Driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes
313 comments
·May 2, 2025EvanAnderson
recursivedoubts
next level would be to hook these "platoons" together physically and then centralize the propulsion in a super efficient package. And then we could move them off the highways and onto specialized "tracks" that guarantee they don't deviate from the planned routes.
speculative, alien technology, admittedly, but some day our scientists will figure it out i bet!
o11c
The problem with railroad is exactly the other side of this: that you can't trivially and automatically detach a single car at any point. I know businesses that literally have an old railroad branch line right up to their door, but they can't actually order anything meaningful via rail.
The existing rail system has at least the following constraints:
* Uses steel-on-steel friction, rather than rubber-on-rock. Cars that can do both exist but are rare.
* Can only travel on the specially-prepared rails, not installed at the last-mile, related to the next point.
* Poor cornering and elevation changing.
* Difficulty in changing speeds (over a thousand meters and over a minute, compare to about a hundred meters and less than ten seconds for road vehicles)
* Very limited lanes, usually no passing. Track reservations will be voided if you aren't exactly on schedule.
* Almost all of the "intelligence" (both computer and human) is at one or both ends; the cars in the middle are all "dumb".
Which of these can reasonably be changed?
sephamorr
My previous company, Parallel Systems is working on this. The solution looks a lot like trucks on rail: individual locomotion, so you get the flexibility of trucking, but the energy efficiency and automation ease of rail. With modern braking, you can stop a Parallel vehicle about as fast as a truck. There's a ton of rail that's underutilized, particularly in Metro areas, so you almost get a fresh highway for free. Vehicles can platoon or separate at will.
wahern
They can all be changed, but then the capital costs for rail infrastructure would balloon and diminish the 3-5x cost advantage rail has over trucking. The modern rail business is structured (physically and, especially, financially) to squeeze every last cent out of existing infrastructure with minimal investment. I doubt that will change significantly anytime soon. The public road infrastructure subsidizes trucking (even after factoring in use and fuel taxes), and perhaps more importantly trucking companies don't have to contend with legal hurdles like land acquisition--the government handles that. (Land acquisition delays have been the biggest barrier for CAHSR.)
stackskipton
>The problem with railroad is exactly the other side of this: that you can't trivially and automatically detach a single car at any point. I know businesses that literally have an old railroad branch line right up to their door, but they can't actually order anything meaningful via rail.
Because companies have invested in JIT because low cost of trucking, an industry which is heavily subsidized (https://www.cbo.gov/publication/50049), allows it.
If trucking costs reflected their true cost, railroad would look a ton more attractive along with not doing JIT.
pcarolan
You can. It’s called multimodal and basically is just picking a shipping container off a train car with a crane and putting it on a truck platform or a ship. 1 platform supports all modes.
virtue3
railroad maintenance is also incredibly expensive.
Especially compared to when you can offload the road maintenance to the state / rest of the population.
reustle
The problem with rail is that we allowed the national rail network to be privatized. Maybe we’ll see some privatized lanes on interstate highways in the next 15 years.
skissane
> I know businesses that literally have an old railroad branch line right up to their door, but they can't actually order anything meaningful via rail.
A century ago they would have found it at lot easier: if you wanted to send just a few cars to the back of a factory, many rail operators would have found a way to make it happen, and at a reasonable price too - now they’ll tell you the service is uneconomic to provide, unless you charter an entire locomotive for $$$$
cycomanic
The bigger issue is that roads are immensely subsidised compared to rail. Even on private roads that are completely covered by usage charges, trucks pay maybe a factor of 2-10 more than cars, however they cause about 40000 times more wear (let's even disregard how they also cause disproportionately more traffic...). Obviously this calculation becomes even worse if we consider that most roads are subsidised by all tax payers. Trucks would be much less profitable (especially for long haul traffic) if they would have to cover their actual cost to society. But they are just another example of privatising profits and socialising the costs.
usrusr
Problem is those railroad cars usually don't share origin and destination. And spending a day or two on the switchyard for every couple of hours of actual travel isn't what customers want.
The beaty of platooning is that trucks can join and leave while traveling at speed, all they need is a free lane on the side.
