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Will self driving trucks hit the roads with nobody on board or will they keep a human supervisor? (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

45 comments fedilink hide all child comments

According to the news self driving trucks are about to hit the road with no driver on board.

But according to this book that is not going to happen. The author says that the real purpose is to get rid of the skilled drivers and replace them with underpaid button pushers.

Will they really do that? What's going to be the situation few years from now?

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 6 months ago (12 children)

I see at least four big problems with having drivers that sit around to supervise the AI.

It's a mind-numbing boring task. How does one stay alert when most of the stimulus is gone? It's like a real-life version of Desert Bus, the worst video game ever.
Human skills will deteriorate with lack of practice. Drivers won't have an intuitive sense for how the truck behaves, and when called upon to intervene, they will probably respond late or overreact. Even worse, the AI will call on the human to intervene only for the most complex and dangerous situations. That was a major contributing factor to the crash of Air France 447: the junior pilots were so used to pushing buttons, they had no stick-handling skills for when the automation shut off, and no intuition to help them diagnose why they were losing altitude. We would like to have Captain Sullys everywhere, but AI will lead to the opposite.
The AI will shut off before an impending accident just to transfer the blame onto the human. The human is there to serve as the "moral crumple zone" to absolve the AI of liability. That sounds like a terrible thing for society.
With a fleet of inexperienced drivers, if an event such as a snowstorm deactivates AI on a lot of trucks, the chaos would be worse than it is today.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (6 children)

It’s a mind-numbing boring task. How does one stay alert when most of the stimulus is gone? It’s like a real-life version of Desert Bus, the worst video game ever.

Agreed. I don't see any chance humans will be continuously supervising trucks except as some sort of quality assurance system. And there's no reason for the driver to be in the truck for that - let them watch via a video feed so you can have multiple people supervising and give them regular breaks/etc.

Human skills will deteriorate with lack of practice. Drivers won’t have an intuitive sense for how the truck behaves, and when called upon to intervene, they will probably respond late or overreact. Even worse, the AI will call on the human to intervene only for the most complex and dangerous situations. That was a major contributing factor to the crash of Air France 447: the junior pilots were so used to pushing buttons, they had no stick-handling skills for when the automation shut off, and no intuition to help them diagnose why they were losing altitude. We would like to have Captain Sullys everywhere, but AI will lead to the opposite.

I don't see that happening at all. An passenger jet is a special case of nasty where if you slow down or stop, you die. With a truck in the rare occasion you encounter something unexpected, just have the human go slow. Also seriously it's just not that difficult. Right pedal to go forward, left pedal to go backward, steering wheel to turn and if you screw up, well maybe you'll damage some panels.

The AI will shut off before an impending accident just to transfer the blame onto the human. The human is there to serve as the “moral crumple zone” to absolve the AI of liability. That sounds like a terrible thing for society.

So you're thinking a truck sees that it's about to run a red light, and transfers control to a human who wasn't paying attention? Yeah I don't see that happening. The truck will just slam on the brakes. And it will do it with a faster reaction time than any human driver.

With a fleet of inexperienced drivers, if an event such as a snowstorm deactivates AI on a lot of trucks, the chaos would be worse than it is today.

Hard disagree. A snowstorm is a lot less problematic when there's no human in the truck who needs to get home somehow. An AI truck will just park until the road is safe. If that means two days stuck in the breakdown lane of a freeway, who cares.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Driving a truck is extremely more difficult than that.

I'm continually boggled by the fact any jackass can walk into a uhaul and drive out with 30 foot box truck, because those are wildly different to handle than a regular car.

Massively larger stopping distance, something almost no one leaves in their regular cars, massively wider turning radius, and heavy enough that if you make a mistake or lose control, there's a whole lot more destructive capability that you clearly are not appreciative of.

Going down a hill with a loaded box truck requires multiple different braking methods than just pushing the left pedal. You engine brake as much as possible, and use what's called stab braking, to keep the pads and rotor cool enough so they don't fail.

All of this is multiplied when you go from an automatic transmission, straight box truck to an actual semi truck, which weighs another order of magnitude more, has usually has a ten speed manual transmission (and three pedals, not two) and the whole trailer aspect.
And despite the extra weight, heavy winds can still blow the things over.

Frankly your cavalier attitude about how easy it is to drive anything is exactly why the roads are so dangerous.

Because nothing I said really mentions how people driving cars interact with trucks or buses on the road. It's a constant stream of getting cut off and having to slam on the brakes because the dipshits don't even know where the edges of their own vehicle are, let alone where mine begins, or the wildly longer stopping distance, or my extremely limited maneuvering capabilities , especially at speed, or the simple fact the larger vehicle will absolutely crush their whole car and everyone in it completely fucking flat.

Driving is absolutely a skill, and like any other, it will atrophy without use.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Agreed, I haven't driven an 18 wheeler but I've driven the big fedex box trucks for a living and even those are harder to maneuver than a regular sedan. The hardest part is dealing with people who think you leaving all that extra space in front of you is just so anyone can slip in and drive there.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The wild part is, the stepvans have wayy more visibility than a modern car. Like you can actually see your bumper and what it might run into. Taking time to learn the ends of your vehicle is important, but when you can't see shit anyway, what's the point?

I understand, crumple zones and shit require bigger a-frames, but I'd rather be surrounded by more competent drivers than crumple zones.

I recall hearing about some guy who was pushing for graded licenses and roads, and if you didn't qualify as skilled for that road, you couldn't drive there. It wasn't a simple 'this is harder, this is easier', either. Tight-in low-speed city roads were a certain classification. Highways were another, twisties were another, and so on.

I fervently wish that'd taken hold, along with a vehicle classification to match. Mopeds and scooters in the city? Easy! Stepvan in the city? Hard! Modern 'pickup' in the city? Fuck no!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That does sound like a good idea in concept. I'm sure it could work in other countries but there's fuck all chance it would ever work in the US unfortunately. Japan could totally do it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Oh the ship has sailed, but said dude was pushing this idea when roads and automobiles were a relatively new thing

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Well, automobiles at least, lol. Road's kind of an old idea, eh

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