So we're going to have a lot of people potentially unemployed because of this...
https://nypost.com/2025/04/29/us-news/trump-signs-order-requ...
https://truckdrivernews.com/new-arkansas-bill-could-make-non...
[1] https://www.iru.org/news-resources/newsroom/worse-you-though...
Well, it's like literally everything else.
Pay more.
You don't "pay more" to get more young people and women to apply to moving spent nuclear fuel, you give the job to the robots.
If it was true, Youngstown Ohio and Flint Michigan would be jewels of the Midwest - bustling metropolises of highly skilled retrained workers in wondrous utopias. You'd have AI unicorns popping out of Huntington and Wheeling, West Virginia.
Whether you count number of bankruptcies, overall mortality rate, number of offspring, percentage that own versus rent... The fervent assertion that going from a union job to hustling for say Postmates, is somehow the rising tide lifting all boats is baseless.
Doesn't matter though. It's ideologically, not materially based so evidence is irrelevant.
There Are state interventionist ways to make it work. China moved from agrarian to industrial. South Korea, Taiwan Japan.... The difference is they don't have this pentacostal snake handling level blind faith in the free market where they go around like Peter Popof preaching Hayek and Rothbard like it's sacred scripture.
In other news, there is a terrible shortage of Lamborghinis at the $30k price point. When will the horror end?
Generally, your chosen price determines how much you get (unless you set your price at 0, where you get nothing, OR if you set your price to infinity, where there literally doesn't exist 1 more of the thing you're talking about).
So in this context, there's really no shortage because all you have to do is raise the price you pay truckers and it's pretty much guaranteed that retired truckers and others with CDL licenses start putting their hands up and saying yes to that job.
Well, not with being asked politely, at least.
yep, it definitely won't happen politely
The best we can hope for is to all end up in permanent slums picking through garbage to survive.
One peep of protest a little too loud and suddenly we’ll all be living the same scenario that’s visible all over the “combat footage” portions of the web: you are walking along outdoors, you hear a buzz, and then suddenly you look up to realize there’s a drone coming at you. You panic and try to run but by the time you hear it, it’s too late. It catches up to you easily and drops a bomb on you. Or maybe it’s a smaller more targeted (and disposable) one that zips straight at your forehead and explodes on contact, destroying your brain.
People may say I’m a doomsayer but just look back at the history of labor in the US. They sent out privatized security to shoot anyone who didn’t cooperate. And that was when they still needed the workers! Just imagine what they’ll do when they no longer need anyone!
That angle unfortunately just doesn’t give me much hope.
Doesn't hold water for me. Do you have some specific idea about how this law only had this effect decades after it passed?
Obviously this also happened against the background of a broader trend towards deregulation that proceeded under Reagan, so it's not just that act.
Modern trucking is nothing like that, and often they are independent contractors in name only, driving someone else’s truck and being evaluated against strict performance criteria.
Edit: Also, Wal-mart's standards are incredibly high -- several years of clean driving experience. Most commercial truck drivers do not meet those standards. Despite the high standards, they still readily fill their positions. If they were having troubles, they'd lower their standards.
I'm sure it's like any job -- everything else can be great, but if you get stuck with a bad boss it can make you absolutely miserable and drive you out.
Of course, they had people fighting for those jobs, and from what I heard, about the only way to get one was to know somebody on the inside.
Up your pay, give them benefits, and the people will come. This isn't hard to figure out.
It’s not as lucrative to the folks that enjoyed pretty much total freedom outside of the start and end points.
... more trucking jobs, more loading/unloading jobs, more FSD operations jobs, more truck repair jobs, more software engineering jobs
We'll see. There will be a loss of little industries that depended on truckers though, like truck stops and inns.
I also hope that this results in more jobs that are fulfilling.
Used to work at a bank that had a few local branches as a teller when I was a senior in HS. Had old, antiquated technology but had a "person on the phone whenever you needed help".
I'm going to guess that the bank that bought them out was quite a bit more advanced, and the banks that do the same will be buying out the less advanced ones.
https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2025/program/paper/eT2Ar7T...
Reminds me of this (automated systems still doing their thing after humans are gone)
That way if a human driver is concerned, they can choose not to drive during this period of time.
Perhaps run the trucks in a train style configuration where a "conductor" can sit in the lead truck and manage any emergency issues that arise (i.e. security, crash or weather related).
If fully autonomous, I could see securing the cargo being real issue - what would stop a few cars passage in front of the truck and helping themselves to the cargo.
The only difference is how maintenance of the route is paid for.
The proposal I would prefer is to do more of a time based multiplexing of the road between daytime auto traffic and night time truck train traffic. And I'm not saying autos couldn't drive at night, just people could decide whether they want to trust the autonomous truck software.
As it stands we probably won't get that choice and its just shoved upon us.
The benefit is to utilize existing access rights and infrastructure.
The reason trucks are so popular and necessary is because they go beyond the interstate highways. Until self-driving trucks handle that portion safely and successfully, they're not much more useful than trains.
[0] https://external-preview.redd.it/VPeHZG0mzsNhJGAHJglxW1jn4Y0...
Self-driving cars are currently proving safer than manually-piloted ones. There isn’t a good reason to segregate traffic like this.
> what would stop a few cars passage in front of the truck and helping themselves to the cargo
Why do you think a trucker would risk life or even their truck in a highway robbery?
Unfettered access to 5 lanes of freeway.
As a general thing, no, we've not really had study confirming that. The stats we have are biased by the feature preselecting good drivers, good weather conditions, known road segments, and other things.
That's an armed robbery whereas stealing from a robo-truck is more like breaking and entering. Robberies require the willingness and ability to commit violence. Having a human witness present means more risk of things going wrong, even if they don't intervene. I think all these factors prevent a lot of potential crimes.
If you ask truckers they'll probably say something about blue lights and asking to see license and registration.
As to why that doesn't happen now? If you try to rob a piloted truck in the middle of nowhere, whether or not you plan on hurting the guy, he's going to fear for his life (why would he trust your good intentions if you're robbing him?) -- and if he fears for his life, there's a good chance he pulls his gun on you. That means you need to come prepared to commit violence and risk him doing the same
You simply iterate on the problem and see if the percentage goes down.
Not to mention you're proposing somehow making off with the contents of a semi truck in a covert way, even though it's so much stuff if takes a semi-truck to move.
But why though? These trucks will be safer than humans at the wheel. The most dangerous thing on the road will continue to be the humans driving next to the truck.
> That way if a human driver is concerned, they can choose not to drive during this period of time.
Why should we care about the concerns of a human driver? I don't get a choice to opt out of pedestrian smashing SUVs.
> Perhaps run the trucks in a train style configuration where a "conductor" can sit in the lead truck and manage any emergency issues that arise (i.e. security, crash or weather related).
What possible value will a human offer in that circumstance? We already have weather reports. Anyone willing to provide security is going to be prohibitively expensive and doesn't need to actually be in the truck. Autonomous vehicles are better at avoiding and responding to accidents than humans.
> what would stop a few cars passage in front of the truck and helping themselves to the cargo.
The FBI? What stops highway robbery today?
Logistics. Unless you know exactly what's in the cargo, it's probably not wortht he effort because you might get a load of toilet paper. Also getting your ill-gotten gains away from the scene is going to be a lot of work, how much stuff are you going to be able to unload before the cops show up and how many vehicles will you need to get it? You'd be better off stealing the truck itself.
A "drivered" lead truck is leading one or more driverless trucks in this case.
I drive the stretch of highway these trucks are on fairly regularly. I don't know that I've seen a group of them yet but I'm keeping my eye out.
I'm probably just showing my age, but I like the idea of a "drivered" truck leading driverless trucks versus a completely autonomous system. It's similar to my attitude on crewed spaceflight-- I like the idea of the ingenuity and capacity for independent thought supervising an automated systems, versus autonomous automated systems.
I think they both have their place, but I think acknowledging it as a system design choice is so helpful even in basic business processes (how will I handle exceptions, how will the person remember to handle a rare exception).
I find myself thinking of this problem frequently. We have lots of modern words for it like observability but I think that removes one a bit from the actual problem.
My bet is this goes nowhere. It’s a horseless carriage that doesn’t have enough time to pay itself back versus fully-automated platoons with remote back-up.
Sure. I just don’t see the time-to-market advantage of starting with a human lead outpacing the core technology advantage of being fully autonomous from the get go. (Counterpoint: Waymo using Uber to manage the front end in Atlanta.)
