Profile For Mack T.

Since we're throwing out big huge predictions for a half century away, here's one from me. Autonomous trucks will need two drivers on board by the time the technology is fully implemented.

The reasoning is that the H.O.S. rules won't be needed for the machine anymore. It will run constantly without need for rest. Thus there will always be a need for a fresh driver/overseer at all times. The humans involved will still require rest, and the way that will be accommodated is to have two of them on board at all times.

LMAO

Most of the companies involved with self driving have billions behind them with no need for investors.

......said the guy who apparently never heard of the Stock Market where all of the largest companies in the world have billions of dollars worth of their investor's money being traded daily.

However investors are sinking multi billions into self driving

So they don't need investors, but billions are being invested?

That's a pretty confusing way to start a Monday morning. Anyhow......

Its coming faster than you think

No, it isn't.

This guy is 21, he has, maybe 10 yrs before he starts getting squeezed out.

No, he doesn't.

Airplanes and trains are much easier to operate autonomously than trucks will be and in fact have had that capability for decades, and yet it hasn't happened.

In fact, if you read some of the stuff being written more recently on the subject you'll find that almost no one is trying to claim that trucks will be operated without a driver on board anymore. They're saying they'll add safety features and autonomous-type features but all of it will have to be overseen by an actual driver in the truck. Not to mention, there are thousands of scenarios that algorithms simply aren't going to be able to deal with even decades from now.

In fact, when I started driving in '93 they had this really lousy system that was supposed to detect objects in your path and alert you that there is a problem by beeping at you. Yeah, it alerted you alright. That thing beeped most of the time when you went under a bridge or near a guardrail or there was a car parked on the shoulder. It beeped at everything. To this day they still use a similar system except it's far more dangerous now because it hits your brakes for you automatically without warning. That's super safe in heavy traffic on slick roads, isn't it?

There is no chance trucks are going to be operated without drivers. The safety advancements they've made in the past 25 years are quite unimpressive and leave us no reason to believe we're even close to this being feasible.

Heck, a Tesla driver was killed about two years ago when the car didn't recognize that an 18 wheeler was completely across the road in front of the car.

You don't judge a technology by its successes. You judge a technology based on its failures. It's not about the potential this technology has. It's about how perfect it can be. As you can see by that Tesla example we're not even in the ballpark.

By the way, you sound pretty confident about what you're saying. Are you involved in the autonomous driving industry somehow?

As far as investors I mean they already have the money or have already invested billions in AI and self driving. I know you guys have a huge interest in manual driving but I will say this, the 21 yr old will NOT retire at 65 as a truck driver.

most of the articles I saw looked like they were written about a year ago if not a little more than a year so I was just wondering if the opinions on self driving trucks had changed since then with all the news about it lately

Heck no. Nothing has changed. All of the "news" about self-driving vehicles is little more than tech companies and universities trying to build hype to raise money for their startups or their research. They keep promising, "We're on the edge of a major breakthrough" to create a sense of urgency. They want investors with deep pockets to think that if they get in on it now and make a big investment they might just be part of the team that takes over the world with self driving vehicles. It's an investor's equivalent of striking oil or hitting the jackpot in Vegas.

Self-driving trucks are not going to have any impact on trucking for a very long time. Like I've said, trains and airplanes are going to be automated before big rigs will and that hasn't happened yet even though the technology has been there for decades.

Most of the companies involved with self driving have billions behind them with no need for investors. However investors are sinking multi billions into self driving. Its coming faster than you think. This guy is 21, he has, maybe 10 yrs before he starts getting squeezed out.