1y ago

California Senate approves ban on autonomous trucks

driveteslacanada.ca 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 [...]

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 [...]

34 comments

Just wait until they secretly replace the trained human safety operator with this:
- I mean airplanes kinda don't drive over people walking on a sidewalk...

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.
- 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.
- Feels ain't reals.
  
  "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.

While you're at it make them pay extra for the amount trucking just fucking eats public infrastructure.
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  oil and car lobbies dominate congress.
  
  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?
- But rail infrastructure isn't that good yet in north America.
  
  If only there was a solution to that which keeps getting ignored
- Do you want your goods to become stupid expensive or something?
  
  Was not taxing them keeping the costs down? I hadn't noticed.
  
  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.

Do truckers have a union?
- Generally no.
  A few larger companies do.
  
  I thought the Teamsters were the trucker union and were relatively powerful....
- Nope. Many are independent contractors.

Why did they do this?
- According to the article, safety concerns and job protection
- 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
- This is an insanely bad decision.

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

So California is down with the Decepticons?
Fuck Optimus Prime?
Bold move.

Sure, wouldn't want them teaming up with the robo taxis already clogging SF streets.

Newsom has lost his mind with this one.

34 comments