
Tell HN: Driverless trucks: just because we can, doesn't mean we should - hoodoof
There are hundreds of thousands of people and families whose livelihood, ability to pay their bills and put food on the table depends on driving trucks.<p>Just because we can make driverless trucks does not mean we should.<p>It would be great if sometimes our society made decisions looking to the wellbeing of other people instead of focusing on profit for companies.<p>What is going to happen to those people and their children who no longer have a means of income?<p>I feel like technologists corporations and government don&#x27;t have much ability to put themselves in the shoes of those who aren&#x27;t doing well financially.
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nefitty
The system actually has a terrific incentive to block innovation in the
autonomous hauling space: avoiding mass unemployment and middle class unrest.
Imagine you take away the best way for a person to place themselves squarely
in the middle class, then multiply that person's anger by millions.

The benefits are also tremendous though. Those people would be unburdened of
repetitive, menial, dangerous work and society would have a more effective and
reliable way of transporting goods.

In the end it's about what fulfills more people's needs more effectively. You
can't blame a company for trying to find any way of increasing profits, you
can't blame governments for trying to protect tax payers, and you can't blame
unemployed people for being restless. The question the world has to answer
soon: if boosting economic growth and increasing the efficiency of the market
are our main goals, what are we willing to do or not do to get there?

~~~
anexprogrammer
_> The benefits are also tremendous though. Those people would be unburdened
of repetitive, menial, dangerous work and society would have a more effective
and reliable way of transporting goods._

Perhaps.

If, and only if, they can get something that at least partially replaces the
menial work they lost.

To give a worked example, some of the former mining communities decimated by
the pit closures in the 80s are dead communities with unemployment around the
40% mark, to this day. Many people never worked again, despite having spent
many years in constant employment and were plagued with depression and other
illness as a result of losing career. Many of those former miners would trade
the half lifetime of unemployment for repetitive, menial, dangerous work in a
heartbeat.

So in that case you're not filling people's needs more effectively, especially
when as is so often the case, only lip service is paid to providing alternate
options, encouraging industry to move to decimated localities and providing
real, substantive help to those unable to find alternate employment.

~~~
nefitty
You're right. This is the danger we're facing as automation across industries
looms greater. There is reason to be pessimistic, seeing as governments and
other institutions have historically dealt with this very poorly. I believe
the danger is greater when middle class jobs (according to this site the
average starting pay is $40k/yr [http://www.alltrucking.com/faq/first-year-
truck-driver-salar...](http://www.alltrucking.com/faq/first-year-truck-driver-
salary/)) are tossed in the mill. There are few other alternatives when it
comes to salaries like that. A high school graduate is going to have a hard
time finding anything remotely close to that kind of pay, and that will be
worse in rural working class communities, like the kind you point out.

This discussion is not full without some mention of the basic income debate.
That is the leverage point at which governments can make a difference. The
problem is that those policies will be difficult to fund at the beginning,
before we see the possibly dramatic economic benefits of automation. My other
fear is that this reality will cause governments to stifle automation. Things
are usually very messy before they get better.

~~~
anexprogrammer
My concern is if a basic income is introduced it will be so low as to render
it near meaningless.

In the UK minimum wage is around £11k, welfare gives somewhere around £3k I
think. A basic income is likely to be nearer a welfare level than a working
minimum. Politically I think it's going to be a very tough sell to set it at
working minimum. I think it has to be at or near working minimum to be
effective.

We're potentially looking at unprecedented numbers of lives ruined unless it
is handled better. Nearly all options for manual or lower qualified workers
are going away. It probably is going to be very messy.

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shaftway
I've never understood this argument. Is it "we should keep inefficiencies in
the system, because some people make money off of those inefficiencies"?

~~~
dllthomas
I understand the argument. Your rephrasing overlooks that our society demands
that most people make money to live a decent life, and it's a lot of people
making a not-crazy amount of money off the inefficiencies, and it's not
obvious what industries could be expected to provide a comparable living to
that many people.

That said, I don't think making everyone pay more to ship things so that some
people can do something that isn't valuable any longer is the way to go.

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mattbillenstein
I'm sure the same has been said of many other sorts of everyday technology
that we all find commonplace now.

The machines are coming and there's nothing you can do about it -- adjust and
thrive, or don't. It's going to happen either way.

~~~
hoodoof
It's a real pity that we feel we don't have the ability to make decisions
against "the inevitable" where that outcomes aren't good for people and that
we should "deal with it".

~~~
mattbillenstein
It's not a shame, it's evolution -- we get better at building solutions for
things we used to do manually -- it frees us up to focus on things that really
matter -- like Angry Birds and whatnot.

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mattkrea
Yes it absolutely means we should.. at least to avoid the hundreds or
thousands of accidents per year caused by truck drivers.

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writeclick
I don't see robots taking away flatbed trucking work. The most important part
of the job is in the securement of irregular loads (and the adjustment of said
securement, as needed, during the trip).

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Piskvorrr
BTW, we can make driverless trucks? I keep hearing the same thing about flying
cars. For about half a century now, without anything substantial to show for
it.

~~~
DanBC
Volvo have been trialing driverless trucks for some time now.

[http://www.volvogroup.com/group/global/en-
gb/_layouts/CWP.In...](http://www.volvogroup.com/group/global/en-
gb/_layouts/CWP.Internet.VolvoCom/NewsItem.aspx?News.ItemId=109685&News.Language=en-
gb)

>Volvo’s vision of combining a well-trained professional driver with increased
automation is being realized through the SARTRE (Safe Road Trains for the
Environment) project. The idea behind the project – of which Volvo is a part
through its centre for research and innovation, Volvo Technology – is to
develop a technology for vehicle platooning – that is, a convoy where a
professional driver in a lead vehicle drives a line of other vehicles. Each
vehicle in the convoy measures the distance, speed and direction to the car in
front, and adjusts accordingly. The vehicles are not physically attached to
each other and can leave the procession at any time. But once in the platoon,
the following drivers can relax and do other things while the platoon proceeds
towards its destination under the expert guidance of the lead driver.

[http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-
tech/fea...](http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-
tech/features/autonomous-vehicles-how-safe-are-trucks-without-human-
drivers-9047546.html)

> In 2012, Volvo Trucks tried out its autonomous vehicles on public roads for
> the first time, as part of the European Commission-backed Project Sartre
> (Safe Road Trains for the Environment), which looked at the feasibility of
> platooning – when a single, lead driver in a truck, using what might be
> thought of as a kind of digital towbar, controls the speed, steering and
> braking of two or more trucks or cars, to form a road train.

> Now, the EC has just announced the €5.4m (£4.55m) Project Companion, led by
> Scania, to develop the technology further and explore the legislative
> changes necessary for this kind of automated road train to run on motorways
> such as our own M4. So while talk of Amazon's delivery drones have caught
> the headlines, autonomous trucks may be doing precisely that in about 10
> years' time, if the law catches up with the technology.

Video from 2012:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oV3nINN2ELQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oV3nINN2ELQ)

~~~
Piskvorrr
I'm aware of this. What I'm trying to say is that there's a lot of
uncertainties and risks in this branch of the tech tree. Just like flying
cars, having a prototype here and there does not make this mass usage.

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Piskvorrr
Just because we can make horseless carriages does not mean we should.

Oh wait. That gave the livelihood _to_ truckers, so it's Something Completely
Different. Right?

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andrewchambers
Deliberately putting your company at a competitive disadvantage goes against
what makes capitalism work.

There is time to plan for this change.

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melling
Well, it's at least a decade away. If you knew your job might disappear in 10
years, couldn't you plan for it?

