I still think driving a truck as a profession will be a thing of the past within 20 years or so. There's just too much money riding on this problem, and logistics companies are fairly ruthless about efficiency.
I hope so. Trucking is one of the toughest professions for a person to endure that I've ever seen. It destroys a person's body and mind...and you're lucky to end up making minimum wage when you account for how many hours they spend working.
And yes, the government. The funny thing about a democracy is that if enough people want the govt. to provide something, it will.
If you're driving fleet, that's correct; however, there are a large number of "Owner/Operators" out there and they do make significantly more than you'd expect. If you have a good freight contract and a logistical mind, an O+O can easily make around $125k/year.
And there will be major accidents with multiple deaths, since the average passenger car driver is so unskilled. No software can account for every idiotic move made by the typical car driver, and big trucks take a lot of room and time to stop. A few lawsuits later, all the financial gains will disappear for the trucking companies and drivers are back in the seat.
I could see in 20 years a system where computer assisted driving automates much of the trip, much like commercial aircraft operate now.
Yeah, city driving is hard. That might be a long ways away. But highway driving? Thats easy. You can even buy a highway driving, consumer self driving vehicle right NOW. Tesla sells them.
And while highway driving generally has fewer decision points per mile than city driving, the speeds are much higher and so the effects of errors are much greater on the highway. The worst wrecks I've seen have all been on the highway, not in cities.