U.S. Pushing Self-Driving Cars. Self-Driving Trucks? Ummmmm...

Jul 30, 17 6:22

Post #1 of 24 (1294 views)

The feds are pushing for self-driving, or autonomous, cars in a big way, with Congress creating legislation designed to encourage the rapid development of autonomous vehicles. The intent of the legislation making its way through the national legislature is to loosen regulations that may be an impediment to getting self-driving cars out on the road in short order, and it would also bar states from enacting laws banning them. There's a catch, though:

Seems that the laws under consideration (and one, in particular) would apply only to vehicles weighing less than 10,000 lbs. It would cover cars, SUVs and pick-ups but would leave existing regulations governing commercial tractor trailers as is.

It appears that leadership in the labor unions got the exception put into laws under work in Congress so that their truck drivers wouldn't lose their jobs to automation.

Union cheers as trucks kept out of U.S. self-driving legislation

"The Teamsters union on Friday praised House lawmakers for keeping self-driving commercial trucks out of a proposed bill aimed at speeding deployment of the advanced technology for cars.

The U.S. House Energy and Committee on Thursday unanimously approved a bill that would hasten the use of self-driving cars without human controls and bar states from blocking autonomous vehicles. The measure only applies to vehicles under 10,000 pounds and not large commercial trucks.

The 1.4-million-member union, hoping to protect the jobs of truck drivers, has been lobbying at the federal and state levels to slow legislation to make it easier for companies to roll out self-driving trucks."

Given that the Teamsters and similar labor unions donate huge sums of money to candidates from both major political parties, it really shouldn't surprise that they get to dictate policy preferences to Congress. But it's still disappointing on a number of levels, including that autonomous semi-trucks might help to improve safety out on the highways.

A self-driving vehicle's ability to make near-instantaneous decisions that would typically result in it sacrificing itself to avoid harm to pedestrians or other vehicles on the road, should trouble develop either with the truck or with other vehicles or people out on the roads is a definite plus. With humans behind the wheel of these trucks, there's still a tendency towards self-preservation as well as an inability to act nearly as quickly as a self-driving truck would.

Side note: It's funny, because there's a scene in the recent X-Men-based movie, "Logan" that involves an interaction the title character and Professor Xavier have with several self-driving trucks out on the highway.

"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Re: U.S. Pushing Self-Driving Cars. Self-Driving Trucks? Ummmmm... [big kahuna] [ In reply to ]

Jul 30, 17 7:04

Post #2 of 24 (1272 views)

Cyclists should be the first in line to advocate for self-driving vehicles. I have several friends and even a family member that have been killed on public roads by distracted or intoxicated drivers. I've had many close calls where life and death was a matter of inches. And don't even get me started about all the assholes and road ragers that don't seem to like cyclists.

Re: U.S. Pushing Self-Driving Cars. Self-Driving Trucks? Ummmmm... [FishyJoe] [ In reply to ]

Jul 30, 17 7:08

Post #3 of 24 (1269 views)

FishyJoe wrote:

Cyclists should be the first in line to advocate for self-driving vehicles. I have several friends and even a family member that have been killed on public roads by distracted or intoxicated drivers. I've had many close calls where life and death was a matter of inches. And don't even get me started about all the assholes and road ragers that don't seem to like cyclists.

There's a raging debate these days about the ethics of autonomous vehicles, some of it revolving around the idea of the lack of 'humanity' in the decisions that self-driving cars make when it comes to situations such as you alluded to in your reply (does the vehicle swerve to avoid a pedestrian standing in the road, or does it plow straight ahead if swerving leads the truck to strike other vehicles nearby, all of which have several people aboard?).

"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Re: U.S. Pushing Self-Driving Cars. Self-Driving Trucks? Ummmmm... [big kahuna] [ In reply to ]

Jul 30, 17 7:09

Post #4 of 24 (1269 views)

I think the idea of self-driving vehicles is great—it will allow old people to maintain their mobility and independence, for example—but I worry that terrorists may find it easy to load up a vehicle with explosives and send it off to kill lots of innocent victims. It could put lots of suicide bombers out of work.

