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Comment by l33tbro | Hacker News Reader

Hmmm, why are we still talking about truck drivers exactly?

The trucking industry is about to tank hard. Mercedes demo'd its first driverless truck a couple of weeks ago (!). Yes, there will be specialists drivers sure and niche companies. But the day of the interstate road train will be done shortly.

The biggest new niche in my mind will be vehicle security. These trucks will be flying solo across the nation - unmanned. How will these trucks be fitted out against good ol' fashioned highway robbers in remote areas that are barely on the grid?

Fun times ahead.

(!). http://www.caradvice.com.au/295713/self-driving-mercedes-ben...

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I like your optimism, but realistically self driving trucks on American highways are a long way off. How will the trucks refuel? How will they handle loading and unloading? How will they handle inclement weather? What is the insurance liability for putting them on public roads? Who will be sued when a driverless truck crashes into another car (at fault or not)?

Even Mercedes says in that article, "the Highway Pilot system could be launched into production trucks 'as early as 2025 if conditions permit'." Which is basically corporate speak for, "we have no idea if this will ever launch, but it will get investors excited now."

Automation doesn't mean having to solve every problem simultaneously. You can still pay a driver to stay with the truck, and handle the fueling and loading. Just being able to keep the truck moving while the driver is required by law to rest will be a huge win.

Then the automation doesn't solve the staffing problem, it just perpetuates forced pseudo-downtime that drivers get underpaid for.

Say you have two trucks doing a cross country run(on the I-10 to keep things easy) and a return run. One with an automated system that can drive while the driver sleeps and one without.

Truck A: Can drive 24 hours a day and can cover the distance there and back in about 3 days

Truck B: Can drive 11 hours a day and can cover the distance in ~7 days.

The first Driver can do the trip twice in the same amount of time. Halving the number of drivers required for that route or freeing up drivers on that route for other jobs.

>How will the trucks refuel?

Full serve gas stations.

>How will they handle loading and unloading?

Do long haul drivers typically load/unload themselves these days? I would have thought that would have been the task of the warehouse staff on either end.

>How will they handle inclement weather?

Probably better than human driven trucks why would you think they couldn't?

>What is the insurance liability for putting them on public roads?

Probably less than human driven trucks since you don't have to worry about a lot of things that will cause problems for those such as tired/impared drivers.

>Who will be sued when a driverless truck crashes into another car (at fault or not)?

The trucks insurance company. Same as it would currently happen.

Going to disagree with you there on inclement weather. Getting a self-driving system to work on sunny days and clear nights when there's an otherwise clean view of the road and surroundings is one thing, and that's the challenge I see most people working on right now.

Now try the same thing in the middle of winter, the equivalent of visual noise is obstructing both the road and the surroundings. People are good at picking out patterns in this condition, especially if they've been driving for a while, computers notsomuch.

Sure, it's a matter of the tech advancing, but solving the second problem is harder than solving the first.

People are horrible at driving in any kind of bad weather. They speed through foggy conditions where they can't see 50 feet in front of them. They drive too fast or erratically on icy or snowy conditions, or they just flat out don't know how to handle the conditions and swerve/oversteer.

If people were any good at it there would be no increase in crashes during winter, foggy or wet weather conditions.

Self driving vehicles will have the same issues with seeing in the visual spectrum in bad weather as humans but they will also have the advantage of IR for example in knowing if something is in the fog/snow in front of them and how to react to that.

You also remove the emotional component. Humans in really bad weather tend to either ignore it(which is risky) or drive scared(which leads to over reactions which leads to accidents). For the second case things like over correcting, slamming on breaks, swerving, etc all lead to tons of accidents that are easily avoidable.

I said people were good at picking out patterns, not that they were necessarily good drivers.

Yup and I said with technology it doesn't really matter since computers aren't limited to our visual spectrum(they can use thermal imaging when needed for example) so they won't have the same difficulty seeing in those conditions as we do.

This is further compounded by the fact that even if humans can see the patterns they rarely act on them perfectly and often do the exact opposite of what they should do.

Not to mention an automated truck driving a safe 20 MPH over 24 hours is equivalent to a human driver at 60 MPH for 8 hours.

I think it's a false-dilemma to assume it needs to be total automation or nothing at all.

What about "trains" of trucks, where the first truck is piloted and the rest follow? That'd be significantly easier to engineer, and there'd be a person on-site for miscellaneous needs like gassing them up.

One of the major advantages of trucks over trains is precisely that - they're not trains. Making them trains would take away all the flexibility they currently have. If you're taking coal from the mine to the power station then you're probably already using a train. Anything less predictable needs individual trucks.

"Trucks aren't trains" is a tautology.

First, having 2-5 trucks in an automatic convoy is still ENORMOUSLY different than a multi-locomotive train with 10+ or even 100+ wagons on fixed rails.

Second, even if you equalized their "sizes", a three-truck convoy is NOT magically equivalent to a three-wagon train, because they are running on fundamentally different infrastructures.

>How will these trucks be fitted out against good ol' fashioned highway robbers in remote areas that are barely on the grid?

They would handle it the exact same way the ones with drivers do. They would do nothing while it is happening but contact the police and claim insurance. The only difference is no one is at risk of dying and they will likely have video evidence.

Even that article puts a minimum of 10 years before automated trucks get on the roads. So, we're talking about truck drivers because it's not acceptable to forget about them for a decade "because they'll be gone someday."

Can the driver-less truck put chains on its tires in the winter? I didn't think so.

I'm sure that we'll make use of the tech we have but there is so much more to driving a truck than driving. Maybe the "drivers" will be able to climb in the back and sleep while the truck does they driving and they can take care of everything else.

This is why I think the "driver" will shift more to a "captain" type archetype. Ie, driverless road-trains will travel in fleets and there will be a mechanic somewhere in that convoy to deal with breaking down in dead of nowhere. Also hard not to imagine this guy being armed.

What is the advantage of this system over the modern railway system? Trains can go faster, don't have to stop for traffic, and can carry far more goods than trucks.

Amazingly, people live where rail is not an option. The interstate system offers more possibilities than rail. Rail also does not deliver to your door.

What parts of the country don't have rail as an option? Pretty much the entire US is covered in rail, especially around population centers since that's why many developed there in the first place.

Most people don't get tractor trailer deliveries to their door so a driverless truck wouldn't have an advantage there.

That's pretty much a tautology - cities exist because trains went there. I live in a state covered with extinct towns, because the tracks went another way back in the day.

But sadly those tracks are bicycle trails or even roads now. Eminent domain space is problematical; rails always go interesting places; tracks have largely disappeared from the landscape by having their route repurposed.

Right but I'm curious if, as the GP claimed, there were any population centers in the US not well connected via rail. It's possible that when the interstates were built, that they created new population centers not connected by rail but I'm unaware of any. Do you know of any?

Certainly interstate highways had an effect - they squashed growth in towns NOT visited. Unless you have a freeway exit in or near your small town, it can't grow today. Similar to the way rail did the job a century earlier.

I work in the logistics industry. Just because there are railroad tracks through a town, does not mean there are active stops. Also, while most people do not get tractor trailer delivers to their door, most business do. Especially for items too large to send via UPS or FedEx. Total US public highways miles: 161K [1] Total US Railroads miles (Class I):100K [2]

[1]https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/hs01/hm41.htm [2]http://www.nationalatlas.gov/articles/transportation/a_freig...

Captain? You mean servant to the machines.

Why would the robot's pet be armed? Only the stupidest bandits would threaten the poor meatbag instead of paying them to cause the breakdown in the first place.

Armed? What, so he can get in a shootout with the robbers?

When I worked at a convenience store, you could get fired for not cooperating with robbers. No company wants to deal with the PR and liability nightmare of some poor schmuck getting gunned down trying to defend a truckload of Cheetos, or the $200 in the register. The policy everywhere is "keep your head down, do everything the bad guys tell you to, and call the police when they leave."

And, similarly, no robber wants the kind of police attention that murder brings. Certainly there's a risk of some fucked-up tweaker getting all trigger-happy, but 99 times out of a hundred they won't hurt you as long as you cooperate.

Can the driver-less truck put chains on its tires in the winter?

http://www.onspot.com/

That's not good news for the truck drivers. I can even see automation getting banned in many states. In the same way some places require an attendant at gas stations.

Presumably the states that have full serve gas stations, which is required for automated trucks, will also be the ones that ban automated trucks.

You just need some human support drone style. Trucking will be 90% automated an 10% rc

Cameras, GPS, an inability to force a driver to pull over, no drivers helping on an inside job. It might be harder to steal from these trucks.

Plus Robocop will be hiding in the back and killing him with carbon monoxide will not be an option.

Of course, when thieves start using robots to do the stealing, it will get tough.

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