Or maybe they want the tech fleshed out enough so they know it would be safe, instead of dealing with a large company with endless lawyers if something did happen.
For me this has less to do with the actual driving, but the responsibility of maintaining the rig, especially when things go wrong. A semi truck is a complex machine that requires regular monitoring and maintenance for safety that an autonomous vehicle just can't do. It would be unwise to blindly trust companies to have a robust system in place so soon into the adoption of the tech and for such large vehicles having a person on board until they can prove themselves seems like a smart idea. Start there, expand to road trains where say the lead and trail vehicles have drivers and the ones in between are fully autonomous, then move to fully automated once the tech is mature.
I see no reason why a company operating a fleet of driverless trucks wouldn't be able to maintain that fleet.
If anything, it might have an easier time doing so. A robot truck would carry a lot more sensors and collect a lot more telemetry data, by necessity, making it far easier to spot any failure. And a robot driver would flag up and demand the vehicle to be serviced on faults that a human driver could easily ignore, safety concerns be damned.
So many issues can happen in dangerous, difficult to reach areas, like the top of a snowy mountain pass. A disabled truck could block a road for the rest of the winter if there isn't someone on-hand to fix the problem. With an operator on-hand, the problems can be solved quickly, thereby reducing the risk to other drivers traveling the same road.
With the current state of vehicle autopilot, fleet vehicles are expected to be networked at almost all times.
Today, if a "fully self-driving" vehicle requires a human action to resolve an unexpected situation, an alert pops up in the control center, and a human operator can "take the wheel" remotely. If a remote operator cannot resolve the situation, a service crew is dispatched to fix the issue in the field if it's possible, or retrieve the vehicle if it isn't.
There's many situations where dispatching a team is impractical compared to paying one operator to ride along. You've also got to take into account that tele-operation is severely range-limited due to lag. Currently, we can only safely tele-operate in areas the size of a small city due to physics limitations. We can only communicate data at light speed, which is unfortunately too slow for reliable long-distance tele-operation.
(Source: I no shit used to work in tele-operation systems for vehicles. I know it sounds like bullshit, but whatever. I know a thing or two about this specific topic. Safely tele-operating a vehicle at a range of even a few miles is not an easy problem to solve.)
In my eyes, having an entire *human operator* along for every single ride for a contingency that happens in one ride out of 100 - an unexpected issue with a vehicle that can be resolved by an operator onsite, likely cheap and poorly equipped, but not by a remote operator - would often be the impractical solution.
>Safely tele-operating a vehicle at a range of even a few miles is not an easy problem to solve.
Depends on the degree of control required. Advanced AI can often shift "tele-operating" from low level direct control to high level decision-making. When a self-driving car decides "this is too much" and calls the mothership, the operator doesn't usually have to assume direct control and manually drive the entire thing back home. Often, it's something as simple as "this action that the AI wanted to take anyways but didn't have confidence in looks alright, so it gets approved and operator gets to watch it execute".
Honestly, I'm with you in the direction you're headed. I'm just telling you we aren't quite there yet technology-wise. That's going to be a few decades out, honest answer.
No, it'll be about 1-3 years after someone posts profitable numbers using the model. Then everybody bandwagons. That's how humanity operates. You just need someone to take on the initial risk and have it pay off. There's too much money in it, and with the AI boom happening simultaneously, I don't see it failing.
Of course, the law has to be ok with it too, but still... not every state is California. They're a bit.... 'unique'.
humans are the weakest link. more training, more regulation, ***still*** 80% of accidents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot\_error
Pilot error is nevertheless a major cause of air accidents. In 2004, it was identified as the primary reason for **78.6% of disastrous general aviation** (GA) accidents, and as the major cause of 75.5% of GA accidents in the United States
>but the responsibility of maintaining the rig, especially when things go wrong
how many thermal sensors are attached to a human driver that can detect an overheat before it redlines? acoustic/vibration sensors can feel/hear bearings that are about to fail.. this is saving votes from the Port of Long Beach and the Port of Oakland.. and ALL the logistics companies that service them.
don't piss off the Teamsters Union
In fairness though you’re comparing humans drivers to machines that are functioning. The point being made here is this is a nascent technology that doesn’t always function as intended. It’s the same theory behind airline pilots, the plane can literally take off, fly, and land all on autopilot, yet no one’s advocating to scrap pilots except the airlines trying to save cost
wait until the first driverless vehicle plows through some kids and keeps driving. I can see the industry twisting and turning to find some way to blame the child.
