We could use the work.

Most of the businesses I've worked with in the DC area are stalling expansion because they can't hire anybody.

That’s what it seems like around here at least.

Seriously. This is a better economy even than the mid-to-late 1990s. Our problems are not economic.

Also service jobs pay on average more than manufacturing jobs.

I admit that I’m not very well versed on economic issues.

it's the opposite of adding jobs.

I don't think employers have been giving raises.

The first year after the tax cut some companies gave a 1 time bonus.

They didn't raise wages and the bonus was a 1 time thing.

The cities and states that didn't raise their minimum wage, (which are the majority) are not feeling

better about the economy and their paychecks have not increased.

Looking forward to your input.

That's kind of the whole point of doing it, right?

way back. I made $4.25 then.

I worked at a department store (big regional chain, one in every mall). Then the minimum wage went up to $4.25.

Asked my manager, "will I get a raise so I'm not making minimum wage?"

Their answer was "NOPE."

Hopefully times have changed.

If the higher price of labor makes replacing them with automation more affordable.

People advocating much higher minimum wages fail to recognize the simple truth that the minimum wage cannot really be set by legislation... it is ALWAYS zero.

Trying to avoid providing benefits, like health care, paid vacations, etc.

Our company is in a serious manpower shortage. We're trying to increase in size by about 40%, while in the middle of a serious "silver crisis" of roughly 50% of the work force being eligible to retire. I've been involved in many interviews with potential employees, and all but one I recommended for hire. Our current acceptance rate is about 1 in 7. I've also personally watched 3 of our best and brightest go out the front door. The reason is plain, we aren't paying enough (especially in a total compensation sense. Cuts to benefits have been going on for about 5 years). HR keeps selling the "we are having trouble finding qualified people" excuse. But it's just not true. We are having trouble finding qualified people TO ACCEPT OUR OFFERS, but we have no trouble finding qualified candidates.

I'm very suspicious of a business that avoids expansion because of a manpower problem. Generally they are either not seriously considering expansion, or they have a productivity problem.

We have 3 drivers positions open at scale pay almost all the time. Everyone is working.

Sorry for the miscommunication!

Nuance is often DOA on a message board.

My apologies.

FWIW, I haul US Mail these days, so this directly affects the trucking discipline with which I am aligned.

I hauled cars for ten years. Maybe I should get back into that. It's going to be a long bloody time before they are able to automate THAT segment of the transportation industry.

Hell, whoever decided to put a yoke on an ox put a whole lot of hand-plow workers out of a job

Perhaps one of them will get out and actually unload the mail and deliver it.

The USPS, FEDEX and UPS trucks I see nowadays have one person operating it. What am I missing about this being a great advance?

:::: "Losing", BTW::::

There are something like 4 million OTR trucks in this country. I am pretty sure I have a bit of time left.

Most OTR company drivers only make between 50k-80k a year these days, not worth it to live in a truck and it's very dangerous.

that too much is automated and there aren't enough jobs for people born on Earth. And waiting lists for college or vocational training can be ten to thirty years long. The consequence is that people use drugs because their lives have no meaningful purpose.

I'd rather do without this delivery automation, too.

where the cops are chasing carjackers who see the self-driving car coming, so they hop in and steal the car to take to a chop shop to break it down for parts.

I'm sure in years t come Florida Man will be stealing these cars, or jumping in front of them for insurance scam purposes.

What could possibly go wrong? For the sake of capitalism, we are just guinea pigs.

I don't think robots will do worse

You know when it happens, the lawsuit will bury the company.

On edit, not to mention that the number of human drivers far outnumbers the number of robotic drivers. So, even one death by robotic car will statistically exceed those of deaths by human drivers.

No reason they should when robot drivers kill less frequently.

Death by mechanical malpractice will take a steeper toll. The need to deliver packages cheaply when we have people out of work will not outweigh the public good.

You do get that, right? Computers are better than us at driving cars already.

There has been at least one casualty that I know of because the driverless car did not recognize the broad side of a semi. There was a volunteer passenger in that car. But I imagine that’s where this is going.

Yes, it is imperfect. It's much much much less imperfect than human drivers.

versus the billions of cars that are driven by people, so no, I'm not convinced that it is safer...at this point.

