I imagine that driver preferences will be established during set up.

Have you heard of the robot truck start up company “Tu Simple”? 60 minutes featured them earlier this year. They’re currently testing a small fleet of self-driving trucks in Arizona…their current self driving trucks have safety drivers /engineers on-board…but they are on the road now. They conceded they have hurdles to overcome but, as I recall, their goal was to start actual driverless testing in a year or so (wow).

According to the article below their investors / partners include UPS. I don’t know anything about this tech but I guess we’ll see in a few years how it all pans out….

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohn.../#5631593b192e

The backing from Nvida and UPS are impressive but post #4 and #6 in this thread offer sound reasons why this tech won’t make it outside of the shipping depot fence without substantial improvement.

It’s ironic that an attempt to eliminate labor costs opens up liability far in excess of the most premium union contract.

As for the Forbes article I thought I was reading a paid advertisement, total fluff.

Yeah, I wanted to link the 60 minutes piece but it's paid content. It was really eye opening, I had no idea someone was trying to make it happen right now. Maybe when they start out it'll be on low traffic, non-urban routes...then go from there? Idk. The points you/others mentioned would seem pretty challenging to overcome but you'd have to assume these guys have a plan? One other nugget of interest...they also have a test fleet operating in China. Wouldn't break my heart if they fail

Will robot trucks happen.
Yes, absolutely! This is the easy question.

WHEN will robot trucks happen?
When it is profitable.
That's it.

"But will it run over babies and kittens?!"
Well, yeah. of course it will.
And when it does so, less often than normal trucks, while being (more) profitable, you'll see them everywhere.

Robots don't get tired, don't road rage, don't get drunk, and don't text.

The big change happens when market saturation reaches around 20-25%.
Remember smart phones? Nerds had them, then business tycoons, then everyone had one.
First Amazon, Walmart, UPS, FedEx will start, then POW! Everyone will have them as fast as you can make them.

Drivers gone, dispatchers, gone. If electrically powered, maintenance personnel reduced by 90%.
Not to mention auto routing, auto road train (convoy for reduced drag)
The change will be profound

I've mentioned in other post that I have a brother who's handled accident claims for a major insurance company for over 30 years. He's very much into tech. He's looked at studies his company has done and come to the conclusion that we're at least 10 years away from seeing driverless trucks and probably cars on the road. Only exception would be if Congress passed liability protection setting fairly low caps on awards involving driverless vehicles accidents.

You just can't program responses for all the stupid things human drivers can do, or even pedestrians.

That's what I keep saying, but I think it's longer than 10 years.

That's not happening here, the TLAs are collectively one of largest contributors to one of our big political parties. No way will they sit still for the creation of a new industry exempt from their pound of flesh... to say nothing of the precedent it might set. Even worse the new industry would tend to replace one of the most lucrative for plaintiff's attorneys.

Honestly I think it will happen first in China... the government can just wave their hand and specify how liability will work (or just make it go away).

Might enable autonomy by cleaning up the roads and banning human drivers, bikers, peds, but the infrastructure cost would probably defeat the purpose.