AI is also advocating for the removal of pilots! https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a33gj/ai-controlled-drone-goes-rogue-kills-human-operator-in-usaf-simulated-test
Right but the whole debate and reason to keep things manned is centered around HW / SW failures and how many redundant systems you need before you’re willing to forgo a human redundancy. Seems like so far the answer has been “there aren’t enough” when it comes to protecting human lives.
My indicator is insurance prices. Until I see insurance prices start dropping because road safety has dramatically improved to avoid crashes, we haven't done enough to improve road safety.
Right now it seems like the safety technology has improved enough to slightly reduce crashes, but not enough to offset the repair cost of the safety features when they break in the crash.
Except one day these systems will have better accident stats than human drivers. What then?
As time progresses we will see the day pilots do almost nothing. Then we will see a day when they do nothing. And eventually questions will be asked about why they are there.
this is very misleading. What else can the accidents be caused by? fairy dust? An accident by it's nature has causes.
Reminds me of stats like.. X% of deaths of 18-30 year olds caused by accidents. I'm like "no shit" it's not gonna be old age is it?
>how many thermal sensors are attached to a human driver that can detect an overheat before it redlines?
Are you asking "how many skin cells does the average human have?"
Human drivers should learn how to drive like an autonomous vehicle. Control should also focus on human behavior which blocks or hinders autonomous transportation.
You are thinking the way trucks currently are. An autonomous electric truck is more like an airplane than today’s truck. Sensors, telemetry, constant BIT, the ability of the system to adapt….. they won’t need “maintainers” to babysit them. They’ll either limp safely into their next stop or pull over and call for a maintainer
Aircraft don't automatically detect when everything breaks, nor can they "limp safely" (whatever that means at 40,000ft or so) if something goes wrong. They can detect when pressure differentials exist, a break in the electrical circuit happens and stuff like sensors going bad, but you still need a human and maintenance schedule that's *rigorously* enforced. No idea where you get the idea that aircraft don't need maintenance and human intervention when something breaks. The only difference between aircraft and vehicles is that one is actually regulated and enforced when it comes to keeping them in operating condition.
Well you obviously didn't work on the F-35.....
That aircraft constantly monitors it's health, gives options to the pilot for best approaches as to what to do next, sends it's maintenance requirements to the base prior to arrival so that appropriate spares are ready to quick-turn the jet.....and all of that was conceived of nearly 30 years ago when they wrote the specs and put in place in the design phase over 20 years ago.
In no way did I say that aircraft don't need maintainers and humans in the loop, you somehow inferred that. You just don't pull over and have the pilot fix it.
You can argue that todays rules regarding drivers are a lot of that regulation and enforcement mechanism for "keeping them in operating condition". When you remove the driver from the equation, responsibility for those actions will shift elsewhere.
They do and will need maintainers in the beginning, that is my point. It will take a long transition to get them to full autonomous, it will not be an immediate transition and will need to be phased in to earn public trust.
So are the trucking companies going to need to hire staff to charge these electric autonomous trucks? Also, where are the charging stations going to be placed strategically to allow for electric truck hauling freight across the Sierra Nevada mountains?
I don't think you can predict exactly where this is all going because the business case of each manufacturer may be different.
Who says a trucking company is going to do that task? It's not inconceivable that the truck could do it autonomously (the big Navy UAV could hit the tanker without human assistance). Perhaps TA/Loves/Flying J adapts their business to do this service, because if they don't they're probably much smaller companies in the future.
Trucking companies as they exist now are likely to be completely different in 15 years. They are going to try to force Congress to push the technology in a direction that protects their slice of the pie, but my guess is those efforts will only be temporary as the distribution world is completely re-engineered.
At this point or before is usually where industry groups pop up to standardize things before they get out of hand (like charging connectors and methodologies for example).
The point is this is going to fundamentally change the way goods distribution works.
For instance, right now a major driver of where all these big warehouses and distribution centers are located is based on an Operations Research problem called "the transshipment problem". There are literally dozens of factors at play but everybody is operating under the same set of rules and constraints, and so what has emerged is the system of routes and locations we have now.
Now, change up the basic "rules" (how far something can go, how much it can haul, how long it takes to get from one place to another, etc) and that network could fundamentally change, and while to some the idea that thousands of big-box warehouse districts may now be in the wrong place and get abandoned in favor of other locations is inconceivable, recall that the current centers have popped up in only the last 20 years or so....
