1.8 Million Truckers Could Lose Their Jobs To Robots?? Really??

http://www.vox.com/2016/8/3/12342764/autonomous-trucks-employment

Not in my lifetime, or yours for that matter. I'm 56, i assume that you are younger than me!

I think this subject needs to be taboo just like being an o/o. I doubt this will ever happen. Cruise control will get way better but we need to be in control when in cities. I think it is time to let this discussion go to, it is fought about too much.

http://www.vox.com/2016/8/3/12342764/autonomous-trucks-employment

This is a propaganda/self promoting, wishful thinking article written and sponsored by VOX. VOX is at the forefront of this technology...and stand to make huge financial gains if and when this technology is accepted and validated. Take it with a grain of salt.

If airplanes still need pilots then trucks will always need drivers.. Airplanes have amazing auto pilot capabilities but they can't land themselves lol 😂 same with trucks. Trucking as a whole would have to be revamped to accommodate these trucks. Imo!

May happen - in the distant future.

Bigger worry, if amnesty goes thru - is losing jobs to folks that will "all of a sudden" become documented and legal to drive and obtain CDL's.

Just sayin'.

Rick

This autonomous truck thing is just completely out of the question. I mean, wait until the very first one kills someone and watch the public reaction.

But seriously, we're not even close to making something like this safe and reliable and the highways get more crowded and dangerous by the day. It was just a week or two ago that a Tesla car slammed into the broad side of a truck, killing the driver of the car. That car had collision avoidance technology which was supposed to hit the brakes if a collision was imminent. The collision avoidance system apparently didn't see the broad side of the truck because the white truck blended with the bright sky.

So if collision avoidance can't detect the broad side of a big rig reliably then let's get serious about this kinda stuff. It ain't happenin anytime soon. In fact, look back throughout American history and you'll see that robots and flying cars and virtual reality were supposed to be running the world decades ago. We can't even detect the broad side of a truck reliably in 2016. Get serious.

My favorite "great idea" from that article talks about having trucks "platooning" each other to save fuel. They're going to run nose to tail down the highway tailgating each other to make the convoy more aerodynamic. They're going to communicate with radar, GPS, and wifi so all of the trucks know what the others are doing. Yeah, sounds perfect because those technologies always work reliably, right? So you put 10 or 20 trucks nose to tail in the hopes of saving a little bit of fuel but with the consequences being the biggest mass-casualty wreck you've ever seen. Great idea college kid. Ever hear of something called "risk/reward ratio"? Evidently not.

omg......none of this is gonna fly. It's all a ton of fun for scientists to experiment with and marketers to create infographics about but it's not going to see the light of day in our lifetimes without purpose-built roads and vehicles specially designed for it.

And by the way, the first truck I ever drove in '93 had the same collision avoidance garbage that many trucks still have today, the type that beeps when it detects you're approaching something too closely. It used to go off a thousand times a day whenever you'd get near a bridge or a guardrail or anything else solid nearby. The same systems still do the same things today except now they're even more dangerous because they're kicking off the cruise control and even hitting the brakes without warning. Unbelievable.

Here's one last fun tidbit from that article - look at the list of things this system can't do. Gee, are those the only limitations??? Wow! LoL!

Now look at the list of things it can do, like "start a countdown when a driver needs to take the wheel":

"Danger! Danger! You're going to hit a bridge in 3....2....1....."

If airplanes still need pilots then trucks will always need drivers.. Airplanes have amazing auto pilot capabilities but they can't land themselves lol 😂 same with trucks. Trucking as a whole would have to be revamped to accommodate these trucks. Imo!

I was discussing this with someone at my school just recently. I used airplanes as my example. Though, some airplanes can land themselves at specific airports. They have had this tech for quite some time. They haven't rolled it out for widespread use, and even the planes that have been able to takeoff, fly to their destination, and land all on their own for quite some time now still are required to have pilots.

We are a long way off from the tech and infrastructure being ready to replace drivers, and an even longer way off from the general public being willing to accept it. Planes will be a big milestone in automated transportation but they are still considerably easier to automate the operation of than trucks because there are a lot less variables up in the air.

Danger! Danger! You're going to hit a bridge in 3....2....1....."

rofl-3.gif

ROFL, Brett!

The post office paid $1 million each for robots that were supposed to load trucks and replace fork lift drivers. The things were too tall for the building and didn't work in most. The ones where they did work eliminated 15 jobs for forklifts but added 25 jobs as mechanic to work in them... then they added the drivers back due to the downtime. Translation : nothing ever works thw way planners think it will.