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Why would the automated system have blind spots though? If it is viable at $50,000 it is probably viable at $100,000 or $200,000 (automated trucks will roughly double the efficiency of driving because of more hours on the road).

I would think that a physics model would also give a reasonable automated system superior control over where the trailer is at a given moment (and to account for different trailers).

Don't forget what happens when people find out they can abuse driverless vehicles. Cutting them off, getting closer to them, slowing down in front of them, etc. God knows what commuters will do to them in the Boston area.

Don't forget that the driverless vehicle will have tracking. Expect to get a ticket complete with video if you do things like that. If you are costing the trucking company money they might be willing to send people to court against you as well (taking you to court might not be worth it, but the teach people a lesson aspect might make it worth it anyway)

Issuing that traffic ticket would not be a good long-term PR move for any organization that needs to work with the public (like the police).

Trucks getting cut off is the norm in many areas. Punishing people for normal is generally not smart.

Punishing people for "normal" has a way of discouraging "normal" and changing it into "not as normal".

And going across boarders I could see people smugglers hiring hackers to slow down the vehicles so that there clients could board the trucks.

Drug smugglers are another group that could use this and how would a cop stop an autonomous vehicle to search it they would have to have a back door which could be abused

Autonomous trucks will be searched just like non-autonomous ones at borders.

Outside of national borders, smuggling felonious quantities of hard drugs from state to state is already trivial.

Smuggling is trivial currently, but not without risking incarceration or death. Once the contraband can be ferried by an autonomous vehicle without risk to the operator, the incentives will change dramatically.

Has been done between Mexico and California already. Aside from that, many of the drivers aren't really given a choice, so the risk is irrelevant.

Tag the vehicle, follow it, arrest everyone who comes to pick the drugs up.

Stopping a safe, automated vehicle would be trivial. Just dress up as a road worker, and hold up a stop sign. Do it above a manhole cover, and you have easy access to the bottom of the vehicle. A remote human supervisor might not even notice what was going on.

Admittedly it seems just as trivial to mitigate with some more sensors e.g. weight sensors to detect the load being modified while stopped, cameras to detect aberrant movement inside the cab, etc.

Let the arms race begin!

This seems like a vulnerability for human-operated vehicles also.

I think you have been watching too much ocean's eleven. This would be trivial to fix with a sensor on the bottom.

> Ok, but what if the refugees were lowered by a helicop...

Sensor on the roof. Sensor on the side. Sensor everywhere.

And what would currently happen? Killing the road worker? No, every truck would stop and you could operate in the driver's blind spot. Autonomous vehicles won't have blind spots so that the operator can identify the theft much faster.

> Cutting them off, getting closer to them, slowing down in front of them, etc.

My brother is a lorry driver who frequently crosses the Turkish - Bulgarian border with his truck (as in once every 2 weeks). Once or twice he caught refugees (or whatever you want to call them) trying to get inside his trailer by cutting through the thick textile material that covers it, while he was awaiting at the border. You generally do not whant people mixing with your industrial equipment while the truck drives at 90-100 km/h. In other cases it happened to him that other people had stolen diesel gas from his tank while he was asleep during the mandatory break (this happened somewhere in Western Europe, I forget where).

And leaving aside all this, assuming that bad people won't suddenly stop stealing and generally doing bad stuff to unattended expensive material (like trucks and the things that the trucks carry), being a truck driver you're also doing lots, and lots of bureaucracy work. I once shared the cabin with him as a passenger during one of his routes, while we passed two European borders. The amount of paperwork he had to fill in was mind-blogging, I half-jokingly told him that his job looks more like a clerk-job than being an actual driver. Now, lots of clerk jobs have already been automated, I know that, but it mostly happened in the private sector, inside private companies doing business with other private companies. But once your clerk-like job involves having to do business with several State-like entities things become a lot more complicated, with legislation changing once every 6 months, being very diverse from State to State etc.

What I'm trying to say is that theoretically the self-driving problem looks achievable for trucks, but once you get into the messy details things become a lot more complicated.

You generally do not want people mixing with your industrial equipment while the truck drives at 90-100 km/h.

He should let them ride with him in the cab up front, then.

It's the human thing to do - and in another universe (or if this universe were configured only slightly differently) they could be his own family, after all.

Regardless of anybodies sympathies for refugees, this is simply not going to achieve anything.

They are not going to let you cross the border with a cab filled with refugees/asylum seekers/undocumented immigrants.

Then put them in the back while you drive a careful 50km/h the first few clicks before and after the border.

The point is, I'm actually amazed at the downvotes, and that people aren't naturally, viscerally having a more human response -- "For heaven's sake, can't I think of a way to help these people? They're fearing for their lives, after all!" -- rather than the response described in the post I was responding to: "Oh shit, it's risky/complicated! Avoid, avoid!"

Especially given this history, among other sordid events in the past:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_St._Louis

I doubt they are fearing for their life in Turkey. They definitely will make more money in Europe but it's not like Turkey is putting them in gas chamber or something.

To suggest that these people are out to make a quick buck is just -- pure snark.

And to think that just because Turkey isn't currently running gas chambers that these people have nothing to worry about is, unfortunately, very naive:

Amnesty International has slammed Turkey for expelling dozens of Syrian refugees to their war-stricken country, saying the move is in violation of international law.

According to a new report released by the UK-based rights group, a total of about 80 Syrian asylum seekers, who were previously held incommunicado in a detention center in the Turkish city of Erzurum, were forced to leave for their country, with 50 more people facing deportation.

-- source: look it up yourself

Please watch this http://imgur.com/gallery/zkafo . You are giving life-threatening advice.

