Will Autonomous Trucks Be Taking Our Jobs Away?

 I am seeing a lot of people concerned about starting a trucking career lately because they think driver-less trucks will soon be taking over our interstates and consequently killing the job market. I’ve been hearing these same reports for twenty years now. I guess we will still be hearing them for the next 40 years. We are nowhere nearer today than we were 20 years ago.

About five years ago there were television programs declaring that driver-less trucks would be taking over truck driving jobs within two years. There is a big scam going on within the tech industries that is driven by greed. If you can convince people you are on the cusp of something really big, then you can get them to open their bank accounts and invest lots of money with you. That’s the scam. Everything about the autonomous truck craze is designed to raise money now for something nobody has a clue how to accomplish.

We actually have driver-less trucks already. They can work fairly well within a confined environment where we control the elements and factors they will be dealing with. That is the problem. We can’t control their environment nationwide. We could accomplish this task if we could afford an entirely new nationwide infrastructure designed solely for big trucks. It seems we can’t even come up with enough money to properly maintain the infamous pothole riddled George Washington Bridge. Everyone is focused on creating self driving trucks to work within our existing infrastructure. That approach will never work. It will always yield a vehicle that still needs a driver on board.

We currently have all kinds of crash mitigation technology in the trucks we are driving. Most of it is total garbage. It is so unreliable that it causes more problems than it does solutions. I’ve had my truck slam on the brakes because I passed under an overpass. Just a shadow in the road will sometimes trigger the forward crash mitigation system to activate the brakes as if there were an emergency. Sensors are only sensing possible dangers, they do not process thoughts and make judgments. Those are uniquely human qualities. Sensors covered in ice and snow basically shut down and stop working. I wish you could see some of the incredibly risky road conditions I have successfully navigated. We sometimes face nightmarish conditions. Humans can handle it, and actually do it safely. 

We have had self flying planes for years now. Even under the power of auto-pilot we still have two pilots on board our commercial airliners. We have trains that run on tracks and could not possibly get off course, yet they still have engineers on board. We can put a rover on far away planets like Mars, and have it operating a mission there without a human being present. The reason that’s possible is because it is a far easier task than what we are attempting with autonomous trucks.

The transportation industry is not confined to its own separate environment. We are side by side with minivans full of small children. We are facing ever changing conditions moment by moment. It is much easier to fly an aircraft on auto-pilot than it is to drive an 80,000 pound vehicle under similar technology. There are so many difficulties when on the ground surrounded by other vehicles and variables. It becomes exponentially more complicated.

I have been brief here, but I wanted to address this. Do not concern yourself over self-driving trucks taking your career away from you. It is not happening now, and will not be happening in any near future I can see. The complexities of the trucking world are proving to be a great challenge to technology. Even the autonomous trucks going through various levels of beta testing generally have two drivers on board, and a convoy of other vehicles escorting them. Ease your mind of this concern. You are still needed out here. That demand will continue on into days of incredible technology advances.