Quote:
Originally Posted by rcentros
Self driving trucks. What could possibly go wrong?
"A truck, navigating rush hour traffic in Boston, crashed into 48 cars and took out the supports of a bridge when the Windows 10 OS decided to do an update and shut down the onboard computer ... News at 11."
And when all these "relatively high paying jobs" are replaced by robots, whose going to be able to buy the products the self-driving trucks deliver?
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1- The self driving trucks are not intended for crowded city centers but rather the open interstates. The plans are for depot to depot routing, typically on the outskirts of metro areas.
2- Don't know about your area but in my region, human driven trucks overturning or crashing is a regular occurrence, invariably due to error or fatigue. Those 14 hour shifts/11 continuous hours at the wheel. Robots don't get tired or fall asleep.
3- Robots trucks are remotely overseen by humans. As I said, they're more like drones, except one human can oversee a dozen trucks on the interstate.
4- There is a *shortage* of drivers. To the tune of 50,000-plus. It is not a cushy white collar job but rather has more in common with mining and warehouse work. The shortage will only grow as railroads keep degrading and clean electrics hit the market.
5- Given the legal restrictions on the job a single robot truck can replace two drivers, so the 50,000 driver shortfall could be filled by 25,000 robotrucks without *anybody* losing their job. Trucking is freaking huge! Each of those *manual* trucks is expensive, in the $100-200,000 range, and the robotrucks won't be any cheaper. All that adds up to a $25-50 Billion dollar market.
Don't let luddite politicking muddy the issues: robotrucks are no danger to the labor market and won't be for a couple genetations. They will however be good for the economy, the standard of living, and will create a few thousand safe and high paying jobs for the remote monitors. On top of the truck factory workers.
Robotrucks will happen and soon. They make too much sense in too many ways for misinformation to stop it.