Platoons of driverless cargo trucks cruising across highways is one of those tempting technocrat ideas that doesn't look like it will pan out. As autonomous driving technology matured in the middle of the last decade, we saw trials of the concept, but human truck drivers do more than just throttle, steer, and brake, and they aren't likely to be replaced soon.
A better idea would be to shift some of that cargo to our underutilized railways—here, the idea of platooning is an old one, better known as a "train." Parallel Systems hopes to do just that with its second-generation autonomous battery-electric freight railcar.
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Autonomous Truck Platoons Are a Bust, but They Work If You Put Them on Rails
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday September 14 2023, @01:12PM (10 children)
See also, "pilots".
The purpose of the first 100 hours or so of training is to put the paw-eye coordination stuff into muscle memory so it drops out of conscious thought and all the conscious thought can be put into more interesting aspects of vehicle operation.
A military buddy of mine a LONG time ago ended up driving a beer truck and its interesting that the job title was "truck driver" but his work duties were almost entirely something like a cross between a railroad conductor and a railroad stationmaster (although is "station" was a diesel truck not stationary).
Sort of like all we need to replace an emergency room doctor is a robot arm with a stethoscope. The visually obvious stuff is often not the secret sauce of the job.
Heavy construction equipment is like that too. Excavator operators don't think about moving the arm, they think about all kinds of needle threading and safety stuff. If they didn't think about that other stuff, they'd have what's called an "industrial accident" so the hard part about replacing an excavator operator isn't making the boom wave "woo woo" but figuring our how to navigate this muddy slope without sliding off, or how to avoid the power lines you don't know about yet, and thats much harder to replace than an AN making the boom wave "woo woo".
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2023, @01:52PM (3 children)
Wtf did I just read?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Thursday September 14 2023, @01:59PM (1 child)
What you read is that someone who is a commercial driver, construction worker, etc. has more responsibilities / duties than what X autonomous thing could replace.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2023, @04:53PM
Glad you could interpret that word salad.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Tork on Thursday September 14 2023, @03:42PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Interesting) by lonehighway on Thursday September 14 2023, @03:36PM (2 children)
It’s the so-called “last mile” that can’t be replaced with automation. In 22 years of driving I had to maneuver into countless hellish situations to get into a dock in countless industrial ghettos. New facilities or large distribution centers like Wal-mart could be automated, but then who is going to pay their ridiculous “”docking/unloading” charges?
And truckstops are a multibillion dollar industry in themselves. Will they voluntarily just say “oh well” and let it all go? The future is mysterious.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2023, @04:09PM
To me it seems more likely that there would be robotruck friendly routes and "solving those" would be an easier problem than getting robotaxis to work safely in cities (which is what more seem to be focusing on for some reason).
(Score: 4, Insightful) by SomeRandomGeek on Thursday September 14 2023, @05:28PM
I heartily agree that the "last mile" is the hard part.
However, that does not mean that the job is not subject to automation. There are three viable strategies for automation:
1. Develop automation that is sophisticated enough to do the hard part.
2. Re-organize those hard to use facilities to be automation friendly.
3. Let an AI driver do the easy cross country drive, then have a local human driver handle the final mile, then have the human hop to another vehicle to do it's final mile while the first driverless vehicle drives back across the country.
People continually think that automation is only viable if it is a direct one-to-one replacement for a human. But in the real world, automation does not replace humans, it restructures the way that they work. The whole job gets organized completely differently depending on what is cheap and what is expensive.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 14 2023, @03:47PM (2 children)
However, see also: autopilot.
If the autonomous driving could be reliably safe enough for the long over the road segments, the meatbag in the sleeper section could just wake up for the detail work. One might argue that the meatbag is needed to "handle emergency situations" better than the autopilot, but the counter-argument is that meatbags commonly fall asleep, use stimulant drugs which have questionable effects on their safe driving abilities, and often both. I personally know an ex-truck driver who ended his career when he discovered he was epileptic. That's 1% of the general population which has epilepsy. (Yes, he crashed, no, nobody but him was hurt, he recovered from the crash, but still has seizures.)
Such trust in autopilots would dramatically reduce the need for truck stops, better enable transits of major metro areas (like Atlanta) at off-peak hours, and enable truckers to pursue other opportunities (online education, side hustle business, rental mobile personal attention like used to be found at the truck stops causing the drivers to not sleep while they were off road...) while the autopilot is "doing their job for them."
