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by abalone 3358 days ago
> trucks self-driving on the regulated toll roads during time that drivers have their mandated rest

How would this be possible at anything less than level 4-5 autonomy? If they can take a nap, the truck's got to be fully autonomous.
2 comments
PeterisP 3357 days ago
It doesn't need level 5 autonomy, and level 4 autonomy in managed conditions seems quite reachable. Also, in this situation, it's okay if the car decides that a problem is unsolvable as long as it stops safely - if it encounters weather or road conditions that it can't safely handle, the driver will handle it; if it needs interaction with cargo, police or refueling - the driver will handle it, etc.

Level 5 is so distant because it requires solving many problems that we haven't fully acknowledged yet; but Level 4 is different, major car companies (e.g. I recall a quote from Ford, probably Volvo as well) have stated that they don't ever intend to produce a level 3 autonomous car, that they want to go straight from level 2 driving assistance to level 4 cars since expecting a driver to monitor the situation all the time and be able to quickly take over (as level 3 requires) isn't realistic from a safety perspective, many drivers simply won't/can't do it.

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peteretep 3358 days ago
Level 4 includes autonomy in the "operational design domain (ODD)" of a vehicle. I'd have thought that on a tollway that's being maintained specifically to support some self-driving trucks that the difficulty of Level 4 is a few orders of magnitude easier than cars in a residential district.
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flamedoge 3358 days ago
Maintaining tollway for self-driving is still going to add to "manually helping" cost. The operational domain of a vehicle includes roads of varying conditions that a human driver can navigate with relative ease.
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PeterisP 3357 days ago
The operation domain of general purpose consumer vehicles includes all roads of varying conditions that a human driver can navigate with relative ease, but the operation domain of e.g. an EU long-haul truck company can be easily limited to a set of pre-mapped highways.

Manual handling of problem cases that can be done from a central dispatch center would still require far less people to deliver the same cargo than now.

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