Working on platooning - assuming it's a more or less viable business idea on its own - doesn't need to be a distraction that prevents anyone from developing fully autonomous trucks.
Unless the front truck is actually hitting something, causing it to slow down more than the following trucks (and then quickly turn into a pancake).
The teamsters, the CDL mills, the driver trade groups, all the people who've joined hands with the hand wringing types to prevent modernization of our trucking regulations will see the writing on the wall, pull out all the stops, lobby to allow human steering wheel holders to work to their full potential and full automation will stagnate for 20+yr while tech is instead deployed to solve other nuisance problems that limit truck sizes and productivity.
speculative, alien technology, admittedly, but some day our scientists will figure it out i bet!
I believe the lesson is that rail sucks here, economically speaking (whether privately run or publicly run). Unfortunately old voters love rail so the politicians pander to them.
But it is true that NZ lacks the scale that many existing rail systems rely on, and also lacks high-speed roads (a good rule of thumb for driving anywhere in NZ is: look at how many miles it is on the map, calculate how fast you could go that far in America, then double the time).
https://maritime-executive.com/article/barge-to-innovate-new...
This is certainly not an example of rail not working. Trucks on the road are a massive disaster as well. Most roads are single lane, so it's not uncommon to be stuck behind trucks for long stretches, this is especially annoying considering that many roads are very windy and truck speed up when coming to passing lanes.
> Freight rail’s modal share has been in decline across Europe, both in terms of market share and the profitability of major operators. In France for instance, modal share declined by 50 percent, from around 30 percent in the 1980s to 15 percent today. By contrast, road transport has been steadily increasing. In 1980, less than 50 percent of goods were transported by road. This rose to more than 75 percent by 2018.
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/infrastructure/our-insig...
By contrast, for most of that same period (1980-today) rail freight was growing its share in the US, though in the past decade or so growth has favored trucking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transportation_in_the_Uni...
The United States doesn't have a lot of navigable waterways, and none go east-west. This means that any bulk goods you want to transport have to go via rail. There is no other option. As a result the railway network has been optimized to do bulk transport at the lowest price possible, even if it means sacrificing speed and quality. After all, coal doesn't care if it sits in a siding for several days.
It's true that the US is shipping an awful lot of tonnes via rail, but this doesn't say anything about its ability to ship regular goods. Getting a single wagon from point to point in a timely manner is significantly more complicated than doing the same with an entire train.
The beaty of platooning is that trucks can join and leave while traveling at speed, all they need is a free lane on the side.
And if you really want to tease out all the efficiencies of rail, without suffering the drawbacks, you make electrified lanes that also have embedded tracks (like those of a tramway, but designed for higher load) and make the trucks multimodals that can switch while moving. Actually just those trucks that would see an economic advantage, trucks designed for light, high volume loads would likely stick to road wheels only.
A setup like this could actually be super economical compared to two because a rail network needs huge separation between trains because rails are terrible for braking fast. Multimodals on the other hand could be designed to be able to switch to their road wheels in an emergency. And a rail network needs an ungodly amount of nines in terms of reliability and rarity of maintenance, because there is no plan B network. Reliability nines are expensive. Multimodals on the other hand could easily be diverted to a dirt road for a bit when the main lanes are defective or going through maintenance. Where they would be running on the same batteries they carry anyways, for the last couple of miles on regular, non-electrified roads.
Why not just use container cranes like docks? There's no reason they won't work inland.
Why? The labor of a conductor is a fraction of the total cost to move the cargo, to the point it’s a rounding error.
At some point it’ll probably be automated, but yeah, what’s the point.
Think of the Miracle on the Hudson. The pilot said "This is the captain. Brace for impact." The flight attendants picked up on that and immediately began directing the passengers on what "brace for impact" means. Without that how many would have reacted properly (the info is on the safety card, but how many have read it well enough??), how many would be asking for information, how many would just generally be panicking?
Anyway, labor costs to have a couple engineers aboard is much less than if the load was travelling by truck, even if the trucks have no driver in them, they're likely supervised at a ratio with more humans than it takes to operate a long freight train.
Singapore and Sydney would like a word.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_driverless_train_sys...
1. Full grade separation with no level crossings (often including platform edge doors along any station platforms the trains move through too)
2. Full fencing along the corridor.
Those are two things that isn’t true for almost any freight line.
