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Uber's Self-Driving Truck Went on a 120-Mile Beer Run To Make History (businessinsider.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In the arms race to build self-driving vehicles, Uber-owned Otto just reached a landmark milestone by completing the first-ever commercial cargo run for a self-driving truck. On October 20, the self-driving truck left Fort Collins, Colorado at 1 a.m. and drove itself 120 miles on I-25 to Colorado Springs. The driver, who has to be there to help the truck get on and off the interstate exit ramps, moved to the backseat alongside a crowd of transportation officials to watch the historic ride. 2,000 cases of Budweiser beer filled the trailer. "We're just thrilled. We do think this is the future of transportation," James Sembrot, senior director of logistics strategy at Anheuser-Busch, told Business Insider.
... they just have to be better than humans. And sadly, in many areas they already are - give it a few more years for the remaining rough spots.
One important difference:
When humans screw up they're usually not worth suing.
When self-driving cars screw up there's a large, wealthy company to try to sue.
No sig today...
and decide to pass another truck at 0.001mph in order to block all traffic for 10 miles?
Honestly if you are not passing by at least 4mph dont pass. they should let cops ticket truckers for passing without using their gas pedal.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
What they're claiming as self-driving is lane keeping with self-adjusting speed.
When the thing manages to overtake / rejoin a lane in a safe manner, that will be news.
When it'll be able to turn around at an (unplanned) stop and take an alternative road by itself, that will be news.
Going in a (semi-)straight line with constant speed is just the very first step of a very complex problem.
Self-driving tech is still at a point where cars are having accidents (some even fatal) , and requires car drivers to be in the driving seat and have their hands on the wheel.
For them to have a fully loaded semi on the freeway and the driver to get in the back seat was blatantly irresponsible. This experiment should never even have been legal.
Not to mention there was no traffic on the road that late at night, and more importantly, you don't learn anything scientific from doing this (and afaict, they don't even claim to have learned anything), it's just a publicity stunt.
And Uber has been doing a lot of these kinds of publicity stunts lately. My theory is that they are trying to pump up their valuation for an IPO (or another round of funding or whatever).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Self driving trucks aren't the right answer for long distance shipping. Sure, it becomes cheaper and safer in the longer term to have trucks drive themselves. But it won't reduce the overall traffic levels, lower the pollution from so many trucks, or reduce the damage to the roads by the vehicles. More trucks will still be needed in the future as more and more goods are transported. It will be lowered because each truck will be on the road more.
We need to go back to railroads for deliveries between large cities. From there then trucks, either with a driver or self driving, can take the goods from the rail yards throughout the city and to the smaller cities nearby. It would mean further reliance on shipping containers but they are a proven technology. Drivers would become local from long haul. This plan would get many large trucks off of the highways which would make them safer, reduce maintenance costs, and drop the need to expand them.
For larger companies such as Walmart instead of loading a truck at their warehouse to go to a specific store or two they would load a container. The container would be taken to the closest rail yard. The rail company would have trains going to nearby cities leaving at regular times instead of waiting for the train to reach a certain size. The container would reach the destination city at a certain time and the company would have a local driver there pick it up and drive it to the proper store(s). This would be instead of having one driver go directly from the warehouse to the store.
I thought about this one night when I was going from Toronto to Ottawa on the train and most of the traffic on the highway was large trucks. They were all going to the same places (Kingston, Ottawa, Montreal, etc). If most of that cargo could be shipped by train it would be better for the environment, the highways would be safer, taxpayers would save money on the highways, and companies could save even more on delivery costs.
It was probably embarrassed. I mean, would you like to be seen with budweiser?
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The entire point of car insurance is to make humans worth suing.
Jobless is the entire point.
The belief that a job is somehow the point of human existence is a ridiculous idea. Sooner or later we'll move to a more or less jobless society, where your worth isn't based on how many hours you spend filing TPS reports.