What Truck Drivers Think About Autonomous Trucking
We've all heard about the advent of autonomous trucking - but mostly from people who work in the tech industry.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
So this week , I've been visiting (and sleeping, eating and showering in) truck stops in Nevada, Utah and Idaho, to hear what truck drivers themselves have to say about the future of their profession.
Wendy MacNaughton is a graphic journalist based in San Francisco.
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"Truckdriver" is an almost legendary figure... who doesn't do quite so well in the real world as in legend...
Their remuneration has collapsed over the last thirty years. And now, their numbers are about to be decimated.
Drove OTR for a few years back in the 70s. The damn CO4070 broke down so often it definitely took humans to fix it.
Had lots of fun driving as a kid but wouldn't want to do it now. Being on the road for months at a time got old.
Just don't think the technology is advanced enough for safe autonomous vehicles.......yet.
There is a whole lot of kinetic energy in a fully loaded semi going down the road. You don't want to be anywhere near it if the human or the computer driver go "offline" for whatever reason. Give them a wide berth at all times because they can't stop quickly and a jackknifing trailer can slap a car into the next county.
When was the last time your computer had a glitch and went down?
None of our cars has had a "stuck by the side of the road" breakdown in... decades. Big-rig breakdowns are pretty rare nowadays.
Yes. I'd guess that drivers are worried about finding a replacement job... but deep down, I doubt that many will regret that regime...
It's on the highway that the robots have the easiest time. Far fewer "extraneous events" than in town.
Good question. What constitutes a "computer glitch"? I haven't had a hardware failure in many, many years, other than a hard drive. RAID is my friend! I've had software glitches, of course... which is surely what the autonomous driving companies are working on most zealously.
If you can take the lifestyle trucking is a good job but in 30, 40, 50 years it may not exist.
In twenty, for sure. Maybe ten.
Railroads have spent billions on PCT (Positive Train Control) that the government thought would be a good idea. It does not work right. Trains don't have to steer or share their tracks with others and they already had a very good closed communications and signal system and PCT is not reliable .
It won't work on public roads where there are too many variables
Most likely nearly every career truck driver (one whose core competency is driving a truck) will find autonomous trucks to be a bad thing.
Of course.
Today's truck-drivers are yesterday's buggy-whip makers.
One aspect of autonomous trucks that gets little coverage is "road-trains". A string of autonomous trucks, talking to each other constantly, could run with just a few feet of interval. BIG aerodynamic (energy!!) advantage.