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Thursday September 14 2023, @04:26PM (1 child)
I agree in theory a startup in a greenfield could do that.
However what you're describing is basically "intermodal transport" using smart trucks instead of rail.
Most of the complaints about intermodal seem to boil down to if you think dealing with one trucking company or one railroad is a nightmare, which it is, then the nightmare scales exponentially when you have a truck at both ends and rail in the middle. In theory you could combine the hassle into one company doing all the trucking, but really it just takes the hassle internal, its not like the departments are going to work together better than companies doing intermodal work together.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 14 2023, @06:37PM
Well, the "smart truck" should be able to be self-piloted when on the restricted access highway with predictable roadway markings, well known GPS tracks, etc. but then when it's all more than the AI can handle, the driver in the back could get a 5 minute warning that his special skills are going to be needed up front, he wraps up his business and heads to the "pilot in command" chair and takes over, wielding all of his professional skills that AI just can't be trusted with today. One trucking company, one truck, same as today, just less crashes when the driver falls asleep.
Back in the late 90s they studied all kinds of ways to monitor driver alertness, what they came to as the most bang for the buck by far was a little widget that hangs over the ear - battery, mercury switch (or equivalent), and beeper. When the head tilt is out of bounds, indicating that the driver is nodding off, the beeper sounds and generally the driver comes alert again. Hugely effective, especially for drivers who have a habit of not sleeping during their mandatory rest breaks (which was a lot of them, back then - I imagine little has changed in that regard...)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2023, @03:20PM (6 children)
In some parts of the world, roll-on-roll-off trains are popular -- special terminals allow:
+ trucks to roll on to a rail car (sometimes specialized for height limitations)
+ be moved by rail (truck drivers ride on same train in a passenger car)
+ trucks roll off at another special terminal near their final destination, with their original driver, who could even be an owner-driver.
A little research suggests that this is most common in Europe and India(?), even though special rail cars may be needed to keep the height below existing tunnels. This article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_highway [wikipedia.org] notes that there are few height problems with rail tunnels in North America.
In the USA it seems that "intermodal" has become more popular with the railroads--in this case the freight is packed in a standard container, loaded on a special truck chassis, driven to a special terminal, craned onto a container rail car and the process is reversed at the other end of the train trip, onto a different truck chassis. I believe (but happy to be corrected) that this service is not scheduled so won't work for time sensitive or perishable loads.
My personal thought (years ago) was to run special trains between major cities that were dedicated to ro-ro service and, most importantly, ran on a published schedule (perishables and time sensitive loads). It could win in several respects such as reduced fuel use, less damage and congestion on major interstate highways, fewer tired drivers on the roads, no special container-carrying trucks required, potentially less pollution from the engine(s) and also tire rubber particulates, etc. The savings in transportation-system-wide costs might be enough to make the train ride free or very low cost--which would make this attractive to truckers.
Of course that would require system thinking and planning...and at least in USA I doubt very much that rail and highway stake holders are interested in that. As long as the rails are owned by the railroads (unlike highways that are publicly owned), it's going to be trouble to improve the overall system.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RS3 on Thursday September 14 2023, @04:04PM (3 children)
IMHO there are far too many huge trucks on highways in USA. I don't know the stats, but it seems, proportionately anyway, that truck use has vastly increased over, say, the last 50 years, while trains have diminished. In my area there were smaller local rail lines (spurs?) that are now gone, turned into trails.
There are many factors, but one I credit (blame) is the whole JIT (Just In Time) paradigm. Train use generally requires more planning, logistics, and shipping / travel time might be longer. The proliferation of MBAs and economic analysis shows there's money tied up in that there inventory. The faster we move it, the more money we make.
Another factor is human impatience, sometimes caused by lack of planning. "Oh no, that machine broke, production is shut down. We don't have any spare parts. Get those parts overnighted now!"
Trains are far far more efficient, IE, less CO2 in the air for the same movement of goods. More use of trains will reduce the problems of highway congestion, road and bridge accelerated wear, and general (huge) safety risks to automobiles and small trucks.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 15 2023, @04:08AM (2 children)
JIT only works with extremely reliable and speedy transportation. MBAs may rely on that reliability (and the JIT paradigm) too much, but they're not responsible for enabling it.
