The first driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes

Not after the first snowfall, they won’t.

Great, just in time for the number of shipments of imports needing to be distributed across the US to plummet...

Americans will do anything to avoid just using trains.
- Trains help poor people too. We like to pretend we don’t have poor people. Makes them easier to ignore while pretending to be Christian.
- Except that nearly all US rail is for freight. We hate PASSENGER trains. We freaking love freight rail.
  
  Except that's rail only carries 16% of freight by weight and 2% of freight by value.
  Pretty sure USA hates freight rail too.
  https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-846-november-10-2014-trucks-move-70-all-freight-weight-and-74-freight-value
  
  But american freight trains are laughably bad too
  https://youtu.be/AJ2keSJzYyY
  
  And semi rigs (which are the topic of this post) are....personal transport?
- While I don't necessarily disagree with you, trains are used here all the time specifically for long haul stuff.
  
  I used to be the shipping/receiving guy in a warehouse, it fell to me to arrange all of our freight pickups, which was annoying because I didn't really have direct access to any information about pricing, deadlines, etc. so I was constantly going back to the office to show someone quotes to see whether the rates and transit times were acceptable.
  Most of our freight was LTL stuff (less than truckload, a couple pallets, not enough to fill a truck by itself) but a few times every month or two we'd get full truckload sized orders.
  When it came to them, often "intermodal" shipping had much better rates. Intermodal meaning at least 2 different forms of transportation were going to be used. Truck, train, boat, cargo plane, etc.
  As a US-based company with mostly US-based customers, that usually meant rail for us.
  However, almost none of our shipments went intermodal because it was too slow for our customers.
  It wasn't usually a drastic difference, we're talking maybe 1-3 extra days in most cases. Over the Road (OTR) there weren't many places in the US that we couldn't get freight to from our location in 5 days or less, and those 5 day locations were mostly real middle-of-nowhere customers on the other side of the country.
  It always blew my mind that we didn't or couldn't push our customers to just place orders 2 or 3 days earlier to save some pretty significant money on shipping.
  I don't claim to know much about the industry, i was just some kid who needed a job and ended up the shipping guy because I knew how to use a computer and spoke English. But we a textile company that made things like work clothes (chef coats, scrubs, industrial work wear, etc) and restaurant table linens, and we sold mostly to bigger wholesalers, business service companies, etc. who would resell it or provide it to their customers as part some sort of contracted laundry service or something, so not really something I'd think of as being particularly time-sensitive or wildly unpredictable that they couldn't anticipate their bigger orders a couple days ahead of time
  Guess it probably says something about how much we all love instant gratification.
  
  Rail is used in the US. We just don't have as much rail infustructure so they can only get so far. If the port/factory/wearhouse aren't connect by rail then they'll have to use trucks for at least part of the transit.
- Trains are great but they don't typically run to your local warehouse...
  
  They have, and they could again
  
  They used to.
- Not much competition in railways. Like literally none.

Why not make automated trains with their own dedicated right of way?
- But that would require investment in infrastructure...
  
  Bet that semi trucks are more expensive due to road damage and congestion alone.
- *** everyone but the lobbyists liked that ***
- They already are automated trains on freight only routes like mines.
  
  Outside of mines or just in mines? I know that mines are becoming more automated but what about commercial routes.
- It's absurd to suggest running a railway to every warehouse in East Bumfuck, Missouri.
  
  No one's claiming that. Trucks can still handle the last mile just like they do it with container ships.
  Im no logistics expert byt ship -> train -> semi sounds like a great infrastructure design especially now as the container is interchangeable between all of these mediums.
  
  Oh. But a road is famously cheap.

Fuck cars. Fuck massive death trucks even more.

As of Thursday, the company’s self-driving tech has completed over 1,200 miles without a human in the truck.
That's not an impressive number. That's like 2 days' worth of driving.
- Yeah that's about 2 and a half round-trips between Dallas and Houston, that's...not a lot to be calling this thing ready to go and pulling out the safety drivers.
  I wonder how these handle accidents, traffic stops, bad lane markings from road construction, mechanical failure, bad weather (heavy rain making it difficult/impossible to see lane markings), etc.
  You'd think they would be keeping the safety drivers in place for at least 6+ months of regular long-haul drives and upwards of 100k miles to cover all bases.
  
  The one article I heard on TechLinked talked about them using lidarr.
  So better in every way than a tesla.
  Assuming they are top mounted, they have a better scanning coverage than a regular car.
  
  It would be more interesting to know how many miles they completed with the safety driver in the vehicle.
  
  That figure is without a human in the truck, not with a safety driver. I.E, they've done a bunch of testing beforehand.
  