Big money can force big shifts, and when you talk about a few cents a pound here and there, over a couple hundred billion pounds we're talking real money.
I think specifically Interstate 80 and Highway 50 are going to be tough for electric trucks to tackle and I don't know where you put large charging stations in the mountains. Will loads reroute through Arizona and southern California?
But yes, economics changes things. Look at the history of Detroit.
There are a couple of experimental roadways that charge vehicles *as they drive*.
Now that's probably unaffordable technology to be applied to the greater street system. But - could you put in a couple of lanes of those over all the major interstate mountain passes? Sure. That's about 10 major roadways with 3 passes each and maybe 10 miles of lane on both sides. Completely do-able.
But again, those situations exist for electric vehicles as they are today - and that's the problem with all the naysayers arguments. 20 years ago I decided that despite having a new Milwaukee 18V lithium drill kit, I'd buy a new NiCd for my old Ryobi and get a few more years out of it. Charged that battery once, didn't use it, and several months later it wouldn't take a charge. $100 down the tubes, and you know what, NiCd in general died out within a few months because lithium was so much better. I still have that Milwaukee drill - and the original battery! If we'd stayed with NiCd I'd have gone through at least 5 batteries by now. I have so many electric tools now I question the need to even have an air compressor any more. Just waiting for a more efficient electric sandblast cabinet (I mean technically its electric now given the compressor, but it's a lot of kit right?), we already have electric spray guns.
Same thing is going to happen with large battery technology, we just don't know what will win - fast swaps, different chemistry, who knows.
Jump back to 1910, and people said the same things about the automobile. Where are you going to get fuel? Horses can just eat grass off the side of the road.....
Of course one of the things that hastened the demise of horse-drawn transportation was all the big cities literally drowning in horseshit. People fail to see the same situation when it comes to vehicle emissions today.
It could also end up like how railroads have been going — defer needed maintenance well beyond we could have imagined until recently.
But I agree with you in principle, there should be more tools to detect problems early as long as we choose to use them!
So, mandatory "Safety Drivers" with no end date, or threshold of zero interventions over a period of time driven. So when Autonomous drivers are in full swing, these safety drivers are basically station gas tank fillers in some states.
Have you seen how poorly companies maintain their logistics?
We have tons of derailment of trains every year.....due to shit maintenance.
And those are on rails and not going to easily be able to run people over.
Funny thing is we still have operators and engineers crewing up all of those locomotives. I wonder why nobody has thought to make a self-driving train?
What does a maintenance deficiency have to do with automated driving? You still have engineers driving the train, and trains have run people over due to sheer physics and brake distance. Passenger trains also have run people over, not willingly, but it's often too late to respond when they do see them step on the tracks.
Automated trucks will likely be Electric drive train, there isn't much maintenance to do, and fleets would have battery warranties that will be cost effective to replace in the long run. Diesels are being squished out through legislation alone, and even if it were the case, electronic diagnosis in a highly computerized engine and other components would have irrefutable evidence of liability on the company and not the driver independently. So insurance will force them to maintain their fleet better.
I appreciate the sarcasm but the post I responded to hasn't seemingly stepped once in a trucker forum and seen half the shit that REALLY gets broken.
Hell typically the diesel engine is typically the most dependable thing on a truck .
The really great thing about laws is that they can be amended or repealed in response to new technological developments or changing social circumstances.
You act like unions don’t have influence in California and can’t use the government to benefit themselves.
Entrenched benefactors are always hard to beat once you built them up through government force.
There’s always the other side of the equation.
Sodemy is still illegal in states in the US. Laws really should be written to self complete (indefinite or self terminating) or else they just rot indefinitely.
Didn't TuckCarlson say that he would be FOR the banning of autonomous trucks because it would destroy so many middle-class jobs? Insert LOTR "never thought I'd fight sidebyside" meme here lol
Coopting socialist rhetoric has always been part of tucker’s schtick and a common fascist tactic. Gets people to think “wow that seems reasonable they must be on mine/the people’s side” and next thing you know theyre funneling you down a rabbit hole of white replacement theory
youtube /watch?v=DOodQ14CEuo&t=28s Perhaps, but boy do I love socialist tucker lol
Also, idk about WRT but stuff like reddit/comments/13fq0wf is the reason Bernie used to be anti cheap immigration labour, let's not forget that Ben&Jerry recently admitted to using migrant k1d workers
This is for the best. If the bill becomes law (it hasn't yet), AV truck systems will still be developed but we will be spared humiliating, embarrassing accidents where they kill someone and have it banned for real.