And if you really want to tease out all the efficiencies of rail, without suffering the drawbacks, you make electrified lanes that also have embedded tracks (like those of a tramway, but designed for higher load) and make the trucks multimodals that can switch while moving. Actually just those trucks that would see an economic advantage, trucks designed for light, high volume loads would likely stick to road wheels only.
A setup like this could actually be super economical compared to two because a rail network needs huge separation between trains because rails are terrible for braking fast. Multimodals on the other hand could be designed to be able to switch to their road wheels in an emergency. And a rail network needs an ungodly amount of nines in terms of reliability and rarity of maintenance, because there is no plan B network. Reliability nines are expensive. Multimodals on the other hand could easily be diverted to a dirt road for a bit when the main lanes are defective or going through maintenance. Where they would be running on the same batteries they carry anyways, for the last couple of miles on regular, non-electrified roads.
anigbrowl
switchyard
Why not just use container cranes like docks? There's no reason they won't work inland.
airtonix
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ethbr1
Hmm. That sounds like it might lead to a monopolization of these tracks, as networks consolidate, and then ultimately evolve into a stagnant industry more focused on cutting costs than innovating...
xracy
I suspect that's why a competent government might invest more in these tracks as they might contribute a lot to delivery infrastructure. Especially in a consumer-based economy where shipping goods is important.
recursivedoubts
dammit
rsanek
turns out, the US has already done this at a scale larger than anyone else https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_tr...
cco
Jokes aside, Germany trialed a hybrid catenary truck system which was really neat.
Diesel to get you from the warehouse to the highway, extend your pantograph and boom, you're electric in the right lane (outside lane) all the way to your exit.
Never looked into how it penciled out but I always thought that was a great idea. Seems like there is a path to add in driverless aspects to the system as well given you have contact with a wire the whole time.
IMTDb
Yeah! Then those same engineers will notice how much single point of failure that model leads to, and how rigid that is. So they will be looking to leverage the existing much denser, much flexible, more connected and redundant network that exists alongside those rare tracks.
It’s almost like this evolution did not happen before.
randunel
Imagine having rails instead of roads, and roads instead of rails. The same argument would apply, only roads would lead to less efficiency overall.
floxy
So why aren't trains automated yet? I mean, beside the inter-airport shuttles. Seems like a much more constrained set of parameters to deal with. I'd think this would be a good "first" project to tackle for an AV company, even if the economics of replacing locomotive drivers/engineers weren't super compelling. Is it an insurance thing? Because a train wreck could be much more disastrous and costly? Or is it a union thing? Others?
stephen_g
Almost all of the currently automated rail systems in the world have two things:
1. Full grade separation with no level crossings (often including platform edge doors along any station platforms the trains move through too)
2. Full fencing along the corridor.
Those are two things that isn’t true for almost any freight line.
Not to say it’s not possible with extremely extensive sensor and decision making systems but we’re probably not really there yet.
degamad
Lots of trains are.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_driverless_train_sys...
tw04
> So why aren't trains automated yet?
Why? The labor of a conductor is a fraction of the total cost to move the cargo, to the point it’s a rounding error.
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jen729w
> beside the inter-airport shuttles
Singapore and Sydney would like a word.
hermitShell
Wouldn’t it be great to enable electric cars to go long distances with platoons? Like a bus system for electric cars to go between cities and charge while you drive. The ‘bus’ is basically a big efficient generator that can charge up the cars behind it. A lot like mid flight refueling for fighter jets.
voidspark
Generator powered by what? If its a diesel powered generator, that's even less efficient and more polluting than just using diesel trucks in the first place.
EsotericAlgo
This reminds me of an oft recommended book "Digital Apollo". One of the driving topics is the human interaction component and the difference in designing a fully automated system versus one that is designed with an operator that can intervene. If I recall correctly, the book presents a dichotomy between the rocketeers and pilots (automate entirely and strap people on for a ride vs design a system controlled by a human).
I think they both have their place, but I think acknowledging it as a system design choice is so helpful even in basic business processes (how will I handle exceptions, how will the person remember to handle a rare exception).
I find myself thinking of this problem frequently. We have lots of modern words for it like observability but I think that removes one a bit from the actual problem.
