Do Robots Drive While Their Babysitters Sleep?
They thought there was a 'Driver Shortage' now, wait until most trucks are semi-autonomous.
*with apologies to the late Philip K. Dick for the title
The fine folks at Overdrive Online just put out an article of interest to myself and you, my fine readership, about plans to study driver involvement in “autonomous trucks”.
I will forgive them the error here, but as soon as you read into the article, what they’re really discussing are Level 2 and Level 3 semi-autonomous trucks.
What do they mean by Level 2 and Level 3?
A great explanation of how the SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) define the different levels of vehicle autonomy can be found here, and they provide a very concise image which I have grabbed for you.
One of the dirty little secrets the autonomous truck makers don’t discuss at the volume they should, is that between the mostly human driven trucks we have now, and the Level 5 Fully Automated rigs of fantasy which give Tech-Bros such massive boners, we are going to have quite a period of working out the bugs within these other levels. This is part of ‘The Slope’, as described by Cornell Sociologist and researcher Karen Levy, in chapter 7 of her upcoming book on all things trucker tech, ‘Data Driven - Truckers, Technology, and The New Workplace Surveillance’ due out later this year.
*(Side note on Levy’s book - I have been commissioned to write a review of it for an online magazine who shall remain nameless at this time - I don’t want to jinx it, as I have never written a book review before.)
”The Slope”, as Levy puts it, is one of my primary concerns, and a major reason why I started this Substack and write what I do; this Slope is the Achilles’ Heel which many of the pimps for automation have not given enough serious consideration to.
From the Overdrive article -
FMCSA said approximately 100 drivers will participate in the new study, which will examine the effect of non-driving secondary task engagement, transfer of control, and training on driver behavior in trucks equipment with Automated Driving Systems (ADS) tech.
Imagine, for a moment, you are driving along that very flat and unexciting stretch of Interstate 80 through Nebraska, or perhaps Trans-Canada Highway 1 between Winnipeg and Regina. Most of us would be (and are), for obvious reasons, kinda bored, and many find themselves having difficulty maintaining complete attention even when in full control of a vehicle.
Do you think the requisite excitement to improve your attention is going to be accomplished by having to perform even less tasks in operating the vehicle?
Will you be able to pull yourself away from scrolling Regina Tinder in time to dodge that deer that just jumped out over the road? How about that drunk person walking down the side of the highway, who maybe strays a little too far from the shoulder? What if it is winter time, and you are pulling an empty van trailer, and that cold prairie wind pushes on the side of your rig so hard that you lose traction and possibly jack-knife? Will you be able to snap out of your technology induced coma in time to take over driving before you plant your Waymo truck out in the frozen rhubarb?
Now let us consider the labor and economic considerations.
Setting aside that the ‘truck driver shortage’ has been fully dispensed with as a pernicious lie, despite the ghouls at The American Trucking Association repeated attempts at animating this wretched corpse, let us think about where they are going to find willing volunteers to babysit these Code driven rigs.
(Wouldn’t it be more fun if, like an X-Wing, R2D2 was sitting in the passenger seat, rather than Cold, Hard code tucked into a box behind the dash?)
Most drivers I know already have a problem with automatic transmissions, various demeaning and demoralizing lane control and front collision avoidance tech, as well as engine derates or ELDs, to name but a few things which have wrested control over their rigs from these professionals over the years. Trucking can be a psychologically boring job, and given that the state is already chasing out those whom have the chops to get it done, just who is going to tolerate being bored to death by yet more control over your work being taken away from you? How are they going to top the old promises of becoming a Lease Operator to attract people who would be willing to strap in for what amounts to a Greyhound Bus Ride, but all alone, and you have to take over immediately when a problem occurs? Maybe they will make the ‘driver’ shortage a reality by taking away most of the driving.
The image I posted at the top of this post makes a very good and succinct point which applies to The Slope, and which I do not believe the FMCSA, nor the Autonomous Truck manufacturers and various systems designers understand - when the shit hits the fan, do you think the type of people you have bamboozled into driving these robot rigs will be ready? Will you find willing babysitters of these utopian PanTechnicons made real? I have my doubts.
My good friend, fellow trucker, and meme master, Justin 'Supertrucker' Martin, one of the emprasarios of the Back The Truck Up website and podcast, made a neat little video which is very relevant to the Autonomous Trucks issue, and I will end with it here for you to consider.