Not to say it’s not possible with extremely extensive sensor and decision making systems but we’re probably not really there yet.
The existing rail system has at least the following constraints:
* Uses steel-on-steel friction, rather than rubber-on-rock. Cars that can do both exist but are rare.
* Can only travel on the specially-prepared rails, not installed at the last-mile, related to the next point.
* Poor cornering and elevation changing.
* Difficulty in changing speeds (over a thousand meters and over a minute, compare to about a hundred meters and less than ten seconds for road vehicles)
* Very limited lanes, usually no passing. Track reservations will be voided if you aren't exactly on schedule.
* Almost all of the "intelligence" (both computer and human) is at one or both ends; the cars in the middle are all "dumb".
Which of these can reasonably be changed?
You also need to be more conservative with elevation changes, right of ways, and turning radiuses, so lots of tunneling and viaducting ala the Chinese HSR network. You are still probably going to have a lot of roads since rubber works better for going up and down, twisty turns, and can deal last mile stuff flexibly. Not everyplace is going to be as simple as the island of sodor.
It is stupid to travel thousands of kilometers by trucks. It's inefficient, expensive and nit scalable. Currently we use mostly huge container ships and empty them with trucks, absolutely insane. There's quite a bit of river boat activity in Europe luckily, which is great if electrified. Though the sorry state of the railways is just human-made and not didtated by economics.
Because companies have invested in JIT because low cost of trucking, an industry which is heavily subsidized (https://www.cbo.gov/publication/50049), allows it.
If trucking costs reflected their true cost, railroad would look a ton more attractive along with not doing JIT.
The European rail network is strongly liberalized, starting with the First Railway Directive 91/440/EEC. The physical infrastructure now usually falls under a state-owned enterprise, which provides access to any company wanting to use it, at a fair and non-discriminatory pricing. In practice this means that the usage fees have to pay for all upkeep and maintenance, with occasional cash injections from the government for things like constructing new railway lines. Importantly, this infrastructure company is expected to either have a neutral result, or run a profit: the railway users have to pay the true costs of operating the railway.
The roads are a different story altogether. They are owned, constructed, and maintained directly by the government itself. Road upkeep comes out of the general budget - just like education or defense. Road users pay via a vehicle tax and/or fuel tax, but there is zero expectation that those taxes pay for the full cost of the road network. After all, you profit from the presence of a road network - even if you don't drive a car yourself.
A century ago they would have found it at lot easier: if you wanted to send just a few cars to the back of a factory, many rail operators would have found a way to make it happen, and at a reasonable price too - now they’ll tell you the service is uneconomic to provide, unless you charter an entire locomotive for $$$$
Diesel to get you from the warehouse to the highway, extend your pantograph and boom, you're electric in the right lane (outside lane) all the way to your exit.
Never looked into how it penciled out but I always thought that was a great idea. Seems like there is a path to add in driverless aspects to the system as well given you have contact with a wire the whole time.
You don't need the tracks, and its called a 'road train'
It’s almost like this evolution did not happen before.
Edit: Various sources say that platooning can cut fuel use by 4-15%.
Great example because spacecraft are fully autonomous. The weakest link in that platoon is the driver.
Also, it eases the pain of introducing automation by removing a major roadblock to incremental adoption. With the Pareto Principle in mind, get rid of most of the drivers relatively quickly, then work on the holdout cases.
That's been tried before. See Demo 97, when CALTRANS had a demo of self-driving.[1] Worked OK, but took a lot of roadside equipment, like a railroad.
Did you read a lot of classic sci-fi growing up? This sounds very I, Robot.
Seriously, we are getting closer to shadowrun rigger territory, but without the neural implants that would have put us deeper in the loop.
But in seriousness, what’s the next step? You drive off with five semi trucks worth of stuff? It seems like it’s just a worse way to steal trucks. Especially autonomous trucks that are going to be very well-instrumented and remote accessible.
I guess I should say its morbid curiosity. If we do in fact have a lot of drivers out of work because international shipping is way down, I hope humans are hired before these trucks.
In any case, semis occupy a largely separate mode of transportation that aren't cost competitive with freight rail where it's viable. Autonomous semis are competing mainly with the limitations of human drivers, not freight rail.
https://www.marketurbanist.com/blog/why-americas-freight-tra...
Which are regulatory more than technical at this point and could change overnight.