Even so, these things happen and overnighting vital parts makes huge economic sense.
There's a fair number of products that aren't seriously affected by slower travel like bulk materials (for example, the traditional industrial era materials like coal, ore, steel, etc) and store cheaply as well. But cost of storage goes up as the value of the item does, its tendency to spoil, or the diversity of the goods. IC chips on a train make a tempting theft target. Fruit even properly refrigerated don't have a long shelf life. And if you're JITing for a large retail or grocery store, you just can't keep up with the changes in demand.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2023, @04:16AM (1 child)
All that typing and you still haven't said a damn thing.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 16 2023, @10:02PM
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 14 2023, @04:29PM
I did an internship with Florida DOT planning division in 1987. "Multimodal" was all the rage with the planners then. There was funding, funding was used for roads, rails, seaports and airports, but... any project that touched multiple modes of transportation was immediately bumped to the front of the construction scheduling queue. New bridge to the seaport, check. Expressway improvements to the airport, double check. Rail improvement between the seaport and airport raising crossings to prevent blocking road traffic? Planning Director Orgasm.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by agr on Friday September 15 2023, @08:14AM
Distances are much greater in North America than in Europe. It make no sense to carry a truck engine a 1000 miles by train so it can drive 30 miles from the intermodal terminal to the final destination and even less sense to carry the truck driver. The major railroads here have increased the clearances on their main routes to allow shipping containers to be stacked two high allowing a single train to carry the equivalent of a couple hundred trucks. Truck drivers don’t have to worry about meeting the train, they just have to deliver to the intermodal yard before the next train leaves, usually one a day. It’s all far more efficient than freight trains in Europe.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 14 2023, @03:24PM (24 children)
You can move freight by rail for pennies on the dollar what it costs to ship via truck. There have been many studies on the comparative cost effectiveness. https://www.rsilogistics.com/blog/comparing-the-costs-of-rail-shipping-vs-truck/ [rsilogistics.com]
In that study, they shipped almost four times as much as a truck could carry, for about 10% of the cost. I've read other studies that make rail even more attractive.
'Muricans have been in love with rocketing down the highway, since the first automobiles were sold in America.
Of course, it doesn't help that 'Muricans are also incapable of making the trains run on time. We should take from pointers from Russia, Japan, and Europe. No one wants to ship a load of lettuce from Mexico to New York City, to receive it 6 months later, dripping under the doors.
A MAN Just Won a Gold Medal for Punching a Woman in the Face
(Score: 2) by DadaDoofy on Thursday September 14 2023, @03:55PM (7 children)
There's one little unmentioned problem. Rail freight deliveries are a lot more unpredictable. If there's a problem with a train, it can delay all the traffic on that line for a LONG time. If it's driven coast to coast in a truck, you are pretty much guaranteed, within a MUCH smaller window, when it will arrive.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RS3 on Thursday September 14 2023, @04:12PM (6 children)
Yes, absolutely true. Problem is, like too many important functions, rail companies need to be profitable. Of course cutting corners, including with safety and maintenance, is how you increase profit.
As I commented above, I think this whole JIT (Just In Time) / GottaHavitNow mentality is a huge part of the problem. More buffering is the solution, but MBAs / money pinchers (greedy) don't want inventory. Societally it's a race to the bottom.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 14 2023, @05:20PM (2 children)
Bingo. When I started driving, places like General Motors were just starting that whole JIT thing. Most companies, whatever their business, had their own warehouses. Depending on what industry they were in, they might have 3 day supplies, or 14 day, or even 30 day supplies on hand. Also, depending on where they were located. A factory in Buffalo can expect the logistics chain to be broken, and stay broken for a few weeks, annually. Gulf Coast and lower eastern seaboard needs to be prepared for hurricanes that break supply chains. Flyover country - not so much.
Some companies were wasteful with warehouse space, stocking stuff they hadn't used in years, and there was no demand for it. But, every company seemed to have a few days supplies on hand.
Today? If the truck doesn't make it in from Timbuktu, the factory shuts down except for maintenance and cleaning crews.
Thank God for MBAs, right?
A MAN Just Won a Gold Medal for Punching a Woman in the Face
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2023, @07:04PM (1 child)
All that any nation needs in order to destroy itself and damn its people is a small, inbred, but powerful group of internationalists (globalist profiteers) whose loyalty is strictly to themselves with none to spare for the nations they parasitically inhabit.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Friday September 15 2023, @04:22AM
I wonder what's at the core [soylentnews.org] of your little onion? Jews did it?
(Score: 1) by Se5a on Friday September 15 2023, @05:47AM (2 children)
It's not profit that's the problem.
It's *quarterly* profit. Short termisim is the bain of long term profit.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday September 15 2023, @08:49PM (1 child)
Shorttermism is the bane of 'now'. IE, we're all inheriting the foolish wastes of yesterday's corner-cutting.
I'll admit, for example, that much of the buying market loves "NEW!", so why bother making a car that'll last 30 years. The people who can and will buy new cars don't really care if it'll last 30 years, and they mostly don't care about the people who buy used cars. But maybe they should, because cheap stuff that wears out too soon is a drain on productivity and society. Imagine the labor hours that would be spent on cancer research, rather than replacing things that were made to fail.
You mentioned "quarterly". You may be aware- stock market trading got so intensely fast that normal CPU/GPU wasn't fast enough, and companies started research, engineering, and producing specialized transaction processing chips and systems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2023, @01:43AM
> Imagine the labor hours that would be spent on cancer research, rather than replacing things that were made to fail.
Unfortunately, what I think is happening are more CXO vacations on private jets...paid for by executive bonuses, which are available because of labor hours saved.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday September 14 2023, @04:39PM (15 children)
An additional thing that's worth mentioning, at least when it comes to the USA: Rail maintenance is currently the responsibility of the big 4 rail companies, while highway maintenance (mostly caused by the wear-and-tear from trucking) is currently the responsibility of government. So it's not like trucking is currently paying the real cost of moving things that way. Also, currently we spend approximately 8 times as much on highways as the big 4 rail companies say they spend on maintaining the rails.
I'm generally of the opinion that freight rail in the US should be nationalized, since it's basically run by 4 regional monopolies that abuse the heck out of their market position right now. Or barring that, make it a public utility subject to similar levels of regulations including the government controlling their rates. But I know, that's commie talk, not worth taking seriously.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Thursday September 14 2023, @05:00PM (1 child)
Railroads are heavily unionized, public utilities exist for gas and electricity in the USA, and anti-trust is also a thing. I don't think regulating railroads as you suggest is that far out of reach. It just may not be the solution. How much money gets spent on roads vs. rails isn't necessarily the metric to judge things. Rails may be inherently easier to maintain, and the contractors who work on the public roads may be gouging us. A railroad bridge collapse made the national news this year.... but highway bridges do that too.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday September 14 2023, @07:05PM
If rails are easier to maintain, then we should move more stuff via rail, because that's more efficient.
As for rail disasters, I live not that far away from East Palestine, Ohio. Yeah, I'm well aware of how bad they can get.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2023, @05:03PM
> ...freight rail in the US should be nationalized,
See similar comment under the Ro-Ro topic. As long as the rails are privately owned, rail won't play nicely with other transport modes and the US won't have anything close to a "transportation system".
The railroad companies (operating trains) can stay private. With publicly owned rails they could compete with each other, imagine that!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 14 2023, @05:26PM (11 children)
I think you should research the taxing on trucks, before making such a sweeping assertion. They pay exorbitant fuel taxes before they get out the gate. Every state charges trucks so much per mile traveled in the state - usually called a 'Highway Use Tax'. A truck may cause thousands of dollars of damage to the highway each year, but that truck almost certainly pays more thousands in taxes. Fuel tax and HUT are only the beginning. They also pay a myriad of licensing and other fees. I suppose that is part of the reason politicians won't make the railroads run on time. Trucks are a bottomless money pit for politicians, as opposed to the rail industry, which has a strong lobby in every state.
A MAN Just Won a Gold Medal for Punching a Woman in the Face
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday September 14 2023, @07:03PM (10 children)
So, according to the trucking industry association [trucking.org], they paid $29.12 billion in fuel taxes. The maximum Heavy Vehicle Use Tax is $550 annually, multiplied by the 14 million trucks they claim are out there = another $7 billion at most annually. According to another article I dug up, back in 2015 at least they paid an additional $40 billion in road use taxes. So I'm counting somewhere around $75 billion in tax revenue from the trucking industry.