JumpCrisscross
> A "drivered" lead truck is leading one or more driverless trucks in this case
My bet is this goes nowhere. It’s a horseless carriage that doesn’t have enough time to pay itself back versus fully-automated platoons with remote back-up.
EvanAnderson
It seems like there's an aerodynamic advantage to the platoons. Placing an autonomous truck in the lead of one of these platoons, down the road, seems like a reasonable "upgrade" strategy.
JumpCrisscross
> Placing an autonomous truck in the lead of one of these platoons, down the road, seems like a reasonable "upgrade" strategy
Sure. I just don’t see the time-to-market advantage of starting with a human lead outpacing the core technology advantage of being fully autonomous from the get go. (Counterpoint: Waymo using Uber to manage the front end in Atlanta.)
anigbrowl
Right up until there's an accident and the lead truck suddenly has to slam on the brakes. Depending on the length of the 'platoon' and traffic density, that could get really messy really fast.
wombatpm
If we can fly a drone halfway across the world, why can’t we have human augmentation for self driving trucks. Have a human, rested, and alert monitoring several platoons back at HQ. The only reason you want a person on the train is security and paperwork.
potato3732842
I'll bet one more cynical.
The teamsters, the CDL mills, the driver trade groups, all the people who've joined hands with the hand wringing types to prevent modernization of our trucking regulations will see the writing on the wall, pull out all the stops, lobby to allow human steering wheel holders to work to their full potential and full automation will stagnate for 20+yr while tech is instead deployed to solve other nuisance problems that limit truck sizes and productivity.
istjohn
Someone should develop an ad-hoc platooning network for truckers. Install a platooning cruise control package on your rig and then get an alert on your dash when another truck in the network is in your vicinity looking to platoon. Lock in the cruise control behind the lead vehicle, and the app automatically calculates the fuel savings and divides the savings equally between the operators.
Edit: Various sources say that platooning can cut fuel use by 4-15%.
Animats
> There's also a trial of "platooning"
That's been tried before. See Demo 97, when CALTRANS had a demo of self-driving.[1] Worked OK, but took a lot of roadside equipment, like a railroad.
coolspot
1997 was ten million years ago. Waymo doesn’t require any roadside equipment.
seanmcdirmid
Wouldn’t remote monitoring be better, or the monitor is in the lead truck that is also driverless, monitoring the other trucks in the platoon?
Seriously, we are getting closer to shadowrun rigger territory, but without the neural implants that would have put us deeper in the loop.
john2x
Would piracy become a problem in this case? Pirates would only have to deal with one lonely driver to get to multipe trucks’ worth of goods.
Waterluvian
The return of the highwayman is exactly what this century needs next.
But in seriousness, what’s the next step? You drive off with five semi trucks worth of stuff? It seems like it’s just a worse way to steal trucks. Especially autonomous trucks that are going to be very well-instrumented and remote accessible.
JKCalhoun
Completely driverless and I wonder when we’ll read about the first case of truck cargo piracy.
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2
I am of two minds about all this. On the one hand, I see the clear, long-term potential given that half the people I see while driving are somehow on their phone. From that perspective, it can't come soon enough. Some people need to be off the road. On the other, I am annoyed that we are effectively beta testing those on public roads with public paying the price.
pedalpete
Is it fair to say they are "beta testing" on public roads with the public paying the price after they've done four years with a supervised driver in the cab?
LorenPechtel
We have two examples to look at:
Waymo, which appears to be doing an excellent job of handling it. Their robotaxis consistently seem to have a better track record than humans (although it's possible the limits put on them taint the comparison.)
Cruise, which had a whole bunch of problems with edge cases and last I knew wasn't allowed to operate anymore.
I'd share the road with a Waymo truck (not that their system can do that yet), I wouldn't want to share it with a Cruise truck.
throwaway48476
Once the technology has been proven it should be possible for fast followers to catch up. We can't let the market be captured by whoever passes the bar first.
callc
Definitely. Since human lives are at stake, it is fair to have an extremely high bar for safety.
vlan0
It's an interesting bar to set. And it shows how we're willing to bend that safety bar to allow seniors to drive on the roads despite their clear cognitive disadvantage.
Let's look at some raw data. Mind you, we have 100x more data for the human drivers below. ie, billions of miles vs millions for automated drivers.
Pop examined Fatal-crash rate All Level‑4 automated‑driving tests in the U.S. 1.5–1.7 per 100 M mi Drivers 70‑74 yr 1.7 per 100 M mi Drivers 75‑79 yr 2.1 per 100 M mi Drivers 80‑84 yr 4.3 per 100 M mi Drivers ≥ 85 yr 7.6 per 100 M mi
So statistically, you are much more likely to be killed by a senior citizen. So to make a consistent argument using data around safety, we should maybe be revoking the licenses of older folks?
edit: Jesus, 19% of all US fatal crashes in 2023 invloved seniors. While they make up 15% of the driver population.
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2
I think it is a fair question to ask. I personally might be too influenced by what I see in gaming these days, where the game arrives in unfinished state. The difference there is, there are some clear ways of telling they are unfinished ( or finished ).
How can we tell in this case? Do we wait for accident reports?
yunwal
What would be a better indicator to you than 4 years of driving records?
defrost
Sure .. if by "beta testing" you acknowledge a decade of driverless 100 tonne+ trucks operating in large fleets on private mining sites mixed in with "regular" driver vehicles.
This might be the first foray onto a subset of open public roads but it's not the first serious use of semi autonomous trucks mixed in with human traffic.
timewizard
I think most mining sites I've been on there isn't mixed large truck and passenger vehicle traffic on any road way. Those trucks simply cannot see you and so it's strictly forbidden, driverless or not.
They usually map out the site and show you which roads you can take in your vehicle and they are completely separate from the operations roads. There are only intersections and it's always the responsibility of passenger cars to come to a complete stop and wait for any cross traffic to pass before proceeding.
I remember this well because we had a job servicing specific equipment on a particular mining companies sites in northern Minnesota. One time we drove on the wrong road. A security vehicle saw us and drove up on us at an extremely high rate of speed to clear us off the truck road and onto the proper passenger road. He spent a good few minutes yelling at us once we were clear. People have been killed this way.
timewizard
During that time did a tire ever blow out? Did one of the brakes ever fail? Did the fifth wheel ever fail? Did the steering gear ever break?
These are things that happen. How does the AI handle them? Do we know?
antennafirepla
Agreed, I think these systems may perform well in the short term with brand new and maintained equipment but will start to fail with age and once the fleet is large enough they push maintenance schedules.
tux2bsd
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supportengineer
In America, we are willing to do anything to avoid expanding or upgrading our rail infrastructure.
AlotOfReading
The biggest problems with American rail infrastructure are related to passenger service. The US has one of the largest freight rail systems in the world by whatever metric you want to use: total miles (#1), annual tonnage (#2), ton mileage (#3) or modal share (#7).
In any case, semis occupy a largely separate mode of transportation that aren't cost competitive with freight rail where it's viable. Autonomous semis are competing mainly with the limitations of human drivers, not freight rail.
sien
To reinforce this, an article about how the US has a world leading freight rail system.
https://www.marketurbanist.com/blog/why-americas-freight-tra...
potato3732842
>mainly with the limitations of human drivers, not freight rail.
Which are regulatory more than technical at this point and could change overnight.
Obviously drivers need to sleep but the tech to make doubles and perhaps even triples workable exists but isn't worth deploying because our regulations are stuck in 1980.
sunflowerfly
Create a hub and spoke system with automated container sorting at the hubs. Basically build a national rail distribution system that works like a modern distribution warehouse. Long haul trucking should not exist.
adrr
We run the largest freight rail in the world and ship more stuff via train than any other nation. BNSF Railway's revenue is $24 billion a year. Same with Union Pacific. They dwarf the major truck freight companies like Fedex Freight or Knight-Swift.
guywithahat
The US already has the largest freight rail system in the world, there are just things rail can’t do
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deadbabe
This is a good thing IMO, it’s too late to play catch up with rail infrastructure, we should just skip to the next big thing and let the rest of the world have their antiquated rail structures.
digdugdirk
... The next big thing is rail. Until we figure out energy-efficient levitation, rail is the most efficient way to move mass at speed. That's the ideal end-state.
gazook89
> help bolster a critical sector of the American economy, which often can't find enough drivers.
