Driverless trucks.

[red750]

Here is a link to a Yahoo News story on testing in China of driverless trucks (semi trailers) on the public highway.

 

Driverless truck tests.

[Jerry_Atrick]

Been trialled in other countries for a while: https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/12877332/driverless-trucks-motorways-einride/

 

I understand they had a few on roads for a while in the UK.. but certainly in Sweden: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/scania-tests-self-driving-trucks-in-motorway-traffic-301220989.html

 

It's coming.. At that stage, I will be thankful I am a pilot. No, wait! Drones.. Darn it, we are all doomed to a fiery death in a collision.

[onetrack]

Couldn't be any worse than some of the "skilled" truck drivers we have now, behind the wheel ....

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-14/truck-driver-jailed-over-melbourne-eastern-freeway-crash/100066336

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-10/truck-driver-carl-allan-bridge-trial-double-fatal-corrigin/100363754

 

And I could write a book about some of the woeful truck driving incidents I've encountered. 

 

 

[Jerry_Atrick]

There was a very sad accident here where a truck driver, texting on his phone, plughed into the back of a car killing the mother and 2 or three children while they were stoppped at traffic lights. The father was driving the car stopped at the traffic lights next to the car that was hit.

 

The driver was jailed, but under the Road Traffic Act, the max penalty is 10 years of causing death by dangerous driving. Personally, it should be the same as manslaughter, which is max life sentence.. I can't recall if the driver got the max of 10 years.

 

He was.. Here is a link: https://metro.co.uk/2018/09/16/harrowing-video-of-motorway-crash-every-driver-needs-to-see-7949929/

 

To be honest, I think that driverless cars will in general be far safer than driver cars - especially when the vast majority of them are driveless.

[onetrack]

The low level of skill requirements and the low level of training for truck drivers, plus the pressure on truck drivers to meet unacceptable schedules are all major problems in the trucking industry here - and probably worldwide.

Hopefully, driverless trucks will eliminate a vast number of dreadful truck accidents caused by all the above.

We've had numerous head-on crashes between road trains in rural and remote areas of Australia, surely these will be eliminated with driverless vehicles.

Here's one truck accident I encountered just last year in the city. I mean to say, how do you roll a road train, simply making a right-hand turn through a set of traffic lights, at the intersection of two major roads? By sheer, utter carelessness, excessive speed, and seriously inadequate truck driving skills.

 

 

[Marty_d]

...or exhaustion.

 

I agree that in time (not right now) driverless road vehicles will be a lot safer than human controlled.  (I can't imagine holding on to a driverless motorbike though...)

 

But the big question is - when there IS an accident, as there will be - who's liable?  The owner of the vehicle who was asleep in the seat?  The software engineers who created the 3 million lines of code in the car's algorithm?  The company in Bangladesh/Philippines/China that made the widget that failed to sense the object?  The mechanic who failed to properly read the 64-page report generated by the vehicle's error sensing software?

 

The updated legal framework that addresses these problems needs to be well and truly sorted out before any fully autonomous vehicle shares a road with humans.

[onetrack]

I think the Americans have those areas well and truly in hand, Marty, and discussions and plans and the direction of legislation is already being addressed.

 

https://www.ncsl.org/research/transportation/autonomous-vehicles-self-driving-vehicles-enacted-legislation.aspx

 

Even here, discussion papers around regulatory reforms were being initiated in 2016.

 

https://www.ntc.gov.au/sites/default/files/assets/files/NTC Policy Paper - Regulatory reforms for automated road vehicles.pdf

[Dax]

There are many problems with autonomous vehicles, they already use autonomous trucks and trains in WA mines, some driving thousands of klms a day. The problem with automation is what do the humans do, what jobs will be around or will everyone just sit there bored watching video's or sleeping. Boredom is one of the reasons we see a rise in crime and violence, humans are designed to physically operate, not lie around.

 

Controlled autonomous vehicles on rails or in tracks work much better but there will always be the failure of technology to contend with and that will be the killer. I think we have to sit back and look at where we are going, automated manufacturing farming, transport retailing and business, would mean humans having nothing of worth or stimulating to do for large periods of time.

[onetrack]

Yeah, I told my family - "Never let me live in a vegetative state! The day I just sit around, connected to electronic machines that I depend on, and reliant on a liquid diet, is the day you can disconnect everything, and let me die!"

So the bastards disconnected my computer, and took away my chair and my beer, and I nearly died!! 

[spacesailor]

It would only take a piece of garbage to cover one or two of the censors, then perhaps that juggernaut will be blind to any road hazard.

A similar bad accident happened in America were the following wind got to a speed, it over powered the drivers ability to guage their speed.

All slammed on their brakes when entering a tunnel, too late by then. Hundreds piled into each other

spacesailor

 

[onetrack]

Spacey, the system is designed with fail-safe backups, so other sensors can take over, if one is blinded. And if more than one critical sensor is blinded, the vehicle comes to a stop.

 

The autonomous (driverless) mining trucks now operate in conjunction with a driverless excavator, to mine and haul ore and waste, very efficiently. 

[spacesailor]

Even the poor ' forktruck ' driver is a thing of the past with robots taking that job away from human endeavor.

spacesailor

 

 

[Yenn]

Onetrack. Is that the same sort of design used in Boeing aircraft? If so keep off the roads.

More and more automation in the airline industry has really only resulted in less competent people getting jobs as airline pilots.

[Old Koreelah]

On 14/08/2021 at 5:24 AM, Dax said:

… I think we have to sit back and look at where we are going, automated manufacturing farming, transport retailing and business, would mean humans having nothing of worth or stimulating to do for large periods of time.

Exactly, Dax. I suspect Trump and his Republican power brokers love automation because it displaces whole groups of workers into lower-paid, casualized work. On the one hand this reduces their costs and increases their massive profits, but best of all, it swells the ranks of alienated and dispossessed voters who can be easily manipulated.

 

 

[spacesailor]

I can,t see any saving from ' automation ' when the  cost of technition,s is far higher then ALL the deposed workers.

Unilever spent  over $ 5 million to replace just 2 shift workers. At $ 30,000 PA for both that's a lot of years.

But , every time that system malfunctioned it was another  $ 20,000 to fix it.

Seemed like a biyearly occurrence, which is more than two workers wages.

spacesailor