- Joker plasters flatscreen of sufficient size on the back of his truck and displays 'empty road' when in fact there is oncoming traffic.
- System malfunctions and shows old image rather than present image.
I'd never ever want to rely on what a medium under someone else's control displays when I want to overtake a vehicle. That's a lot of lives at stake and if you need this display to decide if you should overtake or not you probably simply shouldn't.
Oh, yeah, because someone will buy a truck and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on it and then 4 or 5 thousands more on screens in order to make "jokes".
Jokes that could kill someone and put her in jail, destroy all her wealth, and possible harm her-kill her as a result of an accident.
"System malfunctions and shows old image rather than present image."
Oh, man, some people are really just too frontal lobe- "inventing scenarios that will never happen" and then worry too much.
My company does military, aerospacial life critical stuff. You make it sound like making a screen shut down when something is wrong is magic or the hardest thing in the universe(because nobody else before faced the problem of detecting wrong things automatically...).
The probability that technology fails in uncontrollable ways could be done way less(1/100 or less) than the human failing rate(e.g heart attack on the driver, or he being slept on the wheel because he could not sleep for any reason), or the probability of the driver behind the truck making a mistake(enormously high, 0.1 or so, most of those are harmless "warnings") because he could not see what is in front.
"I'd never ever want to rely on what a medium under someone else's control displays when I want to overtake a vehicle"
Have you never used traffic lights? After all , a "joker" public servant could program two green lights on a cross on those(external control) displays as a "joke". Or they could malfunction and make people die...
Traffic lights are nothing more that green LED lights controlled by PLCs. Someone could open the PLC box, program them badly and create car or rail accidents. Better not use traffic lights at all, or go outside, after all, a meteorite could strike us and kill us.
I have been in craters created by them(meteorites), it is serious.
The second issue is real, but I can tell you from experience that it's the kind of things engineers working on automobile parts obsess about. And there are strict standards for these kinds of things. Besides, if you see a frozen image, you know something is wrong. And getting old video is impossible.
Why would they be found criminally guilty? Intent to cause harm will bury you. There's no other reason to put the false empty road indicator up, other than to cause someone to make a mistake. There'd be next to no debate on this.
- Durability. Best practice with high-value freight is to back the trailer against an object so you cannot open the doors. Good luck backing those monitors against something solid. Crunch.
- Weight. Trucking companies do things like switch to 'super singles' (a double-wide tire in place of tandems) to save a few pounds. They wouldn't be likely to embrace hanging 4 monitors plus whatever extra gear is needed to power & protect them.
- Compatibility. Trailers currently have standardized connectors for air, power, and signaling (turn signals + ABS + GPS if trailer so equipped). This would need a non-standard connector or at least a secondary one for video.
- Visibility. Nice squeaky clean trucks in the video. What happens a few hours down the road, or in snow when the front grille and trailer rear end are covered in spray, sand, and/or ice?
- Anti-theft. I've picked up trailers in so-called 'highly secure' yards with 24/7 guards and CCTV, and the trailers were missing basic things like brake lights, tires, even the little rubber seals on the air brake connectors that cost pennies to replace. How long to these monitors remain on your trailer when you park in say West Memphis or Baltimore and go inside to eat and shower.
It's an interesting idea and I commend the engineers for producing a partial solution, even if highly impractical for real-world use. Needs much more work though.
Also, watching that demo video the first thing that jumped out at me was how incredibly close the cars were when they cut back in front of the trucks. They filled the displays in the rear, I'd say they were about 1.5 - 2 line markers distant at speed. Incredibly dangerous for the cars, hope no one ever does that in normal driving. If you are that close to the nose of a truck and need to brake, you are getting squashed and there's nothing the trucker can do to help you. They'll be lucky to see you, and definitely won't be able to see your taillights yet. You also just annoyed them by triggering the safety cutout on their cruise control which they'll have to reset each time. This is logged and after too many of these they get called in to talk to a safety manager about their 'tailgating problem'.