>> Not to mention all the people who lost their livelihoods when horses were phased out <<
I didn't go there because the article didn't go there. Thanks for bringing that up.
>> most citizens don't want to be on the road next to driverless trucks <<
I don't want to be on the road next to a truck being driven by someone who's been washing their stimulant pills down with "energy" drinks because that's the best way they've come up with to keep their income stream sufficient to save themselves from financial ruin. But that happens more often than it should -- for exactly the reasons you cited elsewhere in your post. Not sure yet whether driverless trucks are better or worse than those.
The vast majority of the long-haul trucks I encounter on the road are driven by responsible drivers who are very skilled at operating their equipment safely and would strongly condemn any behavior of that sort. I remember to drive so as to not make their job harder than it already is. It's just hard to tell the dangerous ones from the safe ones, although it's easy enough to filter the set a bit.
>> the driverless tech companies want to be shielded from liability when their tech inevitably kills people. <<
We don't have much of any law, let alone good law, to work this out right now. We better get some.
I suspect it might well wind up being treated much like hiring a driver. If a trucking company hires a driver whose record shows they are not competent at handling their equipment, I believe they can be held liable for that. If a driverless tech company says "this is what our product can do, it's your problem if you use it for something else", they might only be in difficulty if their product doesn't meet the specs. With that kind of setup, trucking companies might strongly prefer to install responsible driverless tech -- and the tech companies would have an incentive to compete on reliability and not causing deaths or major damages when something breaks.
>> leaving long-distance trucking to humans <<
Something I haven't seen much mention of: trucks break down. A mechanically ept driver in the rig knows what can be done to get the cargo to the next transfer point fastest and/or cheapest -- and is able to do appropriate field repairs when that's the best answer. Try and get *that* out of your shiny robo-driver!
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dancing_serpent
Re: But what about...
Date: 2018-08-12 06:54 pm (UTC)I didn't go there because the article didn't go there. Thanks for bringing that up.
>> most citizens don't want to be on the road next to driverless trucks <<
I don't want to be on the road next to a truck being driven by someone who's been washing their stimulant pills down with "energy" drinks because that's the best way they've come up with to keep their income stream sufficient to save themselves from financial ruin. But that happens more often than it should -- for exactly the reasons you cited elsewhere in your post. Not sure yet whether driverless trucks are better or worse than those.
The vast majority of the long-haul trucks I encounter on the road are driven by responsible drivers who are very skilled at operating their equipment safely and would strongly condemn any behavior of that sort. I remember to drive so as to not make their job harder than it already is. It's just hard to tell the dangerous ones from the safe ones, although it's easy enough to filter the set a bit.
>> the driverless tech companies want to be shielded from liability when their tech inevitably kills people. <<
We don't have much of any law, let alone good law, to work this out right now. We better get some.
I suspect it might well wind up being treated much like hiring a driver. If a trucking company hires a driver whose record shows they are not competent at handling their equipment, I believe they can be held liable for that. If a driverless tech company says "this is what our product can do, it's your problem if you use it for something else", they might only be in difficulty if their product doesn't meet the specs. With that kind of setup, trucking companies might strongly prefer to install responsible driverless tech -- and the tech companies would have an incentive to compete on reliability and not causing deaths or major damages when something breaks.
>> leaving long-distance trucking to humans <<
Something I haven't seen much mention of: trucks break down. A mechanically ept driver in the rig knows what can be done to get the cargo to the next transfer point fastest and/or cheapest -- and is able to do appropriate field repairs when that's the best answer. Try and get *that* out of your shiny robo-driver!