Re: U.S. Pushing Self-Driving Cars. Self-Driving Trucks? Ummmmm... [Jim @ LOTO, MO] [ In reply to ]

Jul 30, 17 7:52

Post #5 of 24 (1256 views)

Quote:

I think the idea of self-driving vehicles is great—it will allow old people to maintain their mobility and independence, for example

Uber and Lyft are already solving that problem.

Civilize the mind, but make savage the body.

- Chinese proverb

Re: U.S. Pushing Self-Driving Cars. Self-Driving Trucks? Ummmmm... [Duffy] [ In reply to ]

Jul 30, 17 8:26

Post #6 of 24 (1243 views)

Duffy wrote:

Quote:

I think the idea of self-driving vehicles is great—it will allow old people to maintain their mobility and independence, for example

Uber and Lyft are already solving that problem.

Autonomous vehicles -- fleets of them, and mostly electric -- would make transportation as inexpensive as a monthly unlimited-minutes cellphone plan, according to some analysis. That's even better than Uber or Lyft, as both are constituted now. I'm sure driverless Uber and Lyft is right around the corner, though. Which is a good thing.

"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Re: U.S. Pushing Self-Driving Cars. Self-Driving Trucks? Ummmmm... [big kahuna] [ In reply to ]

Jul 30, 17 8:53

Post #7 of 24 (1232 views)

big kahuna wrote:

FishyJoe wrote:

Cyclists should be the first in line to advocate for self-driving vehicles. I have several friends and even a family member that have been killed on public roads by distracted or intoxicated drivers. I've had many close calls where life and death was a matter of inches. And don't even get me started about all the assholes and road ragers that don't seem to like cyclists.

There's a raging debate these days about the ethics of autonomous vehicles, some of it revolving around the idea of the lack of 'humanity' in the decisions that self-driving cars make when it comes to situations such as you alluded to in your reply (does the vehicle swerve to avoid a pedestrian standing in the road, or does it plow straight ahead if swerving leads the truck to strike other vehicles nearby, all of which have several people aboard?).

You're right, there is some decision making that occurs that result in life and death. But then again, these situations will be less likely to occur simply because an autonomous vehicle will be more likely to avoid such situations in the first place. A human driver will do stupid stuff like speeding, running red lights, not giving enough spacing, etc. that will put them into hazardous situations.

Accidents will occur with these autonomous vehicles. I guess it will be human nature to weigh these accidents much higher than human accidents. An autonomous vehicle might be ten times safer, but people are going to freak out at every accident. I don't know any solution to this problem other than making these vehicles a hundred times safer. Even then that might not be enough.

Re: U.S. Pushing Self-Driving Cars. Self-Driving Trucks? Ummmmm... [FishyJoe] [ In reply to ]

Jul 30, 17 11:19

Post #8 of 24 (1207 views)

I wonder how they're going to get around the issue of humans gaming the computer. I.e. If pedestrians know that autonomous cars will stop for them, what's to stop them just walking out into the road? Or cyclists riding 3 abreast and taking the whole lane in the knowledge the computer isn't going to tailgate them, hoot at them and then perform an insanely close pass like a human would?

Autonomous cars won't stop people from being jackasses.

Re: U.S. Pushing Self-Driving Cars. Self-Driving Trucks? Ummmmm... [cartsman] [ In reply to ]

Jul 30, 17 12:04

Post #9 of 24 (1189 views)

One thing to think about is when do we reach the point that autonomous vehicles exceed humans in decision capability. In the case of making a decision on whether to run over the schoolchildren or plow into the semi truck full of fuel scenario, it is a decision that humans would make in a fraction of a second, while with autonomous vehicles there is the opportunity to debate policy decisions such as these before they are programmed in, and in fact there a lots of ethics case studies to reference. So decision quality with autonomous vehicles will undoubtedly be higher than human instinctual reactions, even for lose-lose scenarios.

