I’m pretty hopeful, but it’s all in the insurance/liability.
With truck routes, you’re only going a small number of routes, that you can evaluate ahead of time, so there are very few surprises, plus you generally don’t have to deal with people. It seems like a much more predictable scenario.
However there will be accidents, so the future is in how those are handled. Will the vehicle handle it well or make it worse? Who’s liable? With they take care of the victims at least as well as driver insurance would have? Will the manufacturer or shipper be the “deep pockets” and get sued out of existence?
The ‘few surprises’ thing is the issue. I don’t think we actually can calculate how many unforeseen scenarios these trucks can cause catastrophes because of specifically due to the fact that the are unforeseen.
I am thinking that until we get a much higher level of AI in cars, they will just not come as close to a human driver when it comes to situations it’s never encountered before. They don’t have the ability to be creative enough in those situations.
Maybe that will make up for trucker accidents that could have been avoided with non-human drivers, but I don’t think there’s any guarantee there.
I’m pretty hopeful, but it’s all in the insurance/liability.
With truck routes, you’re only going a small number of routes, that you can evaluate ahead of time, so there are very few surprises, plus you generally don’t have to deal with people. It seems like a much more predictable scenario.
However there will be accidents, so the future is in how those are handled. Will the vehicle handle it well or make it worse? Who’s liable? With they take care of the victims at least as well as driver insurance would have? Will the manufacturer or shipper be the “deep pockets” and get sued out of existence?
The ‘few surprises’ thing is the issue. I don’t think we actually can calculate how many unforeseen scenarios these trucks can cause catastrophes because of specifically due to the fact that the are unforeseen.
I am thinking that until we get a much higher level of AI in cars, they will just not come as close to a human driver when it comes to situations it’s never encountered before. They don’t have the ability to be creative enough in those situations.
Maybe that will make up for trucker accidents that could have been avoided with non-human drivers, but I don’t think there’s any guarantee there.