They can find enough drivers, but won’t pay them enough or give them any dignity. The industry has a 90% turnover rate per year. So obviously they are finding drivers all the time…they just don’t keep them.
calmbell
Here is an article from 2022 that does a great job of explaining the issue: https://www.columnblog.com/p/us-media-celebrates-letting-18-...
"Cut to 2022. Wages are still down 30% to 50% in key markets, and the job is as dangerous and taxing as ever. Naturally, the pool of people wanting the job would reduce accordingly. Thus, when demand for truckers increases, there’s a “labor shortage.” But, as Peter Greene noted in Forbes when debunking a related myth of “teacher shortages” in 2019, it’s not a lack of willing workers: It’s a severe lack of incentives—wages, unions, benefits—needed to entice workers to take on the difficult work"
ethagnawl
I wish it were possible to get this through to the NOBODY WANTS TO WORK ANYMORE crowd. Ironically, they're the ones who would benefit from better working conditions, compensation and a stronger safety net. It's a similar phenomenon to the working class folks I know who "hate unions" ... just as long as it's not theirs or one they might be able to join.
horns4lyfe
Would you apply the same logic to people who claim we need illegal immigrants to do the jobs “no one wants to do”?
encrypted_bird
Thank you. This is no better than that terribly disingenuous argument that "nobody wants to work". No, we'd love to work. But we also value not starving to death and having some semblance of work-life balance.
throwaway48476
Someone dug into newspaper archives and found an example of the "nobody wants to work anymore" phrase every year for the last 100 years. The phrase likely predates the printing press.
mangodrunk
Thanks for sharing. Here’s the snopes article confirming the articles referenced: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nobody-wants-to-work-anymo...
encrypted_bird
This doesn't surprise me in the least. It's the same thing with older people claiming moral degeneration with younger generations.
krapp
>But we also value not starving to death and having some semblance of work-life balance.
But the free market has decided you're barely worth the cost to keep alive, much less happy. What are you, some kind of communist?
drivingmenuts
I think the free market is trying to decide if we’re even worth the cost of, well, anything.
encrypted_bird
Democratic socialist actually. I believe markets are fine but that there needs to be strong worker protections. (I know you were joking, but I figured I'd answer honestly anyway. Hehe.)
ortusdux
Is anyone working on an electric truck system where the battery is on the trailer? Many businesses are constantly rotating the same dry van trailers between hubs. If you charged the trailers at the doc during loading/unloading, the rigs could run 24/7, only stopping to swap trailers.
dylan604
how are the trailers getting charged? there are a lot more trailers than tractors, and having enough charge capacity for trailers seems like a lot. There are a lot of trailers that are just a frame with wheels for a shipping container.
93po
trailers have to sit at docks to get loaded and unloaded. they can charge then. meanwhile the truck can leave instantly. maybe a two part system of flatbed trailer with battery + cargo container sitting on top that?
dylan604
who's managing/wrangling those trailers to keep them rotating to always stay charged? you just created a new job type at the ports
hoherd
I expected to find some of the tech that snow plows use on Donner Pass for lane keeping, RRDPS, but couldn't find any info indicating that they are using highway embedded sensors to aid the autonomous trucks.
https://dot.ca.gov/-/media/dot-media/programs/research-innov...
> The RRPDS must maintain an estimate of the vehicle state (i.e., position, velocity, heading, and heading rate) relative to the roadway with position accurate to a few centimeters.