  Most rigs go at least 1,000,000 miles and that isn't isn't even end off life. You'll be paying not much less than new for a rig that only has 100k, that's practically brand new. These systems should have 100 million proven miles. These things weight 80,000lbs which can be very hazardous materials.
  You should see the pile ups semis cause in low visibility. Even with really good lidar, I hesitant to say autonomous trucks can be safe running off independent systems on full mixed use roads.
  We could add those systems to all roads to feed back to semis to know conditions and hazards miles before they reach them. We could build new smart roads for all autonomous vechilce to travel on separately.
  Or we could just end the 100+ year old railroad cartel. Could move people and cargo with ease. But that isn't profitable.
- Its enough to prove the concept.
  If it saves 1% of operating costs trucking businesses will be falling over themselves to implement it.
  
  Nah no one's going to bother with new tech for 1% - that's crazy.

Great... I can't wait to be hit by one of those on my motorcycle
- I'd actually bet they're safer than some tweaked out dude on his 20th hour at the wheel.
  
  Ok, elmo.
- Same. Our government can't even figure out a way for us to trigger a green light so I'm not confident that any self-driving vehicle regulations will consider us either.
  
  Heh, I got hit by that stupid thing today. Luckily the crosswalk button was right there, so I ran over and smacked it before the traffic signal cycled again.
  
  Large neodymium magnet on the bottom will do it. Most are induction activated. They taught this in every motorcycle driving class I ever attended, along with the rules for legally running a red light.
- I vaguely remember a dystopian book that described that exact thing as the protagonist thinking he was looking at an odd flag on the front of the truck until he realized what it was. Can't remember what the book was though 😔

What an incredibly infuriating waste of effort that would be so much better spent on trains, driverless or otherwise.
- I disagree. There are many situations where a truck is better suited for transport than a train. The US already has a pretty large freight train network. I agree that there definitely should be more investment in rail as well, but there's no reason for both not to exist at the same time.
  
  There are, but “long haul routes” are definitely better for a train.
- I don't know why you're being down voted; here's an upvote for being sensible.

And how do they handle a person slowing down in front of them and hijacking them? At least a human might be able to navigate away aggressively but I think the programming would prevent as much harm as possible.
This new lawless future and we may need to raid corpo lords.
- I think the programming would prevent as much harm as possible.
  well, yeah... why wouldn't you want a human to do the same thing??? you're watching too many fast and furious movies.
  Firstly, no one in an 18 wheeler loaded with cargo is "navigating away" from anyone desperate enough to attempt such a scheme. This entire idea is ludicrous, think about how slow and massive those trucks are.
  Secondly, you don't want an 18 wheeler loaded with cargo being driven aggressively. You're just escalating the risk of killing yourself and everyone around you, for what, a truckload of insured corporate assets?
- I can't really imagine people wanting to hijack a truck that's basically a giant camera and tracking system.
  
  I dunno I can see it being done, go in first with a drone and blind the cameras one by one (not hard to rig it up with spray paint) then grab the goods, pick an isolated section of the route so you're gone by the time anyone comes looking.
  I for one predict a glorious era of road pirates.
  
  I've seen plenty of youtube videos to know people are dumb enough to try this.
  
  The resistance needs supplies!
  
  Really?
  Big box truck, no plate or other #s on the rear. Halloween masks for the crew.
  I think that'd work, no problem.
- Honestly, sounds like the corporation's problem. I'm more afraid for human lives than some product in the back. In a case like that it'd be better to not have a driver who could be killed.
- Why do you think a morbidly obese truck driver would have any luck against blaggers with shotguns ?
- Driverless does not meant unmonitored. Aside from numerous sensors, including door sensors, you really think if it suddenly slows to 0 mph at an unscheduled time/location that it's not going to alert someone? "Hey, your freight just stopped transporting itself. Guess we should do nothing". Aside from most of these being ready to be taken over by a remote driver if need be for liability and convenience reasons.

But, do they speak English?

Even in a hypothetical best-case scenario world, unless you have a driver on board any malfunction and you're delayed 2-8 hours because there wasn't a person in there to repair anything
- How many issues on a truck is the driver able to fix themselves though?
  
  A lot. Most of them do a lot of basic maintenance and break-fix work themselves.

Terrifying.
I wonder how much our car insurance will go up due to this.
- I get that you're scared about multi ton vehicles running without a human. But self driving can and actually be safer than human drivers sometimes. Yes, self driving vehicles can cause devistating accidents in situations where a human driver would have handled the situation much better. Sometimes they can just bug out, which seems particularly dangerous, but we also need to consider who they're replacing: Humans. Humans get tired, Humans text & drive, Humans blink, Humans Yawn, Humans do drugs, Humans sometimes just don't pay attention. Because machines don't have any of these factors, they can statistically be much safer, of course assuming the technology is ripe enough and thoroughly tested before it's used.
  
  Ok, elmo.

Lot lizard economy in shambles.

But do the drivers speak English? /s