Driverless Trucks?

Iron ore trains in Australia are NOW unmanned. Of course they run through unpopulated, desolate areas.  BNSF has a sign warning that unmanned locomotives operate in this territory, just outside the western throat of Clyde Yard, in Cicero, IL. Computer driven trucks, and automobiles, are coming.......possibly faster then anyone realizes. Computers can do a heck of a lot of activities, with great efficiency, and safety. And with these changes go a heck of a lot of jobs for people with out too much education beyond high school. More trouble on the horizon.

Remote controlled, driverless trains, isn't that what we have been doing in our basements for over a century ?

And finally the prototype catches up. 

http://www.smh.com.au/business...20150309-13z28v.html

As a car fan myself I don't like the idea of driverless cars.  Unless you can turn it off.  This would eliminate the joy of driving anything other than the min experience needed to get from A to B.  No Corvettes, no twin turbos, no fun, no freedom.  Why should people that know how to drive suffer because some people can't drive their minivans and Camrys.  Driving is fun...and relaxing.   Haha rant over.  

Driverless cars will come, especially with today's smart-phone distracted generation.

Rolls-Royce's marine division is already working on un-manned ships, so engineer-less trains are a blink away. 

You never sat in Chicago rush hour traffic, or the Omnipotent metro area construction season...

Rusty

One of the questions that comes up with driverless technology is how safe is it. What experiments like google driverless car and Tesla's experiments have shown is that when accidents happen, it is because cars with drivers don't follow the rules but the driverless cars do, and that is what causes most of the accidents. One of the problems with driverless vehicles is they are programmed with the exact rules, rules that many drivers themselves either ignore or don't know, and it can be very hard to try and program a car to work around the faults of others (think about the bad drivers you have experienced on the road, people doing 50 mph side by side on a 65 mph highway, older drivers who are having problems, drivers who don't know where they are,panicked drivers, just bad drivers). 

I don't think we totally will eliminate drivers in cars, there is the leisure side to cars as well as a practical one. I don't think going for a drive in a sports car is going to be much fun with a computer controlled car, that will probably go precisely the speed limit or slightly under, will maximize fuel economy, plus sports cars are meant to be driven. On the other hand, if you are driving to the beach in traffic, I don't think driverless is such a bad thing, or if you are driving the daily commute and so forth, or taking kids in the minivan to soccer practice or whatever, it would be nice. Might be nice to be on a highway and have the left lane open for passing, instead of having some road hog doing 45MPH there, when we do want to drive for fun, or have people actually cede right of way properly or do alternate feed. 

In terms of trains, I don't know what kind of rules are going to be involved with driverless trains. I suspect it more built up areas, that they will require there still be an engineer and conductor on board in case something happens, and on commuter lines I doubt very much they will run totally automated. Last I recall the BART system, for example, is computer controlled but they have a human operator on the trains as backup. Ships already often run without a human being at the controls , they are supposed to always maintain a manned watch but a lot of the big container ships and the like spend a lot of time running on auto pilot and apparently from what I have been told don't have someone even on the bridge. 

In some respects, and in some environments, driverless operation can be safer and more reliable. Driving a train can be a routine mind-numbing occupation, especially (for example) with a huge ore train moving at modest speed across a monotonous terrain. Look how many train accidents have occured because the crew fell asleep, or was texting etc.

I believe many modern transit systems have essentially automated operation, perhaps with an operator who mainly oversees passenger loading and unloading to be sure doors are cleared and closed before the trains move.

Remote control switch locos have been around for a while - driverless in the sense that the operator is not on the train with a certain view of what may be ahead.

Tesla just ran a car coast to coast with there new autopilot in 56 hours. Details haven't been release yet but they finished this morning. Don't know how to insert the URL  link. Inside EV's posted it. A team of drivers road along to prove they could and also set the electric car cross country record. Level 2 autonomy. NASA is all robotic.

personally if the cars are driving them selves why don't people just take mass transit?

Unlike cars trains will have to factor in the tonnage of the freight I would think that would get tricky. But if it is a unit train and close to the same weight they'll figure it out real quick.  

Jamie

There are driverless trucks in Nevada.  Daimler Freightliner has a test program under way.

James Menzies of Truck News has driven an autonomous truck.

Back about 3 months ago I was on interstate 26 here in SC and I told wife I didn't see any driver in that truck she just said he must of been there just sitting back and you didn't see hi, this has me wondering 

Safety is always a good reason for a new tech but why should those who like to drive suffer because a new generation of driver lacks the common sense to focus.  

Won't be long before the whole darned human race atrophies, except for the fingers that they use to text with.