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Just so everyone know how much of a blue-collar employment apocalypse this would be: “trucker” is the number one job title in most US states, and literally the last decent paying job you can get without a degree in most of them.
Automating it away–without a transition plan because fuck the poor–will devastate most of the Midwest and the South, as well as much of Canada.
If you think you have a problem with angry disenfranchised men now, just wait.
Think of all the businesses that rely on truckers. Truck stops, motels, even some restaurants. Automating trucking hurts a lot more than just truckers.
Work in transport. We have a severe lack of truck drivers in the US and a severe need. A few years ago the Prez of Texas Trucking Association stated he’s encouraging his son not to go into the biz because of the tough work requirements. He is very clear that trying to hire new drivers is hard. The industry acknowledges connected vehicles with semi autonomous trailers and trucks can support the dire need to move product. In certain circumstances autonomous driving can be useful and reasonably safe. Highways are usually well lit, well marked and well signed. This all helps improve autonomous vehicle safety.
literally the last decent paying job you can get without a degree in most of them.
Relatively decent paying. Most truckers are still contractors with the company they ship for, so they’re paying for their own truck and its maintenance, they have few benefits, awful working hours, typically horrid management, and an extremely unhealthy lifestyle because of the nature of the job.
It’s an industry that is incredibly harmful to the people working it. We should automate it away, but it sucks that it’ll come at the cost of people’s livelihoods and at the profit of the few company owners. Same story as ever.
This is how I’ve always felt about automation. Why keep doing the menial, shit jobs that are harmful to people’s health? Why continue wasting time in meaningless repetitive jobs?
Let us get more time back to live our lives, let us share in the production gains brought about by automation. Let us have meaningful lives outside of just our capacity to produce profits for corporations.
Except the ruling class won’t let that happen. We’re still fighting just to work from home for jobs that can be done entirely from home.
Ohh no! Those pesky results of our actions catching up with us!
The south, Midwest, and SW outside of Texas has pretty much done this to themselves. I get that good people are affected here outside their spheres of influence but these states might try education or some shit.
Oh my god can we please just have more trains?
The US and Canada actually make pretty extensive use of freight rail already, more so than Europe.
Yes but we probably use as much as we can given our infrastructure, which is due for an upgrade.
Monkey’s paw: granted, but safety regulations still weakened so you get ~ 5x the derailment and explosions we already do
I knew it was Johnny O before I clicked on it and I’m so glad I was right.
Teehee whoops I guess
Trains make a lot of sense for cargo moving ascoss more than 1-2 provinces/states, and shoukd be the first choice for that.
But for stuff moving only a couple hundred kilometers or less, and to all the places where there aren’t rails, you still need trucks.
That accurately describes the state we’re in today, it is that way (requiring trucks for a significant leg of the “last mile”) due to the incredible amount of subsidizing being done for road maintenance.
Imagine if we were subsidizing rail infrastructure for freight and passenger service.
This highlights an issue with trains. Why are building robot trucks cheaper than getting competition in the rail market?
(Roads are largely free to use and public, versus near monopolies on rail track use.)
Roads go everywhere you want to go, and it’s worth sending a truck for a much smaller load than a train
This isn’t about last mile trucking though, this is about long-haul trucking.
That said, considering trains are getting longer and longer and with fewer and fewer employees on board, I’m not sure that even more freight by rail is a good solution either.
The rail industry would be much better off being better regulated and with large rail companies broken up.
Definitely, but even then, we have a huge amount of freight going on our railroads. I live in a town that’s a major cross-point for multiple railroads. Traffic is held up constantly by super long trains going through. Kids are late for school, people are late for work, people miss doctor’s appointments and, worse, ambulances have to take circuitous routes to the couple of overpasses they can use to get around them. And then there are the times where a train breaks down just outside of town and cuts off one side of town from the other for hours except for those two overpasses.
I don’t know what the solution is there.
The issue is with how we prioritize rail. When grade crossings are installed, they are the least path of resistance, but also are the biggest obstacle in planning. If we really want to see better rail, we need to pay for the infrastructure (ie, elevated crossings). That’s not to say every route needs the best infrastructure, but at least the busiest.
The other issue is how 150 years ago we gave railroads incredible handouts of land ownership, not just in terms of the amount of land, but also in terms of the type of ownership. In a lot of cases, railroads have more sovereignty over their land than do the local and state jurisdictions it runs through. If you’re a city trying to improve a railroad crossing and the railroad doesn’t feel like cooperating, you’re just fucked with zero recourse.
The solution is to make freight rail companies run on timetables again with shorter trains.
Would shorter trains be able to make up for the lack of cargo in trucks?
You need to run more trains, but a schedule will make it easier to hire qualified people to do so.