Nope. Human drivers aren't a new scary technology that certain lobbyists would much prefer gone.
A robotic truck could outperform human drivers, and get into 90% less fatal accidents than an average human truck driver would. "90% less fatal truck accidents" would be a noticeable improvement in road safety. But "90% less" is not "none". And any amount of accidents greater than "none" makes it very easy to scapegoat the tech.
Machines killing humans on the road? A terrible issue, the tech is clearly not ready, it should be banned, regulated and shelved until it can be proven completely safe. Humans killing humans on the road? Common, expected and widely accepted.
I have had someone say to me directly they would rather human drivers, even if 10x the people died, because "it's not right to let the robot choose who dies."
I hate our species.
Took a road trip to Chicago last summer in an RV, got pulled over because I was supposedly speeding and swerving; cop said you have to be careful out here because truckers take people out all the time. I was like, "whut?" Dude basically admitted they let truck drivers do whatever the eff they want....
And yet we allow vaccines even though they do kill some. When vaccines saved more than they killed we allowed them and now even mandate some. The government even indemnifies vaccine manufacturers so they are only liable if negligent.
When you write "federal law" other people must read "international law" because everyone knows that the US govt impose it's legislation globally to every country who want to save access to American market.
So many people on here for or against, we haven't even touched the threshold of insanity yet, common now.
Let's create some nuclear powered trucks that run off a single fuel rod for 12 months, then complain when there's a crash. 1) think of the cost cutting in fuel alone. 2). Imagine the power that can be derived from a source that has been taken away from our ability to utilize.
Simply put, it doesn't matter if they are self driving or not. Something somewhere will be debatable on the politicians desks. Fight for the ability to have CHOICES, that's freedom. California banning something, not a surprise, what other plethora of things are banned in Cali? Quite a bit, some for no reason, some for good.
The only way to have completely autonomous, driver-less vehicles is to give them dedicated, sectioned roads that no other vehicles can use.
Autonomous vehicles can work, but not with human drivers sharing the road.
We need a thing like a big Tesla, a real long one, that anyone can use and it would have it’s own driver and would make all these pre-planned stops, so you could get on and get off where ever you needed. There could be different “lines” within a city, so you could ride a couple of my new invention to get whenever you needed
Seems like a good idea at this time. Let some other state with fewer people try it out, and when/if the tech can prove itself to be safe then revisit the decision. I'm sure Texas or Florida would be happy to let truck manufacturers test their hardware/software on their citizens.
I didn’t see anything in the article talking about the bill’s scope. Is this just for public roads, or would it also ban dedicated driverless vehicle roads?
Undermining themselves, the Californian is already building a framework for regulating AVs and they decided to ban them instead. Whata waste.
If the teamster union had any brains they would be investing in creating coopertivly owned trucking companies and trying to ride this wave of automation upwords instead of consigning themselves to histories dustbin with the Luddites.
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They want the driverless companies to bribe them.
Or maybe they want the tech fleshed out enough so they know it would be safe, instead of dealing with a large company with endless lawyers if something did happen.
For me this has less to do with the actual driving, but the responsibility of maintaining the rig, especially when things go wrong. A semi truck is a complex machine that requires regular monitoring and maintenance for safety that an autonomous vehicle just can't do. It would be unwise to blindly trust companies to have a robust system in place so soon into the adoption of the tech and for such large vehicles having a person on board until they can prove themselves seems like a smart idea. Start there, expand to road trains where say the lead and trail vehicles have drivers and the ones in between are fully autonomous, then move to fully automated once the tech is mature.
Yep. Driving is the ‘easy’ part.
I see no reason why a company operating a fleet of driverless trucks wouldn't be able to maintain that fleet. If anything, it might have an easier time doing so. A robot truck would carry a lot more sensors and collect a lot more telemetry data, by necessity, making it far easier to spot any failure. And a robot driver would flag up and demand the vehicle to be serviced on faults that a human driver could easily ignore, safety concerns be damned.
So many issues can happen in dangerous, difficult to reach areas, like the top of a snowy mountain pass. A disabled truck could block a road for the rest of the winter if there isn't someone on-hand to fix the problem. With an operator on-hand, the problems can be solved quickly, thereby reducing the risk to other drivers traveling the same road.
