[standardUser]

The end of driving as a profession is going to hit the economy hard. Teamsters may have the organizational strength and political influence to protect themselves. But they only represent ~20% of US truck drivers and none of the other ~3 million people who drive for a living in this country.

I don't see either American labor or American government being anywhere near strong enough or capable enough to facilitate a soft landing.

[micromacrofoot]

well fortunately the timing of the driverless future will seemingly align with figuring out nuclear fusion

[pepperoni_pizza]

If humanity actually put resources into fusion, I'm sure we would have already have it.

But humanity's resources are controlled by few, and they want more exploitation, enshitification and ads, not abundant energy.

[dmitrygr]

Yup, it is the rich who are hoarding the secrets of avoiding neutron embrittlement. And we'll never tell you what they are.

[pepperoni_pizza]

I'm sure it would be much easier to solve with extra $10 trillion a year, which is pocket money compared to what goes into adtech, sloptech, attacking Iran and similar endeavors.

[micromacrofoot]

the joke is that we've been saying fusion is just around the corner for more than 50 years, self-driving cars have been just around the corner for 10... so far

[VanTheBrand]

An under appreciated part of a truckers job is being in the truck so someone doesn’t rob it.

[DonsDiscountGas]

A fully self driving truck won't need to stop much so I'm not sure this is relevant

[bayarearefugee]

> The end of driving as a profession is going to hit the economy hard.

They should just learn to code! /s

> I don't see either American labor or American government being anywhere near strong enough or capable enough to facilitate a soft landing.

More seriously, I agree with this, but the problems are going to extend way beyond just transportation workers.

These are problems we could theoretically find solutions for, but we're headed into it at warp speed with an already absolutely broken political system and massive levels of wealth inequality.

I find it far more likely that the solution to this all ends up being chaos and bloodshed rather than properly managed preventive policy changes.

[toomuchtodo]

Society is fragile and operates in tension, a shared delusion like a currency. If workers burn down every autonomous truck on the road, there simply is not enough law enforcement to prevent them from doing so. There are only 1 million US soliders on US soil [1], there are 100 million workers. If they can't solve cargo theft incurring ~$35B/year in losses, how would they solve this? There are millions of trucks on US roads at any one time.

> I don't see either American labor or American government being anywhere near strong enough or capable enough to facilitate a soft landing.

Certainly not yet, but a resolution will present itself. The quality of which is to be determined of course.

(not advocating either way, simply enumerating the risk model; I am privileged that my day job is to get paid to think like a threat actor across various verticals and model accordingly)

[1] https://usafacts.org/answers/how-many-troops-are-in-the-us-m...

[jedberg]

This is of course a dangerous suggestion, but also, never in the history of the world has the destruction of a technology that was replacing workers ever turned out well for the workers. At best it briefly delayed adoption.

[toomuchtodo]

When has it worked out for workers? Genuine question. If its not offshoring manufacturing (China before, South East Asia today) and services (India primarily), its importing labor to depress wages and keep workers in economic peril (there are approximately 720,000 to 750,000 foreign-born truck drivers in the United States, representing about 18% to 20% of the total commercial driving workforce, as of this comment) to encourage compliance with the status quo [1] [2].

If you work with workers so that they will have a safe landing through a just transition, such that longshoreman experienced when the cargo container revolutionized shipping [3] [4], you might get worker buy in. If you say you will with no evidence you will follow through, you will not get buy in, and whatever is the downstream impact of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of workers becoming redundant rapidly without a safety net.

Despite hope not being a strategy, as an observer, I hope that policymakers make a choice that leads to a net favorable outcome. If they do not, that is a choice.

[1] Is long-haul trucking really facing a driver shortage? - https://www.marketplace.org/story/2024/11/20/is-long-haul-tr... - November 20th, 2024

[2] Impacts of Alternative Compensation Methods on Truck Driver Retention and Safety Performance - https://www.nationalacademies.org/projects/TRB-CAAS-22-01 - 2024

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Box_(Levinson_book)

[4] Arthur Donovan (1999) Longshoremen and mechanization, Journal for Maritime Research, 1:1, 66-75, DOI: 10.1080/21533369.1999.9668300 https://doi.org/10.1080/21533369.1999.9668300

[pepperoni_pizza]

That is possible, but unfortunately I think more realistic scenario is that instead of raising up and losing their chains, the masses will get brainwashed by algorithms and end up convinced it is the minorities fault or something.

The future, boot, face, forever, etc.

[soperj]

> If workers burn down every autonomous truck on the road

I don't think they need to burn them down, punctured tires would probably be enough.

[toomuchtodo]

Laziness on my part, my apologies, pick your system vulnerability to your preferences. Physical disablement, some flavor of cyber RCE, sensor spoofing or blinding, etc. Could be as easy as slowing in front of the vehicle to force it to a stop.

Risk Assessment and Threat Modeling for safe autonomous driving technology - https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.02231 | https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2505.02231

Autonomous Vehicle Security: A Deep Dive into Threat Modeling - https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.15348 | https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2412.15348

[josefritzishere]

That's a great allegory.