AlotOfReading
Most autonomous vehicles localize by using a point cloud map of the route with "ground truth" position data (often via GPS). The vehicle looks around and finds the closest point cloud that matches the map, and makes some adjustments for vehicle state (aka pose). GNSS is usually a secondary input if it's used significantly at all.
analog31
The farmers I know tell me that their tractors and combines use autonomous guidance, including turning at the end of each row.
bluGill
They do - I build those for john Deere. basic high school geometry is all it takes once you have gps accurate to a few cm. been working for more than 10 years (though until reciently hard to settup)
the important part to note as those systems don't have detection of anyone/thing that might be there. In a rural field no problem as nobody is there but on a city road there will be plenty of things to watch out for. We are working on the safety parts, I'm not in that area so I'm not sure what the current state is.
andy99
Curious if there are specific route features that make this feasible or not, like traffic conditions or the roads or the warehouses on either end.
vel0city
I used to drive this route every few months for many years. Lots of seas of warehouses at the edge of both of these metro areas. I-45 is in pretty good shape with a lot of recent overhauls over the last decade along the whole path. You don't need to do any difficult overpasses or interchanges. 99% of this is just stay in the right lane and drive straight. You could almost do this with just adaptive cruise control. Which I mostly did a few times, just turn on cruise control and stay in the lane and you're there in a few hours.
bdcravens
I can't wait to hear the new versions of the "Texas Hammer" Jim Adler's commercials. (for those outside of his market, he has an injury law firm, and has over-the-top ads for those injured by 18 wheelers)
dylan604
He's been around long enough that his son is now (has been for a while) appearing in these ads taking over the family business. He's quintessential ambulance chasers. I'm sure there's a dictionary out there somewhere with his (their?) picture next to the definition
rpozarickij
I think having some kind of a sign/light on a vehicle (especially big one) saying that it's being operated autonomously could be quite useful. You can't wave at an autonomous vehicle and expect it to understand from the context why you are waving at it.
thrill
Having spent a good bit of time driving in Texas, I'd say the safety-average just measurably went up.
dylan604
The roads between the Austin/SanAntonio, Houston, DFW triangle would be ideal for driverless trucks with each market having a depot where the driverless truck could exchange trailers for drivers to pick up for the local in-town "last mile" delivery.
lukaslalinsky
I'm really unfamiliar with autonomous cars, but how do they handle cases like constructor workers or even regular people (in case of an accident), manually handling the traffic by waving at drivers to go or stop? Are they systems smart enough to recognize these? Or is there someone on the other end, getting remote access to the vehicle if the road situation gets weird?
somethoughts
I feel like the ideal scenario would be to prioritize self driving truck at set times and set long haul freeways (i.e. Long Beach to Las Vegas or Galveston to Dallas) during the night time when there is no regular auto traffic - for example from 1 am-6 am.
That way if a human driver is concerned, they can choose not to drive during this period of time.
Perhaps run the trucks in a train style configuration where a "conductor" can sit in the lead truck and manage any emergency issues that arise (i.e. security, crash or weather related).
If fully autonomous, I could see securing the cargo being real issue - what would stop a few cars passage in front of the truck and helping themselves to the cargo.
JumpCrisscross
> if a human driver is concerned, they can choose not to drive during this period of time
Self-driving cars are currently proving safer than manually-piloted ones. There isn’t a good reason to segregate traffic like this.
> what would stop a few cars passage in front of the truck and helping themselves to the cargo
Why do you think a trucker would risk life or even their truck in a highway robbery?
triceratops
> Why do you think a trucker would risk life or even their truck in a highway robbery?
That's an armed robbery whereas stealing from a robo-truck is more like breaking and entering. Robberies require the willingness and ability to commit violence. Having a human witness present means more risk of things going wrong, even if they don't intervene. I think all these factors prevent a lot of potential crimes.
XorNot
No one cares if a human isn't involved because it becomes a line item on your logistics costs.
You simply iterate on the problem and see if the percentage goes down.
Not to mention you're proposing somehow making off with the contents of a semi truck in a covert way, even though it's so much stuff if takes a semi-truck to move.
mulmen
These trucks are already covered in cameras. The self driving ones even more. How does this highway robbery even work? You force the autonomous truck to stop, take an angle grinder to the doors, then... unpack all the crates and boxes and hope you find something good that's also small enough to get away with? it just doesn't pass the sniff test for me.
Barbing
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viraptor
> Self-driving cars are currently proving safer than manually-piloted ones.
As a general thing, no, we've not really had study confirming that. The stats we have are biased by the feature preselecting good drivers, good weather conditions, known road segments, and other things.
somethoughts
Actually interestingly the primary benefit of doing this would actually be trucking companies. The AI software could probably work way better and have less liability if not having to deal with corner cases of irrational human drivers.