Obviously drivers need to sleep but the tech to make doubles and perhaps even triples workable exists but isn't worth deploying because our regulations are stuck in 1980.
Tomorrow though, after my shift.
How can we tell in this case? Do we wait for accident reports?
"In four years of practice hauls the trucks’ technology has delivered over 10,000 customer loads. As of Thursday, the company’s self-driving tech has completed over 1,200 miles without a human in the truck."
It would be a start, but we don't seem to have that. Or, at least, the article does not have them. What we do have is a press release and an indication that the load was delivered. No indication of the issues that arose. Just the simple fact that no issues are mentioned suggests there is a massive amount of information that is being omitted, because, I am sure you will agree, it is close to impossible for any kind of rig to run for 4 years and not have issues.
edit:
Tangent. I am starting to feel real fatigue from seeing those gaping holes and just about all articles I read each day. Even FT had some weird omissions in something I saw the other day. And that is just one problem. It gets even worse, when you read something you have some expertise in and the author gets it very, very wrong.
I like how you didn't seem to notice that there are 1,460 days in four years.
I get the impression that ten semi-truck hauls a day is a lot. If you hit someone (or wreck the truck) you're not going to make your next haul... you're going to be talking to the cops and/or having a wrecker drag you back home.
A single person could turn all of these things into Decepticon in seconds. We need to know that that is intentionally made impossible, and no one will ever make it possible in secret. It could give someone the power of a global army.
We're talking about an ordinary semi truck with attached trailer and a bevy of sensors. This isn't a war machine. The worst thing that can happen here is the same thing that can happen with an inattentive or exhausted driver.
Let's look at some raw data. Mind you, we have 100x more data for the human drivers below. ie, billions of miles vs millions for automated drivers.
Pop examined Fatal-crash rate All Level‑4 automated‑driving tests in the U.S. 1.5–1.7 per 100 M mi Drivers 70‑74 yr 1.7 per 100 M mi Drivers 75‑79 yr 2.1 per 100 M mi Drivers 80‑84 yr 4.3 per 100 M mi Drivers ≥ 85 yr 7.6 per 100 M mi
So statistically, you are much more likely to be killed by a senior citizen. So to make a consistent argument using data around safety, we should maybe be revoking the licenses of older folks?
edit: Jesus, 19% of all US fatal crashes in 2023 invloved seniors. While they make up 15% of the driver population.
This might be the first foray onto a subset of open public roads but it's not the first serious use of semi autonomous trucks mixed in with human traffic.
They usually map out the site and show you which roads you can take in your vehicle and they are completely separate from the operations roads. There are only intersections and it's always the responsibility of passenger cars to come to a complete stop and wait for any cross traffic to pass before proceeding.
I remember this well because we had a job servicing specific equipment on a particular mining companies sites in northern Minnesota. One time we drove on the wrong road. A security vehicle saw us and drove up on us at an extremely high rate of speed to clear us off the truck road and onto the proper passenger road. He spent a good few minutes yelling at us once we were clear. People have been killed this way.
Waymo, which appears to be doing an excellent job of handling it. Their robotaxis consistently seem to have a better track record than humans (although it's possible the limits put on them taint the comparison.)
Cruise, which had a whole bunch of problems with edge cases and last I knew wasn't allowed to operate anymore.
I'd share the road with a Waymo truck (not that their system can do that yet), I wouldn't want to share it with a Cruise truck.
These are things that happen. How does the AI handle them? Do we know?
It feels like autonomous vehicles could become one of America's superpowers. We have so many miles of road and interstate highway. Autonomous vehicles could double down on that strength and flip the underinvestment in passenger rail on its head, making it much less of an issue.
That's even assuming this is actually remotely profitable compared to just using humans. Like a lot of this sort of automation it probably isn't, and it's true purpose is to be used as a threat against workers so they'll be even more "compelled to work without sleep to finish routes with tight deadlines"
Why wouldn't it be?
> instead of improve their conditions
I wouldn't want to drive a truck. To be frank, I really don't want to answer Jira tickets and write plumbing code either. I sincerely hope that none of what most of us do today has to be a job in fifty years.
My debt is your asset, and vice versa. Tell me, what does the autonomous truck drink? Or eat?
The less you pay the driver the less money does driver have to buy whatever he is carrying.