Which is still way less than the $200 billion spent maintaining roads.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 14 2023, @11:43PM (6 children)
Uhhhmmmm - where did that come from? A couple searches for a "maximum highway use tax" let me to this page - https://www.ncdot.gov/dmv/title-registration/taxes/Pages/default.aspx [ncdot.gov] discussing a maximum FEE for heavy vehicles registered in North Carolina. That's not a HUT, but one of the myriad of fees that I mentioned.
New York state's published HUT rates go over a nickel per mile for Class 8 vehicles. Nothing about exempting miles in excess of 11,000 miles.
I assure you, there is no cap on highway use taxes. Doesn't matter if you drive 100 miles, or 100,000 miles in a state each year, you will pay HUT on all miles driven - or face some pretty serious fines, penalties, etc, and maybe even prison time.
You'll have to keep counting, even after you adjust for a ridiculously low estimate of HUT. Don't forget various income and corporate taxes. Bear in mind that owner/operators don't enjoy the big corporation's exemption from any of the state and federal tax structures. JB Hunt can get away with playing tax shelter games, to an extence. Something like 90% of the trucks on the road are owned by small businesses, with 100 trucks or less. They don't get to play tax games.
Trucks and trucking companies hemorrhage money across the continent. And, the tax collecters are there to pick up every penny.
A MAN Just Won a Gold Medal for Punching a Woman in the Face
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday September 15 2023, @02:25AM (5 children)
The Heavy Vehicle Use Tax number I got was from the Federal Highway Administration [dot.gov]. As for the others you're referring to, that's where that $40 billion number I got came from, to the best of my understanding. Even if you doubled my estimate, and I don't think we should, it's still less than the government pays for highways.
But since you seem to have intimate knowledge of the subject, maybe have been in the trucking industry yourself or know somebody who has, let's go at this a different way: You tell me how much somebody running a 1-person operation with a single truck pays out in taxes annually. Or, alternately, tell me how many trucks the operation you know the best had, and how much they paid in taxes. Because I can guarantee you that any tax rate higher than zero will have people complaining about it.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Friday September 15 2023, @03:15AM (2 children)
This is the most common figure thrown around - but it's decades old, because I read it on the backs of trailers decades ago.
https://www.trucking.org/news-insights/trucking-industry-warns-against-truck-only-tax [trucking.org]
Note that Cornyn is referring only to federal taxes. State taxes are on top of that, and as I've already pointed out, New York State charges a little more than a nickle per mile. Every state is different, of course.
I can't give you much more info, since I was never in the accounting end of a trucking business. But, I do know that virtually everyone who talks about trucks and taxes grossly understimates taxes on the trucking industry.
A MAN Just Won a Gold Medal for Punching a Woman in the Face
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday September 15 2023, @10:28AM (1 child)
OK, let's use a bit more than double your figure. $10000 per truck times 14 million trucks = $140 billion. Still less than is spent on highways.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 16 2023, @10:23PM
As evidence for that assertion, I present cost inflation in construction projects. I'm away from a real computer right now, but willing to look it up later.
(Score: 2, Informative) by cereal_burpist on Friday September 15 2023, @05:38AM (1 child)
Here's (part of) the 2022 IFTA table for diesel. I know it's not the simple number you asked for, but unfortunately it's way more complicated than that. Three trucks drove a combined total of over 50K miles, bought a combined total of over 9000 gallons of fuel, and we had to pay a couple hundred dollars for IFTA taxes. Have to file this every quarter.
International Fuel Tax Agreement Return Transaction Summary - Diesel
I tried putting the whole table into a spoiler tag, but couldn't get it to make columns (there are 12 columns).
