Why not make automated trains with their own dedicated right of way?
The first driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes | CNN Business
Submitted 1 day ago by cm0002@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/01/business/first-driverless-semis-started-regular-routes
Comments
twopi@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Rambomst@lemmy.world 1 day ago
But that would require investment in infrastructure…
drmoose@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Bet that semi trucks are more expensive due to road damage and congestion alone.
yggstyle@lemmy.world 1 day ago
*** everyone but the lobbyists liked that ***
catloaf@lemm.ee 1 day ago
It’s absurd to suggest running a railway to every warehouse in East Bumfuck, Missouri.
drmoose@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
JeremyHuntQW12@lemmy.world 1 day ago
They already are automated trains on freight only routes like mines.
twopi@lemmy.ca 20 hours ago
Outside of mines or just in mines? I know that mines are becoming more automated but what about commercial routes.
PattyMcB@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Great… I can’t wait to be hit by one of those on my motorcycle
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’d actually bet they’re safer than some tweaked out dude on his 20th hour at the wheel.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 hours ago
Ok, elmo. Do you work in AI?
SHOW_ME_YOUR_ASSHOLE@lemm.ee 1 day ago
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.
lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
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.
fishos@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
yggstyle@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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 😔
jballs@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
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.
suicidaleggroll@lemm.ee 1 day ago
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 failures, etc.
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 1 day ago
That figure is without a human in the truck, not with a safety driver. I.E, they’ve done a bunch of testing beforehand.
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
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.sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
It would be more interesting to know how many miles they completed with the safety driver in the vehicle.
GluWu@lemm.ee 1 day ago
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.
JeremyHuntQW12@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Its enough to prove the concept.
If it saves 1% of operating costs trucking businesses will be falling over themselves to implement it.
drmoose@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Nah no one’s going to bother with new tech for 1% - that’s crazy.
Hawke@lemmy.world 1 day ago
What an incredibly infuriating waste of effort that would be so much better spent on trains, driverless or otherwise.
Redex68@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
Hawke@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
There are, but “long haul routes” are definitely better for a train.
boatswain@infosec.pub 1 day ago
I don’t know why you’re being down voted; here’s an upvote for being sensible.
Sunsofold@lemmings.world 9 hours ago
Great, just in time for the number of shipments of imports needing to be distributed across the US to plummet…
rekabis@programming.dev 7 hours ago
Not after the first snowfall, they won’t.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 hours ago
Fuck cars. Fuck massive death trucks even more.
The_Caretaker@lemm.ee 21 hours ago
SouthEndSunset@lemm.ee 20 hours ago
ThePantser@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
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.
saltesc@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I can’t really imagine people wanting to hijack a truck that’s basically a giant camera and tracking sysystem.
CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
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 go in and 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.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’ve seen plenty of youtube videos to know people are dumb enough to try this.
ThePantser@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
The resistance needs supplies!
MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Really?
Big box truck, no plate or other #s on the rear. Halloween masks for the crew.
I think that’d work, no problem.
acosmichippo@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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No one is “navigating away” from motivated thieves in an 18 wheeler loaded with cargo.
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why would you want a human doing anything aggressive on the road endangering themselves and likely others in the process?
If you’re getting hijacked don’t risk your life and others’ lives on the road for the sake of corporate assets.
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MBech@feddit.dk 1 day ago
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.
JeremyHuntQW12@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Why do you think a morbidly obese truck driver would have any luck against blaggers with shotguns ?
fishos@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
masterofn001@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
But, do they speak English?
OmegaLemmy@discuss.online 1 day ago
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
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 1 day ago
How many issues on a truck is the driver able to fix themselves though?
catloaf@lemm.ee 1 day ago
A lot. Most of them do a lot of basic maintenance and break-fix work themselves.
zephorah@lemm.ee 1 day ago
Terrifying.
I wonder how much our car insurance will go up due to this.
Molecular5869@feddit.org 1 day ago
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.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 hours ago
Ok, elmo.
rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee 1 day ago
Lot lizard economy in shambles.
w3dd1e@lemm.ee 1 day ago
But do the drivers speak English? /s
rtxn@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Americans will do anything to avoid just using trains.
lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
While I don’t necessarily disagree with you, trains are used here all the time, very specifically for this kind of thing.
Fondots@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
AdamEatsAss@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
muusemuuse@lemm.ee 23 hours ago
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.
fishos@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Except that nearly all US rail is for freight. We hate PASSENGER trains. We freaking love freight rail.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 hours ago
Except that’s only 2% of freight by value.
Image
energy.gov/…/fact-846-november-10-2014-trucks-mov…
drmoose@lemmy.world 1 day ago
But american freight trains are laughably bad too
youtu.be/AJ2keSJzYyY
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
And semi rigs are…personal transport?
Ulrich@feddit.org 1 day ago
Trains are great but they don’t typically run to your local warehouse…
deranger@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
They used to.
jenesaisquoi@feddit.org 1 day ago
They have, and they could again
JeremyHuntQW12@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Not much competition in railways. Like literally none.