It will probably get safer when the infra-structure is improved and the tweaks are corrected that will come up after every casualty. And there will be casualties. And if they mount, there will be backlash.

But, that would mean major infra-structure expense.

It's called the Interstate System.

Planes crashed a lot early in plane technology. People like you would of wanted people to stop working on planes.
Self driving cars are a inevitable and will be safer than human drivers.

Driverless cars might be an inevitability, but you will have problems with acceptance as the casualties mount. I wouldn't want to be in your position of defending it, when that happens.

How old is that picture?

He looks like the guy that used to live down the street from me. He didn't have a demon on his rig though.

Thanks for the laugh. 😊

where the vehicles take a life of their own.

The photo is from a Stephen King movie Maximum Overdrive.

.

Relieve private industry from the costs and negative PR of accidents as this technology is developed.

.

Courts do that.

It's very well established law the owner of the vehicle, be it a person or a corporation carries the liability.

No news reporter is going to change that.

and replaced with higher-paying jobs.

Should we bring back switchboard jobs? Typing pools?

were multi-ton vehicles barreling down the interstate?

throwing drivers on the scrapheap and rushing in technology too soon, that is both not necessary and not proven to be safe.

It was to be a new age, where tasks would become automated and we would only be working 20 hours a week maximum and able to pursue leisure and educational activities because we would have so much time, because the fruits of all this new technology would be shared among us. I was told that 40 years ago. It was BS and still is.

Waymo’s Robots Drove More Miles Than Everyone Else Combined

Self-driving cars promise to change cities, mint billionaires, and push robots into the everyday lives of millions of people. The only problem is, no one knows quite when or how. And with all the research and development locked up inside private companies, the public has little information to judge the progress of the technology, aside from the occasional PR reveal or disaster.

We have one (imperfect) yardstick, however: the numbers that the California Department of Motor Vehicles requires that any company testing an autonomous vehicle in the state file every month. Those are rolled up and released in January of each year. Though people in the industry don’t like what they see as the uneven comparisons between companies, this is the best we’ve got. The data include two primary numbers: the number of autonomous miles driven, which gives a rough indication of the scale of a program in the state, and the number of disengagements, or when a human driver takes over for the computer.

For every year of these disclosures, Waymo, the self-driving-car project within Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has been the leader by a wide margin.

The year 2018 was no different. Waymo drove 1.2 million miles in the state, which is not even its primary testing ground. Its cars disengaged 114 times, for a rate of 0.09 disengagements per 1,000 miles. That’s down from 0.18 in 2017. GM Cruise cemented its position as the key challenger to Waymo supremacy, logging nearly 448,000 miles with 162 disengagements, for a rate of 0.19 per 1,000 miles, and that’s on San Francisco’s difficult streets, a fact that GM Cruise’s Kyle Vogt is fond of pointing out. Together, the two companies’ cars drove 86 percent of the autonomous miles in the state.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/the-latest-self-driving-car-statistics-from-california/582763/

I confess that in 1901, I said to my brother Orville that man would not fly for fifty years… . Ever since, I have distrusted myself and avoided all predictions.
— Wilbur Wright, in a speech to the Aero Club of France, 5 November 1908.

To highlight the article that you posted:

the public has little information to judge the progress of the technology

We have one (imperfect) yardstick

Do you really believe there is enough data that shows that self-driving TRUCKS are safe enough at this moment in time that you would agree to let loose what is a lethal weapon on our highways?

I don't want to take unnecessary risks with human lives, do you?

by having humans driving automobiles. Name a day in the past 100 years that there was not a fatal accident caused by a human driving an automobile.

Deaths in traditional vehicles is about 1.25 per 10 million miles.

There has been one death in driverless cars to date. Also to date driverless cars have logged about 8 million miles from Waymo alone. Just using the 8 million figure, and including the one death from Uber which was considered unavoidable even with a driver, the death rate is exactly the same.

Add in the miles logged by others (apple, Uber, Tesla etc) and even with the technology still in beta, they are already safer than you and I.

The answer at this point of time is no.

like the "people kill people, not guns" argument.

