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Self-Driving Trucks Begin Real-World Tests on Ohio's Highways (cbsnews.com)
An anonymous reader writes:
"A vehicle from self-driving truck maker Otto will travel a 35-mile stretch of U.S. Route 33 on Monday in central Ohio..." reports the Associated Press. The truck "will travel in regular traffic, and a driver in the truck will be positioned to intervene should anything go awry, Department of Transportation spokesman Matt Bruning said Friday, adding that 'safety is obviously No. 1.'"
Ohio sees this route as "a corridor where new technologies can be safely tested in real-life traffic, aided by a fiber-optic cable network and sensor systems slated for installation next year" -- although next week the truck will also start driving on the Ohio Turnpike.
Ohio sees this route as "a corridor where new technologies can be safely tested in real-life traffic, aided by a fiber-optic cable network and sensor systems slated for installation next year" -- although next week the truck will also start driving on the Ohio Turnpike.
Since the self driving tech for trucks is at least an order of magnitude or two simpler for fair weather freeway driving than real city driving it's likely it will be implemented there first. You could probably cut the workforce in half or even more by employing drivers only at depots located next to freeways to ferry them the last mile or two within the city. Even between cities in bad weather but that will likely will become automated soon enough. It could potentially eliminate 1.5 to even 2.5 million jobs within 5 years if done this way. Probably will bankrupt every truck stop along major freeways costing another 200k jobs.
On the bright side thus should employ a few tens of thousands to perhaps even 50k skilled H1-B workers. If anyone can think of how these people will find employment I'd be interested to know as I can't seem to think of how it is gonna happen.
In 2014 there were 1.8 million truck drivers. Average pay was $40K. That's damn good money for a job that doesn't even require a high school education.
Those people are fuuuuuucked. More fucked than any other industry. More fucked than buggy-whip makers. More fucked than coal miners. In 1980 there were only 230,000 coal miners. Over the last 30 years that's dropped by about 150,000 jobs. But once the they get a working retrofit kit for trucks that are already on the road, the trucking industry is going to shed 90% of their drivers in less than decade.
And all the ancillary businesses that depend on truckers, like truckstop restaurants and convenience stores, even hookers, they are are fucked too.
These guys are going to react very poorly to this inevitable future. If Trump's election scared you, get ready from somebody 10x worse when this plays out.
If the incoming administration is as hell bent on bottom lines and profit as any good CEO is this will be a reality in 4 years.
It's not like we elected Clinton after all. We managed to elect someone substantially less Ferengi.
The truckers are the kind of people who voted for Trump so he would be less inclined to hasty adoption of tech to replace truck drivers.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
high school graduates who have been coasting through life thinking their whiteness entitles them to a middle class lifestyle are toast. The number of jobs they're intellectually capable of performing is set to dwindle.
I can say the same thing about anyone with a (whatever) "studies" degree. Making coffee's pretty easy to automate.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Her big fuck-up was basing her entire campaign on the premise that anyone who didn't support her already was an idiot/bigot/misogynist/etc.
Attacking your opponent is expected. Attacking your opponent's supporters is bloody stupid.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It is funny how Trump pied-piper blue-collars about bringing jobs back, when he and his coven are for eliminating the minimum wage, privatizing Social Security, raising the retirement age to 70 or higher...
... and replacing truckers with bots they don't have to pay.
You completely misunderstand how things actually work. A few kids out of 350 million people get shot by some crazy idiot who should never have been on the streets, "we need new gun laws"; one child gets run over, "we need to replace drivers"; a few aircraft are found to have vulnerable cockpits, and no one can ever get on a plane again without ridiculous, expensive security theater (as opposed to actually solving the problem by hardening the cockpits, a one-time cost that doesn't screw your liberties over.) Etc.
Laws aren't a product of sane, reasonable thinking due to science and statistics. Laws are all about pandering, and pandering depends on getting the mommies to feel protective. All it takes is a corporate agenda -- some profit-making scheme -- to push the legislators where they need to go.
Basically, for love of money and re-election, congress creates panics to push a particular corporate agenda; that works, and the corporations get their way, the congresscritters get re-elected, and all is well with the world. From their lofty perspective, anyway.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.