[cgb223]

Having grown up in an area where becoming a trucker is a common enough career path, I can tell you that the hours of work thing (which is really miles per work, but they correlate) lands some truckers in some sketchy situations

Many of my friends have told me they take those gas station "energy supplements" so they can stay up for 2-3 straight days to log more hours and make the trip.

Thats probably not healthy for their bodies, and certainly not safe for other people on the road, but if miles = money then its whats incentivized

If trucks could drive themselves with a passenger trucker to intervene in tricky situations, the passenger could have a much more healthy intake and sleep schedule

[PeterisP]

"so they can stay up for 2-3 straight days to log more hours and make the trip" - by the way, is that legal and actually happening in USA? Sounds like a horrible risk to everyone else on the road; in EU you're not getting on the road without a tachograph recording your driving & rest times, and driving more than 9-10 hours per day (including at least 9 hours uninterrupted "rest" eash day) would result in massive fines; if the cargo is urgent and you need to drive on then it's literally cheaper (as in, it actually happens) to fly in a replacement driver with a low-cost airline than to risk the fines.

[xxpor]

No, it's absolutely not legal. The big difference is AFAIK, we don't require electronic recording. A lot of trucks owned by the bigger trucking companies do have electronic recording though.

The max per day is 11 hours, with a 70 hour cap for the whole week.

https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/new-hours-servi...

[notatoad]

>trucks could drive themselves with a passenger trucker to intervene in tricky situations

this scenario has been mentioned a couple times in this thread, but if the automation isn't good enough to handle 100% of the journey 100% of the time, then it's really not good enough to allow the trucker to simply be a passenger. If the operator might have to take control in tricky situations, they can't be sleeping the rest of the time.

[stale2002]

Well, but what if it can handle 50% of the journey 100% of the time, and that 50% is known?

IE, for the 100 mile stretch of road in the desert, when it is sunny, it works great, and then when it gets to the city it tells the driver to take over.

[dsfyu404ed]

> If the operator might have to take control in tricky situations, they can't be sleeping the rest of the time.

A tricky situation for a computer is often not a tricky situation for a human. 99% of it will be the AI getting confused by things that are simple for humans (e.g interpreting detour signs).

[notatoad]

that doesn't change my point though: regardless of how easy it is for a human to respond to, they can't respond if they're sleeping.

[PeterisP]

If trucks could drive themselves with just rarely needing someone to intervene in tricky situations (and not immediately - e.g. the "passenger driver might have to wake up) then it's going to be much, much cheaper to have the "tricky situation intervention" done remotely by a having a single on-shift driver ready to handle tricky situations for a hundred trucks.