Some states have their own HUT/HVUT taxes (like KY, NY), which are all filed separately on their state sites. Also some states require permits (like OR, NM), which are also all separate applications/payments/etc. It is truly nauseating.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday September 15 2023, @10:34AM
And those fuel taxes are covered by the $30 billion number supplied by the trucking industry association. That's not what's at issue here. Runaway is claiming that there's some number of taxes that means the trucking industry is paying $200 billion or more in taxes, but so far instead of supplying numbers that prove his point so far his evidence seems to consist of "truckers complain about how much they have to be in taxes, so they must be super-high versus the costs they impose on everyone else.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday September 15 2023, @06:02AM (2 children)
...and what? Even assuming your numbers are true, they don't imply anything. What proportion of vehicle operation on public roads do you estimate to be trucks?
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(Score: 1) by pTamok on Friday September 15 2023, @11:40AM
Wear and tear/damage to the highway goes up roughly in proportion to the fourth power of the axle weight (Source: Pavement interactive: Equivalent Single Axle Load [pavementinteractive.org], which uses The AASTO test [wikipedia.org] data.). The GAO pointed out the problems with heavy trucks a long time ago: GAO: Excessive Truck Weight: An Expensive Burden We Can No Longer Support [gao.gov].
If it makes sense to charge users of the highway in proportion to how much they cost in maintenance, then if a typical two-axle SUV weighs about 3500 pounds, and a typical semi has 5 axles and weighs between roughly 35,000 pounds unladen to 80,000 pounds laden
Unladen SUV axle weight is roughly 1,750 pounds
Unladen Semi axle weight is roughly 7,000 pounds,
Fourth power of 1750 is 9.379x1012
Fourth power of 7,000 is 2.4x1015
Ratio Semi:SUV = 256
Which means a Semi ought to be paying at least 256 times a much for highway maintenance as an SUV. Possibly more, as it tends to be on the highway for more hours of the day. Note that semis can weigh up to 80,000 pounds, which substantially increases the equivalent single axle weight, and the load is not distributed equally across all the axles.
In theory, the toll-charges on toll-roads ought to reflect this.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2023, @11:52AM
>> Which is still way less than the $200 billion spent maintaining roads.
> What proportion of vehicle operation on public roads do you estimate to be trucks?
The proportion of trucks hardly matters when it comes to road damage. Why is this you ask? Because loaded trucks effectively do all the damage...road damage is (among many other factors) a function of weight^4 or weight^5 (weight on each tire). Lots more detail has been researched, feel free to dig around for it, but that's the executive summary.
Max load for a typical 18 wheeler = 80,000 pounds,
80,000/18 wheels = 4444 pounds/wheel (average)
4444^4 = 3.9 x 10^14
4444^5 = 1.7 x 10^18
Max loaded weight for a 4 wheel pickup (not a dually, they have 6 tires), say 6000 pounds (per a quick google). The system average will be much less since very few pick-ups are heavily loaded.
6000/4 wheels - 1500 pounds/wheel
1500^4 = 5.1 x 10^12
1500^5 = 7.6 x 10^15
In very round numbers, the loaded 18 wheeler does something between 100 and 1000 times the road damage of the loaded pickup.
Cars & SUVs (except a few "monsters") are lighter still and contribute much less damage, likely a negligible amount.
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday September 14 2023, @03:44PM (5 children)
Define soon.
My mom was a secretary in the 80s. She wasn't going to be replaced anytime soon, until she was, much sooner than anyone anticipated.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 14 2023, @03:50PM
Sister in-law was a medical transcriptionist. When "Dragon naturally speaking" came out (late 1990s) I told her: "see that writing on the wall? now is the time to plan for change." As a Jehova's Witness, her plan for the future is to be ready for the apocalypse which is coming any day now, no need to re-train for employment. Her last paying gig was about 10 years ago, and the 5 years before that were lean.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DadaDoofy on Thursday September 14 2023, @04:04PM (1 child)
Secretaries are still going strong. A couple years ago, when I still worked for a major defense contractor, anyone at the director level or above had one, and they were almost all females. They're called "administrative assistants" now.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday September 14 2023, @04:44PM
also called "office manager" and I've known and know some stunningly sharp ones.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday September 14 2023, @04:43PM
Secretaries (typically now called "administrative assistants" or "office managers") are just as necessary now as they were back then: Their real job wasn't typing or any of that nonsense, it was shielding the brass from people trying to bother them about minor nonsense, and actually running a lot of stuff while convincing the big bosses they are really in charge.
