Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by bobthepanda 2882 days ago
If anything, it would be much easier for a computer to follow the extra regulations than humans, who routinely violate such regulations in the first place, in the same way that autopilots only follow approved routes for planes.

Add in the fatigue and long, repetitive drives that are a feature of long-distance trucking, and it seems like a situation more ripe for automation.

1 comments

I don't mean to be sarcastic here, but I hear developers (myself included) throw out "it would be much easier to..." or "this should only take an hour to automate..." all day long.

If it was an easy and profitable problem to solve it would have been solved by now. I agree that it would be very beneficial for everyone if trucks/truck routes were automated (except maybe the truck drivers getting laid off) but it's obviously a very hard and very risky problem to automate.

Otto is not the only player in the automated trucking space.

https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/money/industries/logi...

In fact, Otto probably suffered negative impact from its association with the Waymo scandal, coupled with the recent bad press for Uber's autonomous vehicles. It sounds like Uber is retrenching in favor of just automating cabs for now.

> If it was an easy and profitable problem to solve it would have been solved by now

No one said it was easy. The issue was easier than another problem that is also not yet solved, not easy in some absolute sense.