It’s good to see the beginings of improvements to drivers pay and terms but before investing in an hgv licence it is worth considering how long human drivers will be in demand.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but do we even have self driving freight trains going up and down the country yet? Would have thought that would happen long before driverless trucks.
Besides not all of us just drive between RDCs with a fridge or parcel box, there’s plenty of jobs where the driving is less than half of the actual job.
Now a self driving, self assembling, self operating crane…there’s a scary prospect!
I wouldn’t worry.
We can’t build a mobile phone that’s reliable, let alone having millions of vehicles that all self drive…
Self driving vehicles are just a technological pipe dream. In theory it’s doable. In practice, nah.
There are too many variables for it to be reality for a hell of a long time yet.
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I’d like to see a driverless vechile find a field in the middle of nowhere ,get a load of straw or hay on , tie it down and then deliver it to a farm yard at the other end of the country . If as fridger says they cant get a driverless train to work - I think HGV drivers are safe enough for a few years yet .
There are also driverless dump trucks working in iron ore mines in the Pilbara
Star down under.:
https://youtu.be/wmCSRg5p7-E
Hardly comparable to running on a public road, especially in an urban environment. That actually demonstrates one of the reasons why it isn’t going to be happening any time soon, that in order for it to actually work it has to be on fixed routes with the whole area they operate in specifically geared to automated vehicles. This is a far cry from mixing autonomous vehicles with thousands of human drivers and in situations where you also add pedestrians and cyclists with very little if any road sense. One of the main problems is autonomous vehicles taking into account for example how at certain junctions that are poorly designed human drivers do not follow the rules and regulations and instead have developed a method for coping with them which all those who use that junction regularly do and the majority of drivers who don’t who come to it quickly work out what is going on. An example would be an extremely busy motorway exit sliproad like the M4 onto the M32 at Bristol where during peak time drivers would turn the hard shoulder into an unofficial exit slip road extension, something which whilst illegal to drive on the hard shoulder has a blind eye turned to it because it serves a greater good by getting static queuing traffic off the main carriageway. An autonomous vehicle currently would find itself sat in L1 stationary on its own wondering what to do.
Conor:
Star down under.:
https://youtu.be/wmCSRg5p7-EHardly comparable to running on a public road, especially in an urban environment. That actually demonstrates one of the reasons why it isn’t going to be happening any time soon, that in order for it to actually work it has to be on fixed routes with the whole area they operate in specifically geared to automated vehicles. This is a far cry from mixing autonomous vehicles with thousands of human drivers and in situations where you also add pedestrians and cyclists with very little if any road sense. One of the main problems is autonomous vehicles taking into account for example how at certain junctions that are poorly designed human drivers do not follow the rules and regulations and instead have developed a method for coping with them which all those who use that junction regularly do and the majority of drivers who don’t who come to it quickly work out what is going on. An example would be an extremely busy motorway exit sliproad like the M4 onto the M32 at Bristol where during peak time drivers would turn the hard shoulder into an unofficial exit slip road extension, something which whilst illegal to drive on the hard shoulder has a blind eye turned to it because it serves a greater good by getting static queuing traffic off the main carriageway. An autonomous vehicle currently would find itself sat in L1 stationary on its own wondering what to do.
It’s the thin end of the wedge. Who, last century would have believed that in under twenty years we’d all have mobile phones that can do everything except the washing up?
The consolation is, that for every driver replaced by an autonomous truck, a security guard will have to be employed.
Tesla have…
Proved by killing people, the technology just simply isn’t ready yet.
yourhavingalarf:
Tesla have…Proved by killing people, the technology just simply isn’t ready yet.
How many miles have Tesla cars self driven? For how many fatalities?
And how does that compare with the status quo?
They don’t have to be perfect, in order to be better than what we have.
(I’m not saying we are there now, though)
Franglais:
yourhavingalarf:
Tesla have…Proved by killing people, the technology just simply isn’t ready yet.
How many miles have Tesla cars self driven? For how many fatalities?
And how does that compare with the status quo?
They don’t have to be perfect, in order to be better than what we have.
(I’m not saying we are there now, though)
The OPs…
Question is ‘is it worth considering how long human drivers will be in demand’.
For the foreseeable future is my answer.
For as long as they need someone to blame when t’puter bolloxes up they’ll need a licenced driver in attendance to take the rap for any ensuing carnage.
Star down under.:
https://youtu.be/uuDYLXfUQRYThere are also driverless dump trucks working in iron ore mines in the Pilbara
This is the country that thinks repeated lockdown will eradicate Covid…
A driver less dump truck in a mine is a long way from millions of driver-less cars in London…[emoji1787][emoji1787]
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Stagecoach are getting “driverless” buses soon between halbeath P&R and hermiston or the airport cannie mind which but its basically a expensive toy, the route has been getting mapped for about a year it’s basically a straight road and there has to be a trained driver sat behind the wheel. I doubt we will see buses or lorrys without someone behind the wheel in our lifetime. Planes can fly themselves but you still have 2 piots sitting in the cockpit.