[jimbobob]

This is an interesting approach in the short term and could help bootstrap Starsky's business before the conversion to fully autonomous driving.

I still think driving a truck as a profession will be a thing of the past within 20 years or so. There's just too much money riding on this problem, and logistics companies are fairly ruthless about efficiency.

[zdean]

"I still think driving a truck as a profession will be a thing of the past within 20 years or so."

I hope so. Trucking is one of the toughest professions for a person to endure that I've ever seen. It destroys a person's body and mind...and you're lucky to end up making minimum wage when you account for how many hours they spend working.

[mc32]

And what job alternatives will you provide them, think specially about current long haul drivers, not future candidates you can discourage and divert to greener fields.

[eduren]

Economic assistance. Give them the resources to choose their new career path for themselves.

[mc32]

From whom, the govt? I don't trust that would happen (see rustbelt industries). These automation startups? What's their profit if they have to train the people they help get laid off/made redundant?

[eduren]

You asked a pretty important question (we agree that this isn't simple) and I replied with what I thought to be the best solution.

And yes, the government. The funny thing about a democracy is that if enough people want the govt. to provide something, it will.

[akira2501]

> and you're lucky to end up making minimum wage when you account for how many hours they spend working.

If you're driving fleet, that's correct; however, there are a large number of "Owner/Operators" out there and they do make significantly more than you'd expect. If you have a good freight contract and a logistical mind, an O+O can easily make around $125k/year.

[kstoneman]

It's a lot further away than 20 years. It really won't be practical for autonomous trucks to share the roads with passenger vehicles using the existing infrastructure. After a handful or more major accidents with multiple deaths involving autonomous trucks, there will be no public support for them.

And there will be major accidents with multiple deaths, since the average passenger car driver is so unskilled. No software can account for every idiotic move made by the typical car driver, and big trucks take a lot of room and time to stop. A few lawsuits later, all the financial gains will disappear for the trucking companies and drivers are back in the seat.

I could see in 20 years a system where computer assisted driving automates much of the trip, much like commercial aircraft operate now.

[stale2002]

Self driving trucks on the highway are already legal in some states. EX: Arizona.

Yeah, city driving is hard. That might be a long ways away. But highway driving? Thats easy. You can even buy a highway driving, consumer self driving vehicle right NOW. Tesla sells them.

[kstoneman]

Self-driving is not the same as autonomous, though. There is always a human present, and sometimes that's not enough to make up for the fact that a Tesla apparently can't "see" a 75 foot long, 13 1/2 foot high truck in front of it while driving down the highway.

And while highway driving generally has fewer decision points per mile than city driving, the speeds are much higher and so the effects of errors are much greater on the highway. The worst wrecks I've seen have all been on the highway, not in cities.