Similarly with safety...it is a very tall order to have vehicles make the right decision 99.99999% of the time. I think once we get to the point that they drive significantly better than humans than that is good enough as it is now a net life saver. I work on autonomous vehicle development and was discussing with my wife some of these issues. She said she doesn't trust it...what will happen if the brakes fail? Well, same thing as if they fail in a human controlled vehicle, except the computer will know it sooner and have a much better ability to control the vehicle than a human would. Then we went on to discuss why we can't have flying cars as well, and why Bruce Willis has a flying car in the Fifth Element but it is not autonomous....

Which reminds me....you can fit something like 3 times as many autonomous vehicles on a roadway as human controlled, so that will pretty much eliminate traffic delays as we know them... plus fewer accidents causing delays.

With regards to truck drivers...well, all I can say is that a LOT of service jobs will be eliminated. It's not just truckers and taxi drivers, there are also the people who work at travel convenience businesses....gas stations, Cracker Barrels, hotels, etc. as travel becomes much easier (for the driver) and we don't need to stop as often. Then there are the police, tow trucks, ambulance and ER staff, insurance, etc, that will all have less work to do. I think it's really a significant issue that will be upon us quickly as you can't just train all these people to be autonomous vehicle engineers instead.

Re: U.S. Pushing Self-Driving Cars. Self-Driving Trucks? Ummmmm... [cartsman] [ In reply to ]

Jul 30, 17 12:23

Post #10 of 24 (1182 views)

cartsman wrote:

I wonder how they're going to get around the issue of humans gaming the computer. I.e. If pedestrians know that autonomous cars will stop for them, what's to stop them just walking out into the road? Or cyclists riding 3 abreast and taking the whole lane in the knowledge the computer isn't going to tailgate them, hoot at them and then perform an insanely close pass like a human would?

Autonomous cars won't stop people from being jackasses.

In theory, anomalous activity could immediately be sent to the police for review since every car will have multiple cameras recording everything.

Re: U.S. Pushing Self-Driving Cars. Self-Driving Trucks? Ummmmm... [FishyJoe] [ In reply to ]

Jul 30, 17 12:40

Post #11 of 24 (1179 views)

That only works if you can use facial recognition to identify pedestrians or cyclists and track them down, which is a pretty radical intrusion into privacy from where we are today.

Re: U.S. Pushing Self-Driving Cars. Self-Driving Trucks? Ummmmm... [cartsman] [ In reply to ]

Jul 30, 17 12:58

Post #12 of 24 (1170 views)

cartsman wrote:

That only works if you can use facial recognition to identify pedestrians or cyclists and track them down, which is a pretty radical intrusion into privacy from where we are today.

I'm talking real time. Something happens, police can respond since they have all the information.

It's not like autonomous vehicles are going to be implemented in a day. For a few decades, a pedestrian or cyclist won't be able to tell if it's a computer or human driving any given vehicle.

If the worst thing is that pedestrians and cyclist are blocking motorists, that's a heck of a good problem to solve.

Re: U.S. Pushing Self-Driving Cars. Self-Driving Trucks? Ummmmm... [cartsman] [ In reply to ]

Jul 30, 17 15:18

Post #13 of 24 (1144 views)

cartsman wrote:

That only works if you can use facial recognition to identify pedestrians or cyclists and track them down, which is a pretty radical intrusion into privacy from where we are today.

I don't see it as any different than cameras currently on cars.

The data recorded by the car would be the property of the owner of the car. And there'd be a "black box" recorder. If someone was messing with your car, you could tag the data and send it to the police immediately.

Maybe no one's in your car. Then the car would be able to recognize an anomalous situation and send you a notification to your mobile phone. And you could deal with it from there.

In either case, if the police, while viewing the data that you released to them, determined probable cause for a violation of law, then they could get a warrant to run a search on identity based on facial recognition or some other type deal like that.

Re: U.S. Pushing Self-Driving Cars. Self-Driving Trucks? Ummmmm... [big kahuna] [ In reply to ]

Jul 30, 17 16:05

Post #14 of 24 (1128 views)

big kahuna wrote:

Duffy wrote:

Quote:

I think the idea of self-driving vehicles is great—it will allow old people to maintain their mobility and independence, for example

Uber and Lyft are already solving that problem.

Autonomous vehicles -- fleets of them, and mostly electric -- would make transportation as inexpensive as a monthly unlimited-minutes cellphone plan, according to some analysis. That's even better than Uber or Lyft, as both are constituted now. I'm sure driverless Uber and Lyft is right around the corner, though. Which is a good thing.

I don't disagree with you here. My contention is exactly what problem are we solving? Inexpensive, autonomous cars will only lead to more cars on the road. You 'might' be able to argue that traffic will become more efficient in merging and such but you still have volume issues on roadways. My concern is that inexpensive, autonomous cars are going to make traffic much worse before it gets better.

Now, if we really want to tackle transportation policy, we need a few key leaders to step up and stand up to a few key special interests, including those you originally listed.

Re: U.S. Pushing Self-Driving Cars. Self-Driving Trucks? Ummmmm... [Trispoke] [ In reply to ]

Jul 30, 17 16:26

Post #15 of 24 (1124 views)

Trispoke wrote:

You 'might' be able to argue that traffic will become more efficient in merging and such but you still have volume issues on roadways.

Not 'might'. The research is clear. The biggest driver of traffic congestion are freeway on/off ramps and intersections. Autonomous cars can increase efficiency in those cases by an order of magnitude. The caveat being that it really helps to have all the traffic be autonomous. Mixing human drivers in messes things up. Perhaps there could be "human driver-only" lanes in the interim.

Quote:

My concern is that inexpensive, autonomous cars are going to make traffic much worse before it gets better.

There is the valid conundrum that the cheaper you make transportation, the more of it you get. But creating an artificial ceiling on efficiency as a method of traffic control seems, to me, like telling "poor people" to stay off the roads so that us rich people can avoid traffic unpleasantness. I'd think there are other ways to handle that.

Re: U.S. Pushing Self-Driving Cars. Self-Driving Trucks? Ummmmm... [Jim @ LOTO, MO] [ In reply to ]

Jul 30, 17 16:36

Post #16 of 24 (1117 views)

Jim @ LOTO, MO wrote:

I think the idea of self-driving vehicles is great—it will allow old people to maintain their mobility and independence, for example—but I worry that terrorists may find it easy to load up a vehicle with explosives and send it off to kill lots of innocent victims. It could put lots of suicide bombers out of work.

This point is often brought up - how to protect against hacking, terrorism, etc.

As a point of comparison, however, how many people die in automobile deaths every year? Now how many would die in autonomous vehicle related terrorism?

Re: U.S. Pushing Self-Driving Cars. Self-Driving Trucks? Ummmmm... [Trispoke] [ In reply to ]

Jul 30, 17 16:46

Post #17 of 24 (1109 views)

Trispoke wrote:

big kahuna wrote:

Duffy wrote:

Quote:

I think the idea of self-driving vehicles is great—it will allow old people to maintain their mobility and independence, for example

Uber and Lyft are already solving that problem.

Autonomous vehicles -- fleets of them, and mostly electric -- would make transportation as inexpensive as a monthly unlimited-minutes cellphone plan, according to some analysis. That's even better than Uber or Lyft, as both are constituted now. I'm sure driverless Uber and Lyft is right around the corner, though. Which is a good thing.

I don't disagree with you here. My contention is exactly what problem are we solving? Inexpensive, autonomous cars will only lead to more cars on the road. You 'might' be able to argue that traffic will become more efficient in merging and such but you still have volume issues on roadways. My concern is that inexpensive, autonomous cars are going to make traffic much worse before it gets better.

Now, if we really want to tackle transportation policy, we need a few key leaders to step up and stand up to a few key special interests, including those you originally listed.

My thesis about Uber and Lyft fleets -- to use those as an example -- would rest on the assumption that privately owned vehicle numbers would decline in response to the convenience of being able to order up portal-to-portal or door-to-door transportation on demand. I believe some of the analysis says that privately owned vehicles could decline by up to 75%, in the most optimistic scenarios.

