California Senate approves ban on autonomous trucks::California’s State Senate this week passed a bill which, if signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom, would require autonomous semi-trailer trucks to have a trained human safety operator whenever they operate on public roads […]

  • Gnothi@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    59
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Just wait until they secretly replace the trained human safety operator with this:

  • Max-P@lemmy.max-p.me
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    42
    arrow-down
    6
    ·
    1 year ago

    I’ve seen enough dashcam footage from truck drivers being cut off in traffic and nearly causing a major accident or running over people that this seems like a pretty wise decision until the technology matures.

    Trucks have a huge amount of momentum, they can’t just slam the brakes like on a Tesla. Humans aren’t particularly good at split second decisions but I feel experienced truckers definitely have better guts on how to react than a computer. Fully support requiring someone to keep an eye on it for now.

      • oatscoop@midwest.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        17
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        “The humans brain is currently better at understanding edge cases, dealing with incredibly odd situations, and predicting other human’s behavior than AI” is more of a fact than a feeling.

        Self driving AI doesn’t notice the driver passing them is nodding off or screaming while giving it the finger. It doesn’t pick up the subtle clues that another driver is drunk or distracted. It can’t see that a load in a pickup truck it’s following isn’t properly secured and predict it falling off.

        Self driving AI currently struggles with fairly common situations. It’s not ready to be in charge of something as deadly as a semi-truck.

        • sizzler@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          I don’t disagree but all of those examples you gave were human. I bet they will be able to recognise drunk quickly. Everything you argue with is present “knowledge”. It’ll grow and the weak link will be people around the roads as you so wisely point out.

  • Sanctus@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    25
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    1 year ago

    While you’re at it make them pay extra for the amount trucking just fucking eats public infrastructure.

    • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      15
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I don’t usually agree with many American leftist talking points, but really what’s it with railways being so little used in the USA? When you need scale with regular routes and regular volumes of anything, it’s unrivaled.

      • hoch@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        16
        ·
        1 year ago

        US railways are heavily used. In fact, we have the largest rail network in the world.

        The problem is that it’s almost exclusively used for freight.

          • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            Cost is determined more by what people are willing to pay and less by what it costs to make the product.

            If they can charge $5 for a bottle of water, they’re going to do that whether it’s costs $1 or $2 to make.

            So if they could increase costs today, they would. An increased tax would give them a politically friendly exercuse to do so, but it’s just an excuse. They’d do it either way.

      • Sanctus@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        No, what I really want is more transportation options to get as many fucking people off the road as possible. Covid was beautiful when no one was driving but my company made me.

      • baccano@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        14
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        I thought the Teamsters were the trucker union and were relatively powerful…

        • Radium@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          15
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          Teamsters have a freight division but the total teamster membership was 1.3 in 2015 and there were 3.6 million truckers in the United States in 2020, so I wouldn’t say most truckers are in a union.

          Teamsters doesn’t disclose what percent of their membership is made up by their freight division

          • legopika@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            Don’t forget that the package division(ups) is a large chunk of their membership.

            According to their website “The Package Division is the union’s largest division, serving hundreds of thousands of members throughout North America.”

    • 5BC2E7@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Probably to protect jobs. They are willing to risk our lives in cities since they allow autonomous cars there. So it’s unlikely that they have safety concerns with trucks

  • kriz@slrpnk.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    1 year ago

    They’ll just go secretive and underground like in that Simpsons episode