Such an obvious use of a straw man fallacy which leads me to believe you really don't have an argument if you have to resort to such tactics.

Human operated vehicles are not safe. My comment was a reply to one you made:

" The issue is are self-driving trucks safe?"

I don't think that's an issue because the number of deaths and injuries incurred in human operated vehicle accidents every year show that such vehicles are themselves not safe but we as a society are willing to accept a certain level of carnage on our roads and streets. We'll do the same with self driving trucks too.

Such as:

-- anyone caught drunk driving should lose their licenses
-- alcohol sensors in cars that wont allow the vehicle to start if driver fails breathalyzer test
-- more and better cameras
-- more avoidance sensors and better driver assist technology

"Computer Assisted Driving" is where we should heading not "Computer Driven Vehicles".

triggering fines or even points on the license. Suddenly, we would cut road deaths significantly.

Leave the Police state and surveilance state is for the other guys.

getting in a self-driving vehicle that is controlled by a set of rules and will never break the speed limit or drive too close to the vehicle in front is fine, but it is "a police state" for drivers in non-automated vehicles to be subject to the enforcement of those same rules.

Driverless vehicles mean you completely give up any control on how it drives to a set of rules, but that isn't "a police state?"

they aren't sentient. I am.

btw, no one is yet advocating or even testing "giving up control". Any self driving car can be driven manually. Just like an aircraft has an optional auto-pilot.

You can't undo invention and you can't stop progress.

In countless ways we are on the brink of massive change to the la is market. Automation is quickly going to replace any jib that is menial and/or repetitive.

Amazon says entirely automated warehouses are 10 years away. There are just under a million warehouse jobs in the US.

Self driving trucks are coming, there are 3.5 million truck drivers in the US.

Cashiers are also threatened by self checkout kiosks. There are over 3 million cashiers in the US.

Just those three examples threaten 7.5 million jobs. That is 4.7% of the US workforce. Yes, new jibs will be created to support that automation; but there will be far fewer and they will require skills, education, and training that the displaced workers do not have. We are on the brink of massive structural unemployment. Many will go right from employed to unemployable as there will no longer be jobs for their skillset.

We struggle to support our current levels of homeless, poor, and needy Americans. We need to plan now for what is coming to avoid disaster.

I'm an IT contractor (BA or PM depending on the job), most of my work is in software design, configuration, and project management. My job is helping businesses automate other people's jobs. Believe me when I say this is going to happen.

Amazon will throw its workers on the scrapheap. It will employ very few people compared to revenue, pay no taxes, squeeze out any new competition, be the biggest retailer on earth, continue to shut down more book store and other retailers, and pay even more billions to its shareholders.

This is capitalism that is out of control that will result in human suffering, and every single one of us will pay the price.

Most people are not ready for this. Can you imagine seeing a huge driver-less truck barreling down the highway at 70 mph?

I am a software engineer and I love technology but automated vehicles scare me. There are just too many variables and exceptions and dangers. I dont think its ready for prime time.

A barreling semi truck has a malfunction, doesn't recognize that a road or offramp or the like is closed for construction, decides to use that roadway and it's filled with dozens of construction workers and heavy equipment, and the thing ends up killing 20 people and causing a few $10M+ in damages ... pics of the carnage, crying relatives, etc, end up on the national evening news ...

And then bam ... all of the automated vehicles are ordered off the roads.

Personally I think they're going to turn out to be too complicated of machines to be reliable ENOUGH ... to ever allow them to be totally driverless, except maybe for some specific, simple routes.

Gotta remember these things are brand-new right now, and all under direct control of the companies that make the tech. Once this tech starts getting SOLD, to regular companies that don't necessarily have the same technological 'know-how' ... they're likely to start getting a lot less safe as they won't be maintained the same way as they are right now.

There is no evidence that the technology is there yet. Even a poster very much in favor on this thread reminds us that early flight was unsafe. Not a ringing endorsement!

and will attempt to avoid them. In fact these systems probably see better that human eyes in most cases since they use something like radar. However it is the odd weird unexpected scenarios that worry me. Those happen frequently on busy roads and may confuse a self-driving vehicle. Also, I worry simply about a basic malfunction like the United 737 Max. The automation simply failed in those crashes. No doubt that will happen with these vehicles from time to time and when it happens hopefully there wont be people in the way.