Seriously, if you are trying to deal with someone who has a secretary, and they appear clueless and/or non-responsive, tell the secretary what's going on and what your problem is, and there's a decent chance you'll have it sorted out in 5 minutes.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2023, @05:05PM
I did data entry as a temp job for a few years in the late 80s and early 90s. It was pretty obvious to me *why* those jobs were temporary. I hated having the agency take that huge cut, and the "temp to hire" thing never worked; but it was what it was.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday September 14 2023, @04:49PM (1 child)
There are lots of complex newfangled transport ideas that, once you correct all the flaws, become trains.
For example, the alleged purpose of the Vegas Loop could have easily been done by a subway. And probably for less money.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday September 16 2023, @12:07AM
Of course the purpose of the Vegas Loop was to have something unusual for the tourists, rather then just another subway.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday September 14 2023, @09:06PM (14 children)
Objection, This assumes facts not in evidence.
Platooning with flawed meatbag human drivers has been shown to save significant amounts of fuel for the non-lead vehicles. Multiple autonomous trials have confirmed it works too. The missing variable is widespread adoption (and public acceptance) of autonomous vehicles. Trying to adopt platoons with less than 1% of vehicles in autonomous mode is a cart before the horse failure.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 15 2023, @04:24AM (13 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2023, @12:08PM (12 children)
Why would platooning require "a massive change in infrastructure"? It's already been tested and saves fuel. While not trivial to program[1], this could be one of the better applications of self-driving trucks?
It might require a change in the behavior of other road users--for example, a platoon in the right lane (USA) could make it more difficult to get over to your exit. Car/SUV drivers normally in the left lane will have to tuck in behind the platoon well before their exit, because the platoon isn't going to open a gap for them to move to the right lane.
[1] consider trucks with different loads--some will be unloaded and able to climb hills easily, others not so much. The speed of the whole platoon up hills will probably be determined by the truck with the worst weight/power ratio.
While flat tires are rare, I suspect all the trucks will need realtime tire pressure sensing and the platoon will have to slow or disengage if any tire loses pressure.
etc -- lots of real world special cases to program, simulate and then test.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 15 2023, @12:17PM (11 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2023, @02:42PM (1 child)
> I don't know why platooning would require that.
Same AC as above. Have you ever tried to follow another vehicle closely? Not only is it nerve wracking, but, given human reaction time, you are always reacting to the situation and the gap varies constantly. The worse cases might be bumper-to-bumper high speed freeway traffic where one car slowing can set off a string of rear end collisions.
Autonomy, including V2V communication between the vehicles in the platoon, should make it possible to maintain reasonably constant gaps, even with a long string of vehicles. If one slows, it also sends out suitable data (with negligible lag) so that the others slow in concert.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 16 2023, @03:20AM
And if the first piles into something and abruptly stops, then only a few will join the pileup along with anyone else who happens to be driving alongside the convoy.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Friday September 15 2023, @03:44PM (8 children)
Parent commenter here.
It's not a change in infrastructure, it's a change in mindset.
Today, Karen Q. Public will shit bricks if I tell her I'm going to have one driver flying 4 trucks down the highway with less than a carlength between them. They already complain about "too many trucks on the road" (cars vastly outnumber trucks) and "dangerous semis" (commercial drivers are far safer than the average public). The power of squawking Karens is a force to be reckoned with. Laws will be passed, and they'll kill it quicker than (insert abortion joke here).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2023, @06:25PM
I guess I'm not KQP(grin). My complaints about trucks on rural highways mostly focus on what I call "truck racing" where one slow truck starts to pass another--blocking both lanes. Then we get to a small rise and the passing truck fails to advance, and pretty soon I'm stuck behind two trucks for what seems like minutes.
The only unsafe thing about this is my temper!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 16 2023, @02:51AM (6 children)
What happens when an obstacle appears without warning right in front of the lead vehicle? Stopping distance is still a thing even with autonomous driving.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 16 2023, @04:24AM (5 children)
> without warning right in front ...
Then there will be a crash, bigger with a platoon than if it was just one truck...but you knew that.
More to the point, most interstates have very good sight lines. Combined with the high position of the driver who is leading the platoon (or future AI?) there aren't many ways that something can suddenly appear "right in front" of a truck. And this is borne out by the relatively low accident rates on interstate highways (when compared to other kinds of roads).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 16 2023, @05:33AM (4 children)
Now you do as well.