Unfettered access to 5 lanes of freeway.
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slillibri
The problem with this is we live in a 24 hour world. When I worked 2nd shift, I got out of work at 2am so I would have to “choose not to” use the highway to get home. Also, emergency vehicles also use highways.
somethoughts
Agree -but the alternative is that at no point does anyone get to chose to opt out of driving amongst a sea of 10 ton self driving trucks.
singleshot_
I have some bad news for you: those trucks are eighty thousand pounds gross.
mulmen
> I feel like the ideal scenario would be to prioritize self driving truck at set times and set long haul freeways (i.e. Long Beach to Las Vegas or Galveston to Dallas) during the night time when there is no regular auto traffic - for example from 1 am-6 am.
But why though? These trucks will be safer than humans at the wheel. The most dangerous thing on the road will continue to be the humans driving next to the truck.
> That way if a human driver is concerned, they can choose not to drive during this period of time.
Why should we care about the concerns of a human driver? I don't get a choice to opt out of pedestrian smashing SUVs.
> Perhaps run the trucks in a train style configuration where a "conductor" can sit in the lead truck and manage any emergency issues that arise (i.e. security, crash or weather related).
What possible value will a human offer in that circumstance? We already have weather reports. Anyone willing to provide security is going to be prohibitively expensive and doesn't need to actually be in the truck. Autonomous vehicles are better at avoiding and responding to accidents than humans.
> what would stop a few cars passage in front of the truck and helping themselves to the cargo.
The FBI? What stops highway robbery today?
anigbrowl
What stops highway robbery today?
Logistics. Unless you know exactly what's in the cargo, it's probably not wortht he effort because you might get a load of toilet paper. Also getting your ill-gotten gains away from the scene is going to be a lot of work, how much stuff are you going to be able to unload before the cops show up and how many vehicles will you need to get it? You'd be better off stealing the truck itself.
insane_dreamer
In other words, trains
somethoughts
Slight difference is that there are more lanes and there's dual usage (daytime - regular auto access, nighttime - truck train access).
The benefit is to utilize existing access rights and infrastructure.
insane_dreamer
The freight rail network is fairly expansive[0] -- sure not as much as the Interstate road network, but has pretty good coverage.
The reason trucks are so popular and necessary is because they go beyond the interstate highways. Until self-driving trucks handle that portion safely and successfully, they're not much more useful than trains.
[0] https://external-preview.redd.it/VPeHZG0mzsNhJGAHJglxW1jn4Y0...
relativ575
Can you come up with a plan to ship Budweiser beer to the consumers around the country via train?
cenamus
Yeah, sounds almost like Musk's hare-brained plan to put self-driving teslas (driving with only a couple metres separation) in paved tunnels. I guess some people really hate sharing the bus/car/train with poor people
somethoughts
Quite the opposite - right now (or at least in the future unless interventions are added) poor people have no option but to submit themselves to driving sandwiched amongst with 10 ton trucks driven by who knows what, vibe coded, beta tested, "AI" software.
reaperducer
Put the driverless truck in their own roads and you've just reinvented the train.
The only difference is how maintenance of the route is paid for.
somethoughts
Yes - agreed if we had dedicated truck train roads.
The proposal I would prefer is to do more of a time based multiplexing of the road between daytime auto traffic and night time truck train traffic. And I'm not saying autos couldn't drive at night, just people could decide whether they want to trust the autonomous truck software.
As it stands we probably won't get that choice and its just shoved upon us.
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There's also a trial of "platooning" of driverless trucks on I-70 in Ohio and Indiana: https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardbishop1/2025/04/24/ease-...
A "drivered" lead truck is leading one or more driverless trucks in this case.
I drive the stretch of highway these trucks are on fairly regularly. I don't know that I've seen a group of them yet but I'm keeping my eye out.
I'm probably just showing my age, but I like the idea of a "drivered" truck leading driverless trucks versus a completely autonomous system. It's similar to my attitude on crewed spaceflight-- I like the idea of the ingenuity and capacity for independent thought supervising an automated systems, versus autonomous automated systems.