That may pay almost the same, or it may not exist. It depends. It's never as simple as "we automated the job so the person is useless."
That the promise but is it the reality? Deaths of despair suggest it isn't.
Deindustrialization is an issue once you move supply chains overseas or to the robots, with it whole parts of country die. No truck drivers means less money spent on truck stops, motels (for sleep), and in their local economy (no pubs, bowling alley, etc.)
But the threat isn't just replacing drivers, it is replacing entire eco systems of jobs.
Say I’m building a company to ship self-driving trucks. I need hundreds of millions, maybe billions in capital.
I need to line up purchasers. My fixed costs are huge and marginal lower, so I need volume.
How, exactly, am I thinking about “threatening” existing drivers so they work longer hours and break more laws?
What are all the costs involved, and not just costs to you directly?
I thought I was pretty clearly questioning the claim that the motivation of DreamCo is somehow to threaten truckers so they work harder, as opposed to (wisely or not) trying to sell trucks.
First step is to isolate the smart ones, which are the people with hazmat endorsements. Treat them well and praise effusively to build resentment. Then take the routes that are cost effective for robots, and offer premium pay and bonuses to the people, but with goals that can’t be met without cutting corners. Encourage reporting of rule violators.
Your goal is to create a toxic and miserable environment that pays just enough. Make them kill each other for a dwindling number of slots. You keep the people agitated and fighting each other, and they won’t notice their toys getting taken away.
I think it’s “funny” how corporate leaders in basically every industry are enthusiastically barreling toward a world in which they have no employed customers to buy their products created by their automated robot workforce.
Nobody in politics is coming close to addressing the societal problems that are incoming in the near future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_violence_in_the_United_S...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair
All of that unrest eventually resulted in the new deal. We have had relative peace in the postwar period thanks to a lot of pain being resolved over a long period of time, but that lack of friction is not guaranteed to last forever.
I would argue that America’s backslide into the election of a reactionary, dare I say fascist government is all about declining prosperity.
Politics isn’t pretending to address anything. We’re breaking the system to extract as much rent from the populace as possible. Caesar type stuff. Destroying the income tax means you’ll pay taxes based on consumption. We’ll be poorer. The overlords will be great.
Chinatown busses are the perfect example, they’d run routes designed to avoid federal jurisdiction and adopt routes and schedules to avoid weigh stations and routine inspection. Busses were unsafe and drivers unlicensed in many cases. Most were owned by Chinese mafia organizations and killed people. When they weren’t doing that, they were huge human trafficking operations.
The federal motor carrier safety administration had a robust, science based program to improve safety and improve conditions in most scenarios. My understanding is that 80% of the staff was fired and resigned, so it’s a Wild West environment. The advice I was given was avoid the busy trucking corridors (I-81/85/95) at night.
When was that? And is there anything public we can read about these things?
Yes? We got rid of telephohe operators. We got rid of "computers" (people who compute). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation) We effectively got rid of horse shoe makers, liveries, etc...
> Sure that won't have any negative repercussions...
Does it suck for the truck drivers. Yes. Does that mean we should give them busy work even though their job can be automated? No. We don't know what the reprocussions will be. We do know, from 100% of past experience, that automating something opened new opportunties that ultimately resulted in more jobs that before. Whether that will be true this time as well no one has any idea.
The usual example is textile creation vs fashion. The loom put people who hand weave cloth out of business. But the abundance of cheap cloth created 100x the jobs in cloth making and fashion. It's why you probably have more than 3 shirts in your house/apartment.
We should bring back elevator operators. And station a traffic guard on every corner instead of traffic lights. Let’s bring back tool booth operators. And let’s delete Google calendar and bring back secretaries while we’re at it.
I think the better point is that having jobs for everyone isn't the goal. Equitably distributing the results of our society's labor so everyone's needs are met is. If people are able to live in a house and put food on their table, they'll be less concerned with whether they have a job or not.
But that requires that you care enough about other people to not let people hoard unlimited resources, so I suspect most of HN will have some objections, and you'll never actually address what monkaiju is concerned about.
The problem is, there's no historical precedent for this, and we're still letting people who do almost no labor amass most of the results of other people's labor. If we follow the current trajectory, we'll have a society controlled by a few people who own the robots, and everybody else fighting over their table scraps.