You don't need a lot of ways, you just need really common ways - like tire blowouts. Sight lines don't help with that BTW when its a vehicle in the convoy.
What's silly about this whole thing is that platoon driving just isn't that useful. It's a slight energy and road usage efficiency with a considerable safety compromise. Normal driving with an autonomous system (and normal following distances) wouldn't require such a compromise and already has almost the same advantages. Further the safety advantages touted here just aren't that useful, instantaneous reaction speed isn't much faster than human reaction speed - the increase in stopping length from reaction speed is linear with speed while the increase from braking power is velocity squared.
Running some numbers (from here [omnicalculator.com], I get that a 0 second reaction speed of an 80 MPH (~130 km/hr) car on dry, level road still takes about 300 feet (or 90 meters) to stop. You still end up with a pile of vehicles when they tailgate like this and the line stops much faster than they can brake. For humans with a 0.5 second reaction time, it’d be about 60 feet (~20 meters) longer. And trucks would take longer to stop than cars. That’s not much of a safety edge that your vehicle can stop oh ~20% sooner when you're chopping the following distance dramatically by much more than that.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Saturday September 16 2023, @03:38PM (3 children)
Stop and think about that for a second. Is that right? Are you sure? The guy sitting behind the wheel costs you a buck a mile, and fuel costs you 0.70 cents a mile. If I can platoon four trucks my driver cost goes down to 0.25 cents a mile and the back three trucks save 0.30 per mile on fuel *each*.
For a 1,000 mile trip, just those two variables for four trucks costs you $5100. With platooning, it's $2900.
"But you should just use rail!" Yes, you're right. For the infinitesimal number of businesses with direct rail access it's massively cheaper than trucks. It's literally a third of the cost. Even if both ends don't have direct rail access, Intermodal (Truck to Bulk Depot to Rail to Bulk Depot to Truck) shipping is half the cost of truck shipping across a thousand miles. It's also significantly slower, but JIT management exists to work around that problem. Platooning's value proposition is its cost savings can make it competitive comparable to intermodal shipping while retaining the speed and security of direct trucking.
If you move the focus beyond trucks down to cars it gets even better. Meatbag drivers create traffic problems. On highways where they go over a hill and see an overpass, they instinctively slow down. When approaching a downhill curve, they instinctively slow down. They drive at different speeds, weave in and out of lanes, fail to signal lane changes, and get distracted easily. The killer app for autonomous vehicles generally and platooning specifically will be when they hit the critical mass so cities can create one designated lane on the highway (like HOV) where vehicles don't do those dumb things. The same technology that enables platooning will allow competent zipper merging at speed without creating standing waves that cause traffic problems. Tell me you won't buy an autonomous vehicle when it means the interstate portion of your commute is a solid 60MPH during rush hour instead of having that long 10 mile-per-hour crawl through the slowdown leading up to the curve where everyone touches their brakes you never noticed until I mentioned it. :D
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 17 2023, @12:28AM (2 children)
I started with the knowledge that truck drivers don't already obsess over drafting. If you could, as you claim above, almost halve fuel costs through extreme platooning, then everyone would be doing it.
Then when I look up research on the subject, I find that the fuel savings are on the order of 10% as compared to isolated trucks. For example: [springer.com]
Notice that a chain of trucks at legal following distances will achieve [springer.com] a significant part of this (see figure 5.10, the third truck in this platoon computer model achieves 10% fuel economy 80 km/hr (~50 mph) and 55 meters following distance which is roughly normal following distance for that speed).
So basically the savings would be ~$0.75 per mile from reducing the number of human drivers combined with a few pennies per mile for fuel savings from extreme platooning. You do the math.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday September 19 2023, @06:28PM (1 child)
I'm shocked the projected fuel savings are so low. Aerodynamic drag is the dominant factor in fuel economy at highway speeds. My (uncontrolled, unpublished, no-better-than-anecdote) experience in a vans and pickups drafting heavy truck trailers at human-reaction-speed-safe distances is significantly more than 10%. Hell, even roof fairings and side shields on a truck gives something like 6 or 7%.
Thank you for the knowledge. Now I've got to figure out why these numbers are so bad. More research required.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 20 2023, @06:02AM