[hourislate]

A family member drives for one of the largest Trucking companies in NA. They have specialized drivers that take the loads into NYC, Boston, etc. He drops the trailer at a yard outside the city and a city truck and driver take it in.

It just works out better for the company since these drivers know their city and that is all they do. It keeps the company from having accident insurance claims.

I doubt there will ever be self driving Tractor Trailer type vehicles in any city. It requires some serious skill and intuition about your rig and roads, like where to take the truck wide to complete a right turn without taking down the street light or pedestrian waiting to cross would be a good example.

[sdenton4]

This mirrors how ships worked historically, as well. You have ocean navigators, who are great at getting reliably from one continent to another (even without knowing their longitude reliably), and then pilots who know every rock in a particular harbor for the last mile.

[adrianmonk]

> serious skill and intuition about your rig and roads, like where to take the truck wide to complete a right turn without taking down the street light or pedestrian waiting to cross

I'm actually convinced that maneuvering a large, articulated vehicle is the comparatively easy part.

These two videos convinced me AIs can be pretty good at it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR4MEh5-paA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYPA4ajTQgk

AIs might even have an advantage over humans because they can more easily use cameras on all sides of the truck to maintain awareness of everything going on around them. The AI should be able to predict with good accuracy where each part of the truck will be as the motion progresses because it can do the math, whereas a human has to rely on experience.

To me, the real difficulty for AIs is in the higher reasoning, like how you deal with situations (lane closed, vehicle traveling the wrong way, etc.).