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 [...]

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.worldEnglish
    571·
    1 year ago

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

  • Max-P@lemmy.max-p.meEnglish
    416·
    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.

    • El Barto@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      1 year ago

      You’d be surprised at how quickly a truck can brake to a complete stop.

      But you’re right regardless. It’s the momentum what makes them dangerous. If a car taps another car for half a second, the damage might be catastrophic. A semi doing the same? Yikes.

      • oatscoop@midwest.socialEnglish
        151·
        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.worldEnglish
          2·
          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.worldEnglish
    245·
    1 year ago

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

    • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      163·
      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.worldEnglish
        13·
        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.

      • Sanctus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        61·
        1 year ago

        You sure are right, bud. I beseach you, have you thought of the money to be made by convincing a nation to become dependant on your industry?

          • surewhynotlem@lemmy.worldEnglish
            52·
            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.worldEnglish
        62·
        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.worldEnglish
        144·
        1 year ago

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

        • Radium@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          15·
          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.zoneEnglish
            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.worldEnglish
      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.netEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

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