A lot of what has made current freight rail shitty in the USA is that a lot of freight rail companies seem hyper fixated on only the most profitable routes at the exclusion of everything else. This has caused freight rail companies to adopt some really terrible labor practices, which has led to labor shortages.
While it may be more efficient (in time, energy, labor) to have something make most of its long haul journey on a train, I have to think that the time between “I need to send this” and “it is moving” is much shorter with trucking than with trains.
There’s also an article somewhere around here about an attempted renaissance in shipping. They headlined the Great Lakes, but included that Chicago could be a hub connecting the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River system- together those cover a huge portion of the US
Might not be the best idea either considering the Mississippi was so low in 2022 that barges got grounded.
Pretty much answering your last paragraph: Relevant John Oliver segment
Roads go anywhere you build them.
Rails go anywhere you build them.
Roads are a lot more flexible though. Tractors also use roads for example. As to bicycles and pedestrians.
Note that the above is about very rural areas where seeing 4 of the above per hour on any stretch is busy. As you start scaling up density it makes sense to separate uses, and trains quickly become the best option for various reasons.
The best option is what Europe has been trying to do by decoupling track ownership from companies running the trains. However, that would likely mean a government takeover of all tracks.
Just do it
It’s weird to me that a company can own a train line which cuts though the country and needs maintenance. Like imagine if they owned roads…
Like imagine if they owned roads…
Oh, that’s been happening in some parts of the world. Well, at least highways.
The vehicles have drawn skepticism from safety advocates, who warn that with almost no federal regulation, it will be mainly up to the companies themselves to determine when the semis are safe enough to operate without humans on board. The critics complain that federal agencies, including the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, take a generally passive approach to safety, typically acting only after crashes occur. And most states provide scant regulation.
What could go wrong?
I’d be willing to bet you l3 systems, limited to highway miles, have a better track record than humans, especially in long hauls.
Ideally, sure.
Companies: “They’re safe! Trust us! It’s a total coincedence that we have a huge profit motive in
them beingyou thinking they’re safe!”This is somewhat controlled via insurance though. There is a built in financial incentive to reduce insurance without paying billions for the software.
I’m sure it’ll be abused and challenged at some point but this isn’t something I’d lose sleep over IMO.
Regulation will probably get pushed to insurance. Someone has to ensure these trucks in case of accidents, with either the company or an insurer paying out in cases of accidents.
I remember watching that scene on the highway in Logan with all the self-driving trucks and thinking, “this is our terrifying future too, isn’t it?”
I wish. A school of justice and equality defending mutants is still nowhere to be found.
I just meant that specific scene, not the whole movie.
That’s a shame. We could really use some X-Men these days.
I’ve been watching the X-Men 97 series and it really good.
The funniest part is that they didn’t stop (when it’s pretty easy to code that in). They just raised alarms telling the person your gonna get hit. Idk if I misunderstood that though but it fitted with the dystopia vibes they were going.
I was just thinking, how likely is it that these trucks could be highjacked and the contents stolen with no driver. I would think disabling the truck wouldn’t be too difficult. No people on board so no collateral damage. Sure there will be cameras and sensors to call the police or whatever but an organized team in the middle of the night in a rural area. What would the police response time be? Just a though.
Then it becomes an insurance game. Loss rate vs extra profit by not having to pay a driver or limit the number of hours driving. Same thing is happening with rail theft in SoCal north of Long Beach.
No drivers would cut costs massively you could afford to lose trucks all the time.
If this ever happens a huge population, that’s poorly educated and really doesn’t have any mentionable skills will be thrown into the unemployed books.
It would be a cool heist movie. But it would probably be too easy. Just get in front of the truck and slow down. When it stops disconnect the trailer.
Having truckers lose jobs also may impact truck stops and lot lizard jobs.
I’m pretty hopeful, but it’s all in the insurance/liability.
With truck routes, you’re only going a small number of routes, that you can evaluate ahead of time, so there are very few surprises, plus you generally don’t have to deal with people. It seems like a much more predictable scenario.
However there will be accidents, so the future is in how those are handled. Will the vehicle handle it well or make it worse? Who’s liable? With they take care of the victims at least as well as driver insurance would have? Will the manufacturer or shipper be the “deep pockets” and get sued out of existence?
The ‘few surprises’ thing is the issue. I don’t think we actually can calculate how many unforeseen scenarios these trucks can cause catastrophes because of specifically due to the fact that the are unforeseen.
I am thinking that until we get a much higher level of AI in cars, they will just not come as close to a human driver when it comes to situations it’s never encountered before. They don’t have the ability to be creative enough in those situations.
Maybe that will make up for trucker accidents that could have been avoided with non-human drivers, but I don’t think there’s any guarantee there.
MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE
