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Comment by michrassena | Hacker News Reader

In the United States at least, it's going to be devastating. I don't see a bunch of individual owner-operators banding together to protect their livelihoods. As soon as it's cheaper to run automated trucks, they'll get picked off one by one. Probably the best than can be hoped for is laws mandating a person as co-operator in case of emergency. There's also some version of the last mile problem, where people need to be present.

For fully automated trucking, I imagine no one has explored the security implications yet. These vehicles seem far too easy to hijack, redirect, or delay and steal the cargo. Take out the human factor and long-haul trucks are autonomous warehouses roaming the countryside.

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I could see the last mile problem for trucking being solved by depots on the outskirts of cities where the automated trucks arrive, and human drivers commute and drive the trucks from the depot to their final destinations in the city. I don't know about the economics of it, but it could potentially be beneficial to the health of the human drivers as they wouldn't need to be making long-haul trips, but instead navigating more, but shorter, trips into cities. If this scenario increased the volume of long-haul trips (through automation), it could create demand for more drivers for the last mile trips.

Autonomous trucks may actually be a little more secure. The vast majority of truck thefts occur within 200 miles of the origin and truckers are strongly encouraged to not stop in this zone. Many still do though, either for legitimate reasons, or they're working with the thieves. Automated trucking will probably fix this problem. You can have automated trucks moving from secured site to secured site without worrying about exceeding a truckers 11 hour drive limit.

They can also lock down the cargo in such a way that it sort of becomes a sort of totally-sealed (automated) roving container. Much like any security, there would be limits into how cheap they can make the container still relatively secure of course (those hijackers are pretty wily and clever!)...but that doesn't seem to be such a logistical challenge in my mind.

> The vast majority of truck thefts occur within 200 miles of the origin ...

Now. The GP point is, if in future thieves find ways to explore truck software and redirect the trucks then current statistics will change.

Aside from thieves, there's likely to be some mischief from the truckers whose jobs were taken away, or soon will be. They are already a group that's very tight, with lots of communication methods (CB, forums, newsletters, etc). And pretty good knowledge on how to disable/vandalize a semi truck.

I'd also expect more "insider" help than usual. Probably many truckers will be transitioned to lower paying roles and will be bitter.

I don't think exploiting software, in the usual sense of the term, is even necessary. Just box the truck in somehow when it's off the grid and can't phone home. There's no way the designers will build in the capability to ram through a barricade, will they?

My point, which I stated poorly, is that automated trucking is a whole new class of problems from a security standpoint. I'm leaving some scenarios out deliberately. I haven't even given much thought to the problem, but I hope someone does.

What do you think a human driver would do if they were faced with a barricade? They'll hand over the keys. Act quickly and they probably won't even have the chance to call the cops before you take their phone.

An automated truck will lock itself down, and start taking high def video. Plus, if it has a satellite hook-up, it can contact the police even from outside of cellphone range.

Laws would have to change with a person in the cab you are talking about Grand Theft, Kidnapping, and Robbery. With an AI it's just Grand Theft meaning you'd spend much less time in prison.

Exactly, the law hasn't caught up yet. Likely they'll take a cue from laws covering rail shipping, but I'm not a lawyer.

Why would laws have to change, after all there is no kidnapping and robbery occuring. Stealing the contents of an ai-truck is less terrible than robbing a truck driver at gunpoint. There is a reason one is punished more than the other.

It seems like it'd be far easier to rob a human-driven truck. Point a gun in the driver's face and they'll do whatever you want. For a machine, you'll actually have to hack into it.

> I imagine no one has explored the security implications yet.

I bet they have. Especially insurers.

Insurers, in stark contrast to VC funded startups, are very conservative. I'm confident they'll rather not spend time and money now exploring something that's not going to be reality for at least half a decade, maybe ever.

I agree, they are among the most conservative. But I think that's why they are studying it. Insurance companies hate being surprised.

Self-driving vehicles will going to prevent a lot of collisions which will in turn drive premiums way, way down. The need to insure unattended shipments is one mitigating factor that I bet they are thinking about.

I would hope so. And maybe the cost of insurance is what keeps human-driven trucking going for awhile longer.

> I bet they have. Especially insurers.

Externalize the cost: call the cops when the truck surveillance detects something and have them clean up the mess.

I think I like that better than the transport companies having private police forces.

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