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Comment by tynpeddler | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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