"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

Last edited by: big kahuna: Jul 30, 17 16:47

Re: U.S. Pushing Self-Driving Cars. Self-Driving Trucks? Ummmmm... [Trispoke] [ In reply to ]

Jul 30, 17 18:39

Post #18 of 24 (1085 views)

Quote:

My contention is exactly what problem are we solving? Inexpensive, autonomous cars will only lead to more cars on the road. You 'might' be able to argue that traffic will become more efficient in merging and such but you still have volume issues on roadways. My concern is that inexpensive, autonomous cars are going to make traffic much worse before it gets better.

.... except that ride-sharing can become vastly more efficient and cheaper, so that volume plummets when enough folks opt for cheaper "vanpool" plans.

Re: U.S. Pushing Self-Driving Cars. Self-Driving Trucks? Ummmmm... [big kahuna] [ In reply to ]

Jul 30, 17 19:52

Post #19 of 24 (1068 views)

Quote:

My thesis about Uber and Lyft fleets -- to use those as an example -- would rest on the assumption that privately owned vehicle numbers would decline in response to the convenience of being able to order up portal-to-portal or door-to-door transportation on demand. I believe some of the analysis says that privately owned vehicles could decline by up to 75%, in the most optimistic scenarios.

So, how is that different from being able to call a taxi, like we've been doing for the last, oh say, 80 years? Your thesis sounds very similar to the justification for the "uber high" valuation one of the venture capital investors in Uber gave.

Costs will not come down with "driverless" taxi's. I can't help but think of my brother-in-law who drives an executive class taxi in Indonesia and earns about $200/month. The cost of the driver is hardly anything in Jakarta, and in fact taxi service is super cheap, yet most middle/professional class people still own their own cars (and have personal drivers).

Re: U.S. Pushing Self-Driving Cars. Self-Driving Trucks? Ummmmm... [big kahuna] [ In reply to ]

Jul 30, 17 20:19

Post #20 of 24 (1057 views)

They'll buy themselves a few years at most. There's just too much money to be made. Think about it this way: Amazon wants autonomous trucks, Walmart wants autonomous trucks, and any consumer who isn't employed in over the road trucking or a closely related industry will soon demand autonomous trucks because of the increased safety and the reduced price of goods.

I'd imagine at some point in the next five years we'll hit a tipping point with autonomous vehicles. They will be sufficiently advanced and there will be enough of them on the road that a small percentage of the population (but a decently large number in absolute terms) will have first hand experience with them and a much larger percentage of the population will have heard about these experiences second hand.

"I watched Netflix on my commute!"
"I cleared my inbox on my way home!"
"I watched Por....uh... Netflix on the way to the airport!"

Autonomous vehicles will be perceived as a luxury good and everyone will want one or want to use an autonomous vehicle service. It will be just like the changeover from feature phones to smart phones.

Re: U.S. Pushing Self-Driving Cars. Self-Driving Trucks? Ummmmm... [Dapper Dan] [ In reply to ]

Jul 30, 17 20:43

Post #21 of 24 (1051 views)

Dapper Dan wrote:

....you can fit something like 3 times as many autonomous vehicles on a roadway as human controlled, so that will pretty much eliminate traffic delays as we know them...

Sure... I've heard that before. :-)

"Traffic jams will be a thing of the past."

"100% of the people who confuse correlation and causation end up dying."

Re: U.S. Pushing Self-Driving Cars. Self-Driving Trucks? Ummmmm... [big kahuna] [ In reply to ]

Jul 31, 17 3:56

Post #22 of 24 (994 views)

big kahuna wrote:

Trispoke wrote:

big kahuna wrote:

Duffy wrote:

Quote:

I think the idea of self-driving vehicles is great—it will allow old people to maintain their mobility and independence, for example

Uber and Lyft are already solving that problem.

Autonomous vehicles -- fleets of them, and mostly electric -- would make transportation as inexpensive as a monthly unlimited-minutes cellphone plan, according to some analysis. That's even better than Uber or Lyft, as both are constituted now. I'm sure driverless Uber and Lyft is right around the corner, though. Which is a good thing.

I don't disagree with you here. My contention is exactly what problem are we solving? Inexpensive, autonomous cars will only lead to more cars on the road. You 'might' be able to argue that traffic will become more efficient in merging and such but you still have volume issues on roadways. My concern is that inexpensive, autonomous cars are going to make traffic much worse before it gets better.

