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Driverless Trucks?


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I do think the lawyers will hate it, and I also think the insurance premuims will go up.

No, the lawyers will LOVE it. Endless litigation.

Insurance? That's going to be a whole 'nother battle. Whether any conventional insurance company will even consider touching driverless 'autonomous' highway-bound 'unguided' missiles remains to be seen.

All you're hearing from so far are the engineers and the manufacturers. You haven't heard any feedback from the money people (insurers) yet. It's likely to be blow-back, not feedback.

If insurance actuaries and underwriters don't buy in, it will never happen.

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Before retiring from Chrysler in 2006, I used to go out to the Chelsea MI proving grounds on a regular basis. The last time I was there was in 2006 and they were in the process of updating their technology on one of the durability test courses. The course was a mile long oval track with a control tower in the center and robotic drivers doing the driving on up to 6 vehicles on the course at any one time. The reason for the robots was that the course was so rough, that it was too severe for human drivers endure for more than 15 to 20 minutes. They would run the vehicles at speeds from 10 to 60 miles per hour, 24/7 to accumulate the equivalent of 250,000 severe service miles on the vehciles in just a few months of driving. They also had several road simulators in the Chrysler Technology Center where they duplicate the motion and impacts on the vehicle as if it were on a road, but they couldn't quite duplicate the affects as when a vehicle was turning and hiting bumps etc. at that time. The robotic cars, Jepps ,a dtrucks were cool and worked on a combination of gps, radar, and computerized radio commands. I'm sure that they have improved on all of this since I left, but back in the day it was amazing to watch. FYI - The coolest thing I ever did was to drive a police package equipped Hemi Dodge Magnum on the 5 mile high speed oval. Flat out, I had the Magnum up to 143 mph for 25 miles (5 laps). The track was 5 lanes wide and the turns were banked at 35%. Going 143 into the turn, you could let go of the steering wheel and the vehicle tracked right around in 4th lane (next to the fatsest) and never left its lane. What a rush!

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  • 2 weeks later...

It´s only a 6 kilometer long stretch where this thing is being tested. It may work well under the testing conditions but in the real traffic and world-wide? Oh, come on! In order to be really driverless the truck would need army laser scanners and some other devices. They are so expensive that the truck wouldn´t be competetive in any way. And completely new infrastructure would probbaly be necessary.

800 people dying on German autobahns each year is just statistics. Nothing to write home about. But imagine one single person to be killed by a robot´s missjudgement. Quite a different story, don´t you think?

Stay calm, good people. New world or not, nobody´s chasing drivers out of the cab.

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I'm not all for computers driving cars, but the general population are far from safe when it comes to driving. I would feel safer if a large percentage of the population wasn't able to drive anymore. Just consider a few statistics on the average American driver:

-Around 44,000 people are killed each year in car accidents in the US

-On average 10,220 people are killed in drunk driving accidents in the US each year

-On average 350,400 people are injured each year in drunk driving accidents in the US each year

-17 Million Americans admit to driving drunk at some point

-The average convicted drunk driver has driven drunk 80 times before his first arrest

-Each year there are 1.3 Million car accidents involving cell phones in the US

So statistically speaking, computers driving the cars would most likely be much safer than letting the general population do it. Kind of like flying a plane, pretty safe when you leave it up to a select few pilots with the help of computers (yup, the pilots are not controlling jumbo jets the majority of the time). Let the general population fly their own planes and see how safe it remains.

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I'm not all for computers driving cars, but the general population are far from safe when it comes to driving. I would feel safer if a large percentage of the population wasn't able to drive anymore. Just consider a few statistics on the average American driver:

-Around 44,000 people are killed each year in car accidents in the US

-On average 10,220 people are killed in drunk driving accidents in the US each year

-On average 350,400 people are injured each year in drunk driving accidents in the US each year

-17 Million Americans admit to driving drunk at some point

-The average convicted drunk driver has driven drunk 80 times before his first arrest

-Each year there are 1.3 Million car accidents involving cell phones in the US

So statistically speaking, computers driving the cars would most likely be much safer than letting the general population do it. Kind of like flying a plane, pretty safe when you leave it up to a select few pilots with the help of computers (yup, the pilots are not controlling jumbo jets the majority of the time). Let the general population fly their own planes and see how safe it remains.

The airline mfg's and designers have a compelling reason to make sure control software works essentially "bug" free. Not so sure about the auto industry:

Reports of Chevy Impalas equipped with crash aversion braking systems slamming on the brakes for no reason.....

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