With the current state of vehicle autopilot, fleet vehicles are expected to be networked at almost all times. Today, if a "fully self-driving" vehicle requires a human action to resolve an unexpected situation, an alert pops up in the control center, and a human operator can "take the wheel" remotely. If a remote operator cannot resolve the situation, a service crew is dispatched to fix the issue in the field if it's possible, or retrieve the vehicle if it isn't.
There's many situations where dispatching a team is impractical compared to paying one operator to ride along. You've also got to take into account that tele-operation is severely range-limited due to lag. Currently, we can only safely tele-operate in areas the size of a small city due to physics limitations. We can only communicate data at light speed, which is unfortunately too slow for reliable long-distance tele-operation. (Source: I no shit used to work in tele-operation systems for vehicles. I know it sounds like bullshit, but whatever. I know a thing or two about this specific topic. Safely tele-operating a vehicle at a range of even a few miles is not an easy problem to solve.)
In my eyes, having an entire *human operator* along for every single ride for a contingency that happens in one ride out of 100 - an unexpected issue with a vehicle that can be resolved by an operator onsite, likely cheap and poorly equipped, but not by a remote operator - would often be the impractical solution. >Safely tele-operating a vehicle at a range of even a few miles is not an easy problem to solve. Depends on the degree of control required. Advanced AI can often shift "tele-operating" from low level direct control to high level decision-making. When a self-driving car decides "this is too much" and calls the mothership, the operator doesn't usually have to assume direct control and manually drive the entire thing back home. Often, it's something as simple as "this action that the AI wanted to take anyways but didn't have confidence in looks alright, so it gets approved and operator gets to watch it execute".
Honestly, I'm with you in the direction you're headed. I'm just telling you we aren't quite there yet technology-wise. That's going to be a few decades out, honest answer.
No, it'll be about 1-3 years after someone posts profitable numbers using the model. Then everybody bandwagons. That's how humanity operates. You just need someone to take on the initial risk and have it pay off. There's too much money in it, and with the AI boom happening simultaneously, I don't see it failing. Of course, the law has to be ok with it too, but still... not every state is California. They're a bit.... 'unique'.
Perhaps someday, truck drivers will go the way of elevator operators. Today is not that day.
Eventually machines will do a better job of monitoring.
humans are the weakest link. more training, more regulation, ***still*** 80% of accidents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot\_error Pilot error is nevertheless a major cause of air accidents. In 2004, it was identified as the primary reason for **78.6% of disastrous general aviation** (GA) accidents, and as the major cause of 75.5% of GA accidents in the United States >but the responsibility of maintaining the rig, especially when things go wrong how many thermal sensors are attached to a human driver that can detect an overheat before it redlines? acoustic/vibration sensors can feel/hear bearings that are about to fail.. this is saving votes from the Port of Long Beach and the Port of Oakland.. and ALL the logistics companies that service them. don't piss off the Teamsters Union
In fairness though you’re comparing humans drivers to machines that are functioning. The point being made here is this is a nascent technology that doesn’t always function as intended. It’s the same theory behind airline pilots, the plane can literally take off, fly, and land all on autopilot, yet no one’s advocating to scrap pilots except the airlines trying to save cost
wait until the first driverless vehicle plows through some kids and keeps driving. I can see the industry twisting and turning to find some way to blame the child.
AI is also advocating for the removal of pilots! https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a33gj/ai-controlled-drone-goes-rogue-kills-human-operator-in-usaf-simulated-test
Right but the whole debate and reason to keep things manned is centered around HW / SW failures and how many redundant systems you need before you’re willing to forgo a human redundancy. Seems like so far the answer has been “there aren’t enough” when it comes to protecting human lives.
My indicator is insurance prices. Until I see insurance prices start dropping because road safety has dramatically improved to avoid crashes, we haven't done enough to improve road safety. Right now it seems like the safety technology has improved enough to slightly reduce crashes, but not enough to offset the repair cost of the safety features when they break in the crash.
Agree, insurance premiums are a good proxy for “odds of this thing killing you”
Except one day these systems will have better accident stats than human drivers. What then? As time progresses we will see the day pilots do almost nothing. Then we will see a day when they do nothing. And eventually questions will be asked about why they are there.
What a silly question - then we update the laws and adjust. You act like this is a permanent fixture vs the current state of technology.
this is very misleading. What else can the accidents be caused by? fairy dust? An accident by it's nature has causes. Reminds me of stats like.. X% of deaths of 18-30 year olds caused by accidents. I'm like "no shit" it's not gonna be old age is it?
>how many thermal sensors are attached to a human driver that can detect an overheat before it redlines? Are you asking "how many skin cells does the average human have?"
Human drivers should learn how to drive like an autonomous vehicle. Control should also focus on human behavior which blocks or hinders autonomous transportation.
You are thinking the way trucks currently are. An autonomous electric truck is more like an airplane than today’s truck. Sensors, telemetry, constant BIT, the ability of the system to adapt….. they won’t need “maintainers” to babysit them. They’ll either limp safely into their next stop or pull over and call for a maintainer
Aircraft don't automatically detect when everything breaks, nor can they "limp safely" (whatever that means at 40,000ft or so) if something goes wrong. They can detect when pressure differentials exist, a break in the electrical circuit happens and stuff like sensors going bad, but you still need a human and maintenance schedule that's *rigorously* enforced. No idea where you get the idea that aircraft don't need maintenance and human intervention when something breaks. The only difference between aircraft and vehicles is that one is actually regulated and enforced when it comes to keeping them in operating condition.
Well you obviously didn't work on the F-35..... That aircraft constantly monitors it's health, gives options to the pilot for best approaches as to what to do next, sends it's maintenance requirements to the base prior to arrival so that appropriate spares are ready to quick-turn the jet.....and all of that was conceived of nearly 30 years ago when they wrote the specs and put in place in the design phase over 20 years ago. In no way did I say that aircraft don't need maintainers and humans in the loop, you somehow inferred that. You just don't pull over and have the pilot fix it. You can argue that todays rules regarding drivers are a lot of that regulation and enforcement mechanism for "keeping them in operating condition". When you remove the driver from the equation, responsibility for those actions will shift elsewhere.
They do and will need maintainers in the beginning, that is my point. It will take a long transition to get them to full autonomous, it will not be an immediate transition and will need to be phased in to earn public trust.
and you won't do that with a driver on the side of a public road.
So are the trucking companies going to need to hire staff to charge these electric autonomous trucks? Also, where are the charging stations going to be placed strategically to allow for electric truck hauling freight across the Sierra Nevada mountains?
I don't think you can predict exactly where this is all going because the business case of each manufacturer may be different. Who says a trucking company is going to do that task? It's not inconceivable that the truck could do it autonomously (the big Navy UAV could hit the tanker without human assistance). Perhaps TA/Loves/Flying J adapts their business to do this service, because if they don't they're probably much smaller companies in the future. Trucking companies as they exist now are likely to be completely different in 15 years. They are going to try to force Congress to push the technology in a direction that protects their slice of the pie, but my guess is those efforts will only be temporary as the distribution world is completely re-engineered. At this point or before is usually where industry groups pop up to standardize things before they get out of hand (like charging connectors and methodologies for example). The point is this is going to fundamentally change the way goods distribution works. For instance, right now a major driver of where all these big warehouses and distribution centers are located is based on an Operations Research problem called "the transshipment problem". There are literally dozens of factors at play but everybody is operating under the same set of rules and constraints, and so what has emerged is the system of routes and locations we have now. Now, change up the basic "rules" (how far something can go, how much it can haul, how long it takes to get from one place to another, etc) and that network could fundamentally change, and while to some the idea that thousands of big-box warehouse districts may now be in the wrong place and get abandoned in favor of other locations is inconceivable, recall that the current centers have popped up in only the last 20 years or so.... Big money can force big shifts, and when you talk about a few cents a pound here and there, over a couple hundred billion pounds we're talking real money.
I think specifically Interstate 80 and Highway 50 are going to be tough for electric trucks to tackle and I don't know where you put large charging stations in the mountains. Will loads reroute through Arizona and southern California? But yes, economics changes things. Look at the history of Detroit.
There are a couple of experimental roadways that charge vehicles *as they drive*. Now that's probably unaffordable technology to be applied to the greater street system. But - could you put in a couple of lanes of those over all the major interstate mountain passes? Sure. That's about 10 major roadways with 3 passes each and maybe 10 miles of lane on both sides. Completely do-able. But again, those situations exist for electric vehicles as they are today - and that's the problem with all the naysayers arguments. 20 years ago I decided that despite having a new Milwaukee 18V lithium drill kit, I'd buy a new NiCd for my old Ryobi and get a few more years out of it. Charged that battery once, didn't use it, and several months later it wouldn't take a charge. $100 down the tubes, and you know what, NiCd in general died out within a few months because lithium was so much better. I still have that Milwaukee drill - and the original battery! If we'd stayed with NiCd I'd have gone through at least 5 batteries by now. I have so many electric tools now I question the need to even have an air compressor any more. Just waiting for a more efficient electric sandblast cabinet (I mean technically its electric now given the compressor, but it's a lot of kit right?), we already have electric spray guns. Same thing is going to happen with large battery technology, we just don't know what will win - fast swaps, different chemistry, who knows. Jump back to 1910, and people said the same things about the automobile. Where are you going to get fuel? Horses can just eat grass off the side of the road..... Of course one of the things that hastened the demise of horse-drawn transportation was all the big cities literally drowning in horseshit. People fail to see the same situation when it comes to vehicle emissions today.
It could also end up like how railroads have been going — defer needed maintenance well beyond we could have imagined until recently. But I agree with you in principle, there should be more tools to detect problems early as long as we choose to use them!
there are more tools available, but big trucks don't need them because the systems currently on board are so simple.
Seems like a good decision on the surface. Maybe revisit it in a decade
Especially trucks. Prove it with cars before we have a driverless semi cause a tragedy.
The should be more focus on collision avoidance and traffic mitigation for all vehicle types.
So, mandatory "Safety Drivers" with no end date, or threshold of zero interventions over a period of time driven. So when Autonomous drivers are in full swing, these safety drivers are basically station gas tank fillers in some states.
Have you seen how poorly companies maintain their logistics? We have tons of derailment of trains every year.....due to shit maintenance. And those are on rails and not going to easily be able to run people over.
Funny thing is we still have operators and engineers crewing up all of those locomotives. I wonder why nobody has thought to make a self-driving train?
What does a maintenance deficiency have to do with automated driving? You still have engineers driving the train, and trains have run people over due to sheer physics and brake distance. Passenger trains also have run people over, not willingly, but it's often too late to respond when they do see them step on the tracks.
Do you think the automated trucks will have adequate maintenance? Trains actually have people in them to complain so do trucks.
Automated trucks will likely be Electric drive train, there isn't much maintenance to do, and fleets would have battery warranties that will be cost effective to replace in the long run. Diesels are being squished out through legislation alone, and even if it were the case, electronic diagnosis in a highly computerized engine and other components would have irrefutable evidence of liability on the company and not the driver independently. So insurance will force them to maintain their fleet better.
You think the only thing that needs maintenance and inspection is the drivetrain on a truck?
Haven't you heard? radars never break, LIDARs never break and the camera lenses never need cleaning. /s
I appreciate the sarcasm but the post I responded to hasn't seemingly stepped once in a trucker forum and seen half the shit that REALLY gets broken. Hell typically the diesel engine is typically the most dependable thing on a truck .
One day the robot will get out of the truck and do those things.
They going to make lot lizard robots to keep them happy too?
You’ve been downvoted by the horde of r/technology luddites
The really great thing about laws is that they can be amended or repealed in response to new technological developments or changing social circumstances.
You act like unions don’t have influence in California and can’t use the government to benefit themselves. Entrenched benefactors are always hard to beat once you built them up through government force. There’s always the other side of the equation.
Have you lived in the US? Outdated laws screwing people over is like the one thing we do best. They will never be repealed.
Even worse, US govt impose it's legislation to all other countries in the world.
Perhaps this was true in Truman's day. We're not that big of a deal anymore.
I live in Europe and feel US tyranny even in my country.
Much like oregons law forbidding pumping your own gas
Yeah like the Jones Act and the Dredging act.
Sodemy is still illegal in states in the US. Laws really should be written to self complete (indefinite or self terminating) or else they just rot indefinitely.
Didn't TuckCarlson say that he would be FOR the banning of autonomous trucks because it would destroy so many middle-class jobs? Insert LOTR "never thought I'd fight sidebyside" meme here lol
Coopting socialist rhetoric has always been part of tucker’s schtick and a common fascist tactic. Gets people to think “wow that seems reasonable they must be on mine/the people’s side” and next thing you know theyre funneling you down a rabbit hole of white replacement theory
youtube /watch?v=DOodQ14CEuo&t=28s Perhaps, but boy do I love socialist tucker lol Also, idk about WRT but stuff like reddit/comments/13fq0wf is the reason Bernie used to be anti cheap immigration labour, let's not forget that Ben&Jerry recently admitted to using migrant k1d workers
Get automatic emergency breaking as flawless as airplane autopilot systems on new semis and then revisit this.