The solution to this isn't rejecting automation to create artificial jobs: that's just fighting over table scraps by a different name. The solution is to stop rewarding generational wealth with more wealth, and distribute resources more equitably.
This is statement is somewhere between ignorant and an outright lie. There's a bunch of rules governing how many hours truckers can work. And those regulations are mostly followed. And when they're not it's typically some local outfit delivering fuel or groceries, not the long haul mega fleets
https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/regulations/hours-service/summary-...
Aviation the limits are much stricter than trucking.
True!
> And those regulations are mostly followed.
Very false, at least as of 5 years ago.
I worked with trucker biometric data which for a large company which runs trucks all over North America.
The company itself keeps its hands clean: they required drivers to keep strict manual logs and have strict rules about compliance with regulation. But at every step of the way, the incentives are for drivers to lie in these logs. Particularly, per-mile pay incentivizes driving a lot of miles at times when there's less traffic on the road (night). If your truck isn't moving, you aren't getting paid, and drivers want to get back to their families and hobbies, so they minimize time spent sleeping in their truck in a random location. Additionally, missed deadlines can significantly impact your pay, and deadlines are set at levels which cut very close to regulation, so that any delays force drivers to break regulation to meet the deadline.
Biometric data shows flagrant violations of regulation, which we can't share with anyone (including the company), because it's medical data protected under HIPAA. The manual logs are corroborated by an electronic black box on each truck, but these logs aren't checked unless something goes wrong, at which point the company can use to show the trucker was in violation of their stated policies to reduce liability.
I've only seen data from one company (which I cannot name due to non-disclosure) but it's my understanding that most of the company's driver incentives are structured similarly to the reputable parts of the trucking industry. Other companies have mile quotas (or inversely, mile bonuses) which further incentivize lying in logs. There are extremely exploitative owner/operator outfits which force drivers to work desperately to pay off their trucks, likely resulting in worse violations.
So sure, on paper, the letter of the regulations are followed, but that's definitely not what's happening on the road.
> And when they're not it's typically some local outfit delivering fuel or groceries, not the long haul mega fleets
Even if there were true (which it isn't), a head on collision with a sleeping local fuel delivery driver is just as deadly as a head on collision with a long haul trucker. This is irrelevant.
They can find enough drivers, but won’t pay them enough or give them any dignity. The industry has a 90% turnover rate per year. So obviously they are finding drivers all the time…they just don’t keep them.
But the free market has decided you're barely worth the cost to keep alive, much less happy. What are you, some kind of communist?
"Cut to 2022. Wages are still down 30% to 50% in key markets, and the job is as dangerous and taxing as ever. Naturally, the pool of people wanting the job would reduce accordingly. Thus, when demand for truckers increases, there’s a “labor shortage.” But, as Peter Greene noted in Forbes when debunking a related myth of “teacher shortages” in 2019, it’s not a lack of willing workers: It’s a severe lack of incentives—wages, unions, benefits—needed to entice workers to take on the difficult work"
We've been promised driverless technology for over 10 years now. If you can't do it with cars, then why does anyone think we would have it with delivery trucks?
Please use critical thinking for one second. I beg you HN. This is just another tech company scam that will get dumped as soon as they get the investor money.
I think this sucks, because my gut tells me it sucks, the same way AI in everything sucks -- it just sounds kinda weird. But, of course, when I think about it, it makes sense in a lot of places. The only way for me to have a valid counterpoint to that is if I move the goalpost. I implore you to not move that goalpost, even if it feels right.
My point being (and please correct me), this is practical but 15-20 years away from widespread adaption, best case.
> autonomous trucking firm Aurora announced it launched commercial service in Texas under its first customers, Uber Freight and Hirschbach Motor Lines
https://dot.ca.gov/-/media/dot-media/programs/research-innov...
> The RRPDS must maintain an estimate of the vehicle state (i.e., position, velocity, heading, and heading rate) relative to the roadway with position accurate to a few centimeters.
the important part to note as those systems don't have detection of anyone/thing that might be there. In a rural field no problem as nobody is there but on a city road there will be plenty of things to watch out for. We are working on the safety parts, I'm not in that area so I'm not sure what the current state is.
For the keen eye, automation creates new jobs as it replaces others. Someone has to design, implement, and maintain these systems. There is always a higher level of abstraction where a human being is needed to oversee things.
rolph•1d ago
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