Now, if we really want to tackle transportation policy, we need a few key leaders to step up and stand up to a few key special interests, including those you originally listed.

My thesis about Uber and Lyft fleets -- to use those as an example -- would rest on the assumption that privately owned vehicle numbers would decline in response to the convenience of being able to order up portal-to-portal or door-to-door transportation on demand. I believe some of the analysis says that privately owned vehicles could decline by up to 75%, in the most optimistic scenarios.

And I want to believe that is reasonable. I ponder this very conundrum daily as I sit in traffic. I can't for the life of me find a way to believe that a privately owned enterprise could make this profitable and more efficient. Again, if this approach is cheap and available, it puts more cars on the road as people will stop using mass transit. More cars = more traffic = more congestion

Re: U.S. Pushing Self-Driving Cars. Self-Driving Trucks? Ummmmm... [trail] [ In reply to ]

Jul 31, 17 4:02

Post #23 of 24 (989 views)

trail wrote:

Trispoke wrote:

You 'might' be able to argue that traffic will become more efficient in merging and such but you still have volume issues on roadways.

Not 'might'. The research is clear. The biggest driver of traffic congestion are freeway on/off ramps and intersections. Autonomous cars can increase efficiency in those cases by an order of magnitude. The caveat being that it really helps to have all the traffic be autonomous. Mixing human drivers in messes things up. Perhaps there could be "human driver-only" lanes in the interim.

Quote:

My concern is that inexpensive, autonomous cars are going to make traffic much worse before it gets better.

There is the valid conundrum that the cheaper you make transportation, the more of it you get. But creating an artificial ceiling on efficiency as a method of traffic control seems, to me, like telling "poor people" to stay off the roads so that us rich people can avoid traffic unpleasantness. I'd think there are other ways to handle that.

Your caveat is important here. I agree that 100% autonomous could solve a few problems, but we are WAY away from that. And one has to wonder if we, as a society, can every really get there. In the interim, we are talking about transportation policy that is a blend of human & autonomous.

My point is that I don't think autonomous driving as it is most commonly discussed -- privately owned, single person usage -- solves much for us. Until leaders, visionaries true create hubs and multi-modal routes, then we aren't solving the bigger issue of traffic, delays, etc. We do, most likely, solve smaller issues of carbon emissions, less collisions, etc. Those are important, but not as sexy.

Re: U.S. Pushing Self-Driving Cars. Self-Driving Trucks? Ummmmm... [oldandslow] [ In reply to ]

Jul 31, 17 4:11

Post #24 of 24 (987 views)

oldandslow wrote:

Quote:

My contention is exactly what problem are we solving? Inexpensive, autonomous cars will only lead to more cars on the road. You 'might' be able to argue that traffic will become more efficient in merging and such but you still have volume issues on roadways. My concern is that inexpensive, autonomous cars are going to make traffic much worse before it gets better.

.... except that ride-sharing can become vastly more efficient and cheaper, so that volume plummets when enough folks opt for cheaper "vanpool" plans.

This is my hope. As I mention above, there is opportunity for leaders to reshape transportation policy and build hubs around key locations to increase ride-sharing opportunities. More autonomous buses, increased routes, dedicated lanes of travel--those are the missing policy links. But that's not really what we are talking about here.

Personally, I don't think autonomous cars will increase vanpooling. Right now there is nothing stopping people from van/carpooling. In fact, the federal government has a program vanstar where they basically give you a free van and only those who participate pay for the gas. It costs about $30/m to operate with 10+ people for a 40 mile roundtrip daily ride. I've worked with two communities, one with a large factory and a community college adjacent to one another, trying to bring this program to the students/employees. No interest. Tried on a different side of town, no interest.

Vanpooling/busing works in some areas but in others it is a long way off. As a society we are very tied to our own vehicle and the autonomy it provides. That is a cultural shift that has to happen before people's behavior changes. While I am both excited and in favor of autonomous cars, I don't see it providing that shift for a really, really long time (40-60 years)

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