deere, have been quietly putting the concept to work in a business setting.In related news, as tipped to us by a reader, "Swedish automaker Volvo is planning on bringing a fleet of 100 self-driving vehicles to China from next year, in a project which will see local drivers test autonomous cars on public roads in everyday driving conditions. Dangerous driving and congestion in Chinese cities will likely prove a difficult challenge for the fleet." I am particularly interested in learning how this autonomous truck is controlled. From the article, it appears that these vehicles utilize Wi-Fi. Based on so many security incidents we continue to come across, perhaps these companies should first work on solving the technical challenges to make these trucks safe -- that is, bolstering the hardware and software security.
In the US, trucking is already heavily subsidized. The government spends far more money on roads than it takes in supposed use (fuel) taxes, and trucks are far more efficient per pound than cars meaning the major beneficiary are trucks. Add to that higher speeds than many trains (and more flexible schedules), and the ability to run all night, and you have a recipe for disaster: huge amounts of freight currently carried by train will end up on the roads, bankrupting the railroad industry AND the causing massive chaos on the roads and expenditures on roads going through the roof.
The question, I guess, is whether Congress (and the States) is willing to address fuel tax reform before this can happen? (And at the same time, are States willing to address the silliness of property taxes on railroads given the existence of a private railroad network saves them money.)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I'm very surprised there hasn't been a movie yet (that I'm aware of) featuring an autonomous vehicle being hijacked remotely to do some dastardly deed.
Other than China, they also might want to try driving the vehicles through Cairo. I remember taking a taxi once from the area of the zoo to a hotel near Giza once and the number of near accidents, crazy driving, etc. in that 20 minute trip was greater than everything I've seen in every other country I've ever visited put together over the span of my entire lifetime (40+ years).
If you're making more than a subsistance living driving trucks in the US, you're either doing something else besides driving, or you own the truck.
Some truck drivers are delivery drivers. They won't be replaced with self-driving trucks (though they might by delivery drones or whatever).
Some truck drivers are driving construction-related trucks. There's a lot more to operating a cement mixer or even dump truck than just rolling down the highway. Plus, autonomous driving on a construction site isn't a problem people are even thinking about yet (once you're on the site, where you actually go changes all the time).
And if you own something as capital-intensive as a big rig, whether you drive it or not you can still make money from providing haulage.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
>To do otherwise is sheer madness and inviting disaster.
Goddamn luddite. A computer doesn't get tired, a computer doesn't need to take no-doze to make that time sensitive delivery. A computer doesn't speed so it can get home to its family faster. A might misjudge the grip it has on a wet road, but it won't willingly risk wiping out a bunch of other drivers in the wet because it wants to get somewhere faster. A computer takes inputs, makes predictions, and operates on those outcomes. Exactly the same as a human, but the computer can be biased towards safety whereas the human is biased towards whatever immediate reward they are seeking, and no amount of legislation or policing will stop that.
The most dangerous element of driving is the human element. That is exactly what we're seeking to remove.