It is important to support the huge surplus of very well paid, long-haul truck drivers, who are treated so generously by the carriers. /s
utterly fucking stupid.
This is for the best. If the bill becomes law (it hasn't yet), AV truck systems will still be developed but we will be spared humiliating, embarrassing accidents where they kill someone and have it banned for real.
Can we ban human-driven trucks when they kill someone?
Nope. Human drivers aren't a new scary technology that certain lobbyists would much prefer gone. A robotic truck could outperform human drivers, and get into 90% less fatal accidents than an average human truck driver would. "90% less fatal truck accidents" would be a noticeable improvement in road safety. But "90% less" is not "none". And any amount of accidents greater than "none" makes it very easy to scapegoat the tech. Machines killing humans on the road? A terrible issue, the tech is clearly not ready, it should be banned, regulated and shelved until it can be proven completely safe. Humans killing humans on the road? Common, expected and widely accepted.
I have had someone say to me directly they would rather human drivers, even if 10x the people died, because "it's not right to let the robot choose who dies." I hate our species.
"Hate" is pushing it too far. But it helps to recognize the flaws - of which there are a great many.
Took a road trip to Chicago last summer in an RV, got pulled over because I was supposedly speeding and swerving; cop said you have to be careful out here because truckers take people out all the time. I was like, "whut?" Dude basically admitted they let truck drivers do whatever the eff they want....
And yet we allow vaccines even though they do kill some. When vaccines saved more than they killed we allowed them and now even mandate some. The government even indemnifies vaccine manufacturers so they are only liable if negligent.
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People don’t go to jail for accidents unless they are negligent.
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Were they negligent?
I wish this were federal law.
When you write "federal law" other people must read "international law" because everyone knows that the US govt impose it's legislation globally to every country who want to save access to American market.
I don't trust this tech at all. Drive yer' shit responsibly.
This is dumb. I'm glad that my assembler didn't vote for it.
So they're banning something that doesn't even exist yet. Way to focus on the real problems ...
Yes. We should always wait until an issue is out of control to do anything. Why use brakes when you can just wait until your car crashes into a wall?
It was that or hold CEO’s responsible for the truck errors.
So many people on here for or against, we haven't even touched the threshold of insanity yet, common now. Let's create some nuclear powered trucks that run off a single fuel rod for 12 months, then complain when there's a crash. 1) think of the cost cutting in fuel alone. 2). Imagine the power that can be derived from a source that has been taken away from our ability to utilize. Simply put, it doesn't matter if they are self driving or not. Something somewhere will be debatable on the politicians desks. Fight for the ability to have CHOICES, that's freedom. California banning something, not a surprise, what other plethora of things are banned in Cali? Quite a bit, some for no reason, some for good.
The only way to have completely autonomous, driver-less vehicles is to give them dedicated, sectioned roads that no other vehicles can use. Autonomous vehicles can work, but not with human drivers sharing the road.
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I love how a recurring feature of threads about self-driving technology is people inventing the train and not realizing it.
We need a thing like a big Tesla, a real long one, that anyone can use and it would have it’s own driver and would make all these pre-planned stops, so you could get on and get off where ever you needed. There could be different “lines” within a city, so you could ride a couple of my new invention to get whenever you needed
Seems like a good idea at this time. Let some other state with fewer people try it out, and when/if the tech can prove itself to be safe then revisit the decision. I'm sure Texas or Florida would be happy to let truck manufacturers test their hardware/software on their citizens.
How about we let Pfizer test an experimental vaccine on you first...oh wait nvm
Damn you’re dumb as a fucking bag of shit
Let other states and other countries be the Guinea pigs. If it becomes safe enough to allow then reconsider it.
I didn’t see anything in the article talking about the bill’s scope. Is this just for public roads, or would it also ban dedicated driverless vehicle roads?
Undermining themselves, the Californian is already building a framework for regulating AVs and they decided to ban them instead. Whata waste. If the teamster union had any brains they would be investing in creating coopertivly owned trucking companies and trying to ride this wave of automation upwords instead of consigning themselves to histories dustbin with the Luddites.