Driverless trucks will be better protected, not worse. You can lock the vehicle much better if there's no driver who needs access to it. Cameras everywhere will mean that the control center sees people approaching the truck much earlier than drivers at the moment (who won't see it at all if you keep in the blind spot). It's the same as robbing an ATM. Theoretically also unattended but well enough secured that few people do it. The insurance premium for cash in an ATM is lower than in a bank branch where the teller can access it. A driver doesn't provide a lot of protection against serious theft, video surveillance could deter more people.

I live in (ok, ok, near) Boston and I constantly fantasize about this. I don't commute by car I look forward to riding my bike 5mph in front of driverless cars, at least if they don't run me over...

I also have to imagine they will be a ripe target for vandalism, especially if operators don't aggressively remove graffiti.

"ripe target for vandalism"

And they'll also be surrounded by camera's and hard drives. I would imagine that the sensors that can see through fog could also get more detail than the average CCV camera - meaning that even with a mask, you're going to get a lot of detail on vandals or road hazards (aka: You going 5mph in front of one)

> I also have to imagine they will be a ripe target for vandalism

Is a lone driver with a tire iron, mag-lite, or billy club really the deterrent to this? Especially, the stereotypical obese early 50s driver?

Vandalism already happens to cars. As are cyclists who go 5mph in front of a car (on a road where it cannot overtake you) to take revenge on a driver they don't like.

None of that will change and that's not dependent on drivers.

> Cutting them off, getting closer to them, slowing down in front of them, etc

Car drivers already take advantage of trucks leaving a safe distance or their slow acceleration in traffic.

I wonder what % of truck driving is highway driving? If you are covering the trucks in cameras and you have the control software there already it seems pretty easy(relatively at least) to have someone take over via remote for the last mile.

AI sensors combined with some sort of 360 view VR with drivers for the last mile with full AI on highways/freeways would allow for progressive roll out of self driving technology. A lot of video to push down the wire though but probably manageable with modern codecs.

pretty much every sleeper truck is designed to be mostly highway. The ones that stay in-city are the single cab designs. This isn't always true for Owner-Operators taking a buck where they can get it, but most trucks are designed for this use. There's no other cost-efficient way to get goods across cities/states/provinces/countries/continents.

> Once they're on the freeway, I would think most automation would work (relatively) well.

That's assuming nice weather conditions. Mudslides, flash floods, extreme code, ice, snow, etc. needs to be taken into consideration.

Of course those need to be taken into consideration but to be fair, aren't most of the conditions you listed dealt with by a human driver pulling over and waiting it out/calling for assistance? That's exactly what an autonomous system could do in those situations.

And if there _are_ dangerous conditions that a human driver could navigate but an autonomous one would give up on, is that so bad? The industry is making enough efficiency gains to offset that.

Doesn't most self-driving protocols out right now demand perfect conditions to even operate?

Remote driving, though, might solve for this. You still have a human to react to unforeseen circumstances, but you can switch up the remote driver easily so you can work in shifts, drive 24/7, not stop for bathrooms/food etc.

I'd imagine the quality of life would be significantly better too since they would work in the same spot with co-workers and could go home every day.

>I'd imagine the quality of life would be significantly better too since they would work in the same spot with co-workers and could go home every day.

Actually, working in the same spot with coworkers was exactly the reason I started driving a truck. Going back to that would be an enormous downgrade in quality of life for me and a lot of drivers.

I grew up in Minnesota where we learned to deal with bad roads. We did drive on them and got good at it. The truth is we went in the ditch a lot when the weather was bad.

In those conditions human drivers don't work very well either. I'd rather have computers that drive very slowly because they can't see very well instead of humans that drive faster than they can see because "I'm a good driver".

People are astonishingly good at dealing with unconventional conditions. This idea that computers are 'smarter' than humans (that program them) in the realm of driving is amusing and terrifying at the same time. Calling them 'self driving cars' is oxymoronic. They are pre-programmed cars.

The people duped into this will lose their driving skills and pretend it's other humans fault for not conforming to the program they invested in. I'm not all that worried, the market will sort this out in the US at least.

If not the market, definitely the regulations once traffic reports start piling up... Even faster when there's no one behind the wheel to blame.

Can't even imagine a manslaughter case where a driverless vehicle killed someone. Who's at fault? Most fault current resides in the driver, as they're the final call.

'Who's at fault?'

Exactly. Humans. Humans are the bugs in their code. The control writers will argue for more laws so their programs work. The possibility that their code revisions are futile will dismissed as [insert buzzword]. I am excited that we get to watch this play out. The wildcard is biological CPU's: http://www.research.ufl.edu/publications/explore/v10n1/extra...

Driverless trucks aren't going to 100% perfect. They just need to be significantly safe and more reliable than humans.

Humans get sleepy, get emotional, zone out, and make all kinds of mistakes all the time.

The first generation of driverless trucks will still have a human as passenger to be backup in case of mistakes. You may be thinking, "What's the point if there will still be a human there? s/he might as well drive." Well, humans still need breaks and can help give feedback to Truck for it to improve.

The first generation won't be perfect, but it will be on its way.

More reliable than humans is too low a bar. People mostly forgive each other's imperfections, not so much a computer's. A self-driving truck is going to need to be at least an order of magnitude or more safer than a human.

I am extremely skeptical that a porcupine would take out a truck tire.

I'm not doubting the professional truck driver, though. Do you have experience running over porcupines? I do not. They've seen a lot. Enough to draw conclusions from fringe conditions like this.

Perhaps this is more of an occurrence on re-treads.

If dead porcupines are a problem, the system can be trained to identify them.

They're not dead, yet.