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Comment by mmazing | Hacker News Reader

Should be a fun day when people realize they can pretty easily hijack automated trucks.

I assume you could either get in the back of the thing while it's moving, or simply slow down in front of it and cause it to stop. Unload your newly acquired goods and be on your way!

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What makes you think they would be easier to hijack?

Part of the ease of hijacking truck is that you can drive off with it. What if the trailer locks its wheels and bricks itself, if it determines it's being hijacked, all while recording 360 video and sending immediate alerts to management and law enforcement?

Certainly better than a driver afraid for his life.

Think burglary vs home invasion. It's not just about easier, it's about it being a different threshold for whether it's worth it. The presence of other people drastically complicates crimes, and makes it much more likely that you'll end up dead or in prison for decades.

Also, all the countermeasures you mention aren't free or without issues, and could be in place now, but aren't. Why not?

In general, the real bottleneck with theft at scale isn't the actual theft. It's turning the stolen goods into money afterwards and disposing of the evidence. Items being slightly easier to steal doesn't do much to make them easier to fence.

You can do that now. Most truck drivers aren't going to defend their cargo with a gun.

So what's stopping people from doing that now?

Note: an automated truck can probably dial 9-1-1 as easily as a human.

Can't you use the same strategy for human driven trucks? Except that the human driver is a lot less likely to be uploading a live video stream back to the corporate office.

Assuming the truck driver isn't heavily armed or willing to endanger themselves by wrecking an 18 wheeler, there's nothing really stopping anyone from doing that today.

You seem to be working under the assumption the nobody has ever hijacked truck up to this point, and that for whatever reason self driving trucks would be left unlocked with no security mechanisms in place whatsoever.

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