Google veterans head off on their own to work on self-driving trucks

Some of them will. Some will become despondent, sink into depression, and never work again. Humans aren't always rational.

That is to even say there are ~4 million jobs in the US currently going undone, that would pay ~80k a year in effective income, that people are just not doing now because only the truckers have the work ethic to do them.

That is not how economics works, and the only difference between this sea change and previous ones (the obsolesence of agrarian living being by far the largest) is that unlike those, you could not just "ignore" it until you are dead while your kids and future generations make the transition and just sell your farm after you die.

As a specialized veteran of a job that requires very few transferable skills, truck drivers are fucked initially, and we'll see massive unemployment from this.

In many cases, the areas with high ratios of their economy supported by trade/transportation have very weak other sectors of the economy. Good luck working part-time retail, truck drivers. Hope you didn't like your benefits or salary.

ALL of that being said, I support automation and can't wait for it in my life.

I am honestly sorry for the anger, but really. Stop to think about this from someone else's perspective for a second. Just acting like they should just go get another job and that there aren't any hiccups is ridiculous. Look at Detroit, look at Gary, look at any of the large rust-belt cities. These things aren't without precedent.

Acting like all these people need to do is apply themselves a little harder is just stupid.

If a driver spends 1 hour at each end of a 20 hour cross region trip, that could still be a 10 times decrease in the total number of skilled drivers needed. A handful of skilled drivers at each trucking destination could be sufficient.

1) There are really 3 kinds of truck drivers. Each of the types of truck drivers have different problems. Local drivers will be the last to have any kind of automation as they have lots of stopping. The other 2 are both mainly highway driving, so at least that part can be partially automated.

(a) You have the long-haul drivers (which is what I think most people think about). These guys spend around a week at a time on the road and away from home. They are probably bringing stuff across the country, maybe with multiple pickup/dropoffs through their trip.

(b) Round trip drivers. These guys will move cargo between 2 hubs, but it's done in a single day. Start at one center, haul that to another center (where you unload and reload), then return back to your starting point. My dad does this. It's around 950 miles every single day (250k miles a year), doing the exact same drive.

(c) Local drivers. This tends to be delivery/pickup through some area. This covers Fedex/UPS drivers, various food delivery, and so on.

2) Weather. Weird shit happens on the roads. While some driving will be in good weather, dealing with rain, snow, and all the craziness that can come with that adds lots of complexity to an automated system. Example: ice fog. Driving through this can create a buildup of almost an inch thick of ice all over the forward facing parts of the vehicle. I'm sure this would cause problems for sensors and who knows what else. Ice fog result: http://imgur.com/xWWTC0S

3) Tires. Tires on trucks blow out a lot more than on cars (mainly because they can be made of patches, plus run tires at 110 psi). This is something that just has to be dealt with more regularly on trucks while on the road.

4) Brakes. Due to their weight, brakes on trucks can go out. If you've ever driven in the mountains you know about truck runaway ramps. And even beyond that, brakes on trucks lock up. Example, my dad's truck caught on fire due to the brakes on the back of the trailer locking up (but it wasn't something reported on, and you don't notice it from the cab). If you drive for a long distance with a locked up brake, the pad will get red hot, then eventually catch up fire.

It'll be interesting to see if the DOT reacts similarly in time to vehicle automation.

Plus, almost every country in the world has stopped building infrastructure to allow trains to go where you'd want them to go. So trains are only useful for huge manufacturing firms and things like harbors. Goods trains don't even go to most airports anymore.

The implications for self driving cars is nothing short of an existential threat for so many people in this world. As we know, it's just the beginning.

Similarly, Apple moved very slowly in introducing the iPad even though the under technology had been available for years. They started with the iPod, then advanced to the iPhone. At the time the iPhone caused a great amount of tribulation. People were very uncomfortable and large portions of the tech sector predicted it would be a monstrous failure. Their apprehension was cloaking a deep-seated unfirmiliarity (and maybe some fear). Once the iPad finally did arrive it was easily digested by the market. That was the mistake HP and windows made when they introduced the tablet in 2001. People had no concept of what a tablet is or how to integrate it in to their lives, so it was a miserable failure.

The lesson is don't move so fast that you scare your ultimate market, the people.

In other words, the parts that don't have to move much. You can keep a much smaller, more local staff that costs far less per volume of goods flowing. A single agent at a weigh station that handles hundreds of trucks a day, instead of a truck driver per truck. A set of contracts with local mechanics that get paged if a truck breaks down along the route. Loading crews can load trucks without a truck driver, And so on.

You don't need someone to attend the trucks -- you just need people at key points along the routes.

Milatery supply trucks would be another area and as Google seem to have the vapours over anything milatery or dual use - this maybe why they are doing this.

In case of regular cars, you go to jail for vehicular manslaughter when you brake the traffic laws and in effect kill someone.

My guess is that, if the driver of a self-driving car decides to press the "auto drive" button and the car violates traffic laws and kills someone, it's still the driver who's responsible. The self-driving features are not deemed safe by law and are not meant to replace a driver.

It may change when self-driving cars are actually legalized as a thing (as it is currently discussed in California), but I can't imagine the current designs being close to passing a proper homologation process.