Self-Driving Heavy Freight Trucks?

by JASmius



All together now: "What could possibly go wrong?":

May 5 Nevada has given Daimler AG , the world’s biggest truck maker, the go-ahead to test its self-driving heavy freight truck for the first time on the open road in ordinary traffic, the two sides announced on Tuesday.
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Daimler has previously shown off its prototype autonomous truck in Europe on a closed section of German autobahn. The truck maker says self-driving, or autonomous, trucks will help freight companies save money on fuel and increase safety on the roads.

Bernhard said in order to get the nod from Nevada the truck, which will be under its Freightliner brand, underwent 10,000 miles of testing. The vehicle will now undergo testing under real road conditions, he said.
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In a presentation to journalists, Bernhard said some 90% of road accidents are due to human error, which autonomous trucks could greatly reduce especially as global freight volumes are expected to triple by 2050.

Daimler has previously said its truck model still requires human oversight while freeing the driver to perform back-office tasks such as handling bookings and billing, or planning future itineraries. Bernhard on Tuesday compared this to putting a plane on auto pilot.

Sure, 90% of road accidents are due to human error.  But up until now, vehicles haven't had the capacity to drive themselves, either.  And every machine inevitably has built into it the same fallibilities of its human creators.

The implication suggests itself....



Wouldn't that look spectacular on the six o'clock news?

But no worries, my friends, because it's a foregone conclusion that neither insurance carriers nor the Teamsters will never allow the inevitable costly trial and error process of perfecting this idea:

Autonomous driving proponents, however, face the challenges of meeting safety concerns while convincing lawmakers that accident liability can still be established. They are also expected to fuel conflicts with freight driver unions.

Martin Daum, chief executive of Daimler Trucks North America, acknowledged the hurdles that autonomous trucks face legislative hurdles.

"Before mass production, the liability issue has to be addressed," Daum said.

Captain James T. Kirk used to say, "Risk is our business".  It is precisely because our society is so hyper-paranoiacally risk-averse that it is sliding backwards in so many ways, actually fleeing genuine "progress" because genuine progress diminishes state power and frees We, The People to chart and conquer new frontiers, and even develop the courage to accept the inevitable costs of doing so in order to get over the ever-present next hurdle.  It's how the United States went from the first powered flight to landing men on Luna in only sixty-six years.  That we haven't been beyond low Earth-orbit in the forty-three years since, and no longer have a manned space program, is highly symptomatic of the death of America that was simply confirmed on November 6th, 2012, but was coming a long, long time before that.

Exit thought: It's a pity that Back To The Future II got its prediction of flying cars and "skyways" by this year wrong.  I would eat one of my own feet to see how the leftwing primitivists would go after that notion.