Im not sure how that will work. Here's an article from last year that discusses it. It sounds rather iffy.

https://www.engadget.com/2018/05/08/waymo-snow-navigation/

Maybe things have improved since then... I kind of doubt it.

But my eyes cannot.

But a computer can be programed to slow down when the data in ambiguous. A human is taught to slow down. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they dont

I understand that an infrared camera or detector can read temperature, but I'm just not sure the software currently is able to detect the complete array of conditions. I've seen it snow and turn to rain at chest level. The opposite condition - freezing rain, happens often in the winter, and the temperature can be in the high 30's.

I have no doubt that sooner or later autonomous trucks will be commonplace, don't get me wrong, but the way I see it, there needs to be a lot more standardization nationwide before these vehicles can be reliably safe everywhere.

Road marking on the interstate system are standardized, (otherwise your highway can't get the designation, from what I understand) but the processes and methods used to set up warning devices for construction zones is NOT standardized.

Just like it fools people today.

Todays benchmark is 1.25 deaths per 10 million miles. Waymo is currently at 8 million miles and no deaths. Add in the death in the Uber accident, without adding in Ubers miles and we are already at break in. I don't know about the data for fender benders but for the thing we worry about most (dying in traffic), the technology is looking extremely promising.

Totally agree on road markings btw. I also expect that the highways will be additionally marked with other RF type markings to give the computer FAR more road data than can be conveyed by the pictorial signs that we humans use today.

by not acting to recall and fix the issue. It took two planes and hundreds of lives until it was forced to act, and the US government was slow to ground the planes. It turned out Boeing did its own inspecting on its own systems. And this is only based on what we know so far.

This is the standard that we can expect to be applied to self-driving trucks. Is there any reason to have confidence that this will go well?

Hundreds of planes have been grounded worldwide for a reason.

The grounding isn't actually solving a problem at this point.

or ice on the road far far better than my visibile light eyes.

I just feel this technology is being rushed. I suspect alot of this is being driven (no pun intended) by the stock market. Investors love this stuff so companies are pushing it to get a stock boost.

in a short period of time. In this case, we really dont need this technology. It provides nothing critical that we don't already have.

Yes, perhaps someday it will be a safer alternative to what we have now but I dont think we are there yet.

I feel this technology is being forced on us by companies trying to generate buzz so their stock price goes up.

These things are coming, computing power is up to the point where it can anticipate and react to things many times more accurately than a human can.

This will exacerbate the division between prosperous urban and suburban areas and rural ones. The latter community is where truck drivers come from, predominately.

( "Rural communities" )

Really? I'm curious where you got that information.

The vast majority of truck drivers I have met in my 30 plus years in this industry weren't "rural". They lived in cities and towns.

There certainly are particular segments of this business that a significant number of drivers are from the country, like grain haulers, as an example ( because they live near their primary source of cargo), but to suggest that truck drivers come "predominately" from rural areas is inaccurate.

based on who I've met.

The truck can run 24 hours a day. 2 people can run 22 hours (legally)

SO that's a 10% improvement right there.

Oh but the 2nd person? He's monitoring data in test mode. In production it'll be 1 person.

Maybe the designers for Tesla can help them.

Husband is a truck driver and he reads up on all of this regularly.

He's not too worried safety-wise. He sees actual truck drivers as more dangerous. The stories he's told has scared the crap out of me. It's the nature of the business.

Our big worry is that as technology improves, that some companies will see the benefit and will begin costing jobs. It's not likely to happen before retirement, but it is still a problem for the industry. Truck driver turnover is high. That lifestyle isn't for everyone. Trucking companies could be persuaded. It's more profit for them without a human driver in the seat. But, I don't expect it to get like that for several years.

I'm not worried about a self-driving truck mail delivery test at this point.

nothing. Then they came for us and we really did nothing. We were all replaced by machines.

If they could program robots to become consumers, we would eventually all become human garbage left to rot as we would be no use at all to big business.

Everything on a big truck breaks, this technology will also.