<story><title>Uber shuts down self-driving trucks unit</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/30/ubers-self-driving-trucks-division-is-dead-long-live-uber-self-driving-cars/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>arijun</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve always felt that self driving trucks make the most economical sense to automate. A self driving truck would get to its destination faster (saving money) and without the need for a driver (saving money). And the majority of their time is spent on relatively predictable interstate roads, not the chaotic roads of a busy downtown, so they&amp;#x27;d be simpler to automate.&lt;p&gt;Otto (the self-driving truck company that Uber bought and is now shuttering) was the first I&amp;#x27;d heard of that. It&amp;#x27;s a bit sad that they&amp;#x27;re shutting down.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>amarka</author><text>What do you mean by &amp;quot;most economical sense to automate&amp;quot;? It seems like everything about automating a truck would be more expensive (cost of 1 truck = 5-6 cars), the insurance and maintenance on the truck and hardware, the potential for catastrophic failure (1 runaway car doing 70 = bad, 1 runaway truck doing 70 = REALLY bad), the extra complexity of pulling a trailer and monitoring the trailer as well as the truck, monitoring the size and type of load of the truck and modifying the driving characteristics to match the load, the extra regulations that trucks are subject to (what roads they can be on, what loads they could cary on certain roads, what time of day they can drive on said roads, when they can or can&amp;#x27;t use engine braking).&lt;p&gt;Edit: even on &amp;#x27;simple&amp;#x27; point A to point B route that involve 99% highway, what happens when a small part of the highway shuts down for whatever reason (flooding, multi-lan accident, fire, etc) and all traffic is routed on smaller adjacent streets, or forced to share a lane with oncoming traffic. Automating a truck is as hard or harder than automating a car, since you&amp;#x27;re dealing with the same external variables but have more internal&amp;#x2F;attached moving parts.</text></comment>
<story><title>Uber shuts down self-driving trucks unit</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/30/ubers-self-driving-trucks-division-is-dead-long-live-uber-self-driving-cars/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>arijun</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve always felt that self driving trucks make the most economical sense to automate. A self driving truck would get to its destination faster (saving money) and without the need for a driver (saving money). And the majority of their time is spent on relatively predictable interstate roads, not the chaotic roads of a busy downtown, so they&amp;#x27;d be simpler to automate.&lt;p&gt;Otto (the self-driving truck company that Uber bought and is now shuttering) was the first I&amp;#x27;d heard of that. It&amp;#x27;s a bit sad that they&amp;#x27;re shutting down.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hourislate</author><text>My brother in law works as a recovery driver for a very large trucking company 10000 + Trucks. He really doesn&amp;#x27;t make that much (50k-65k)considering he is at the top of the pay scale, so I am under the impression that the driver costs are pretty low. Fuel, Insurance, Break Downs, Regulations, and just waiting for loads that are not ready are the largest costs.&lt;p&gt;Part of his duties is to fly out and bring back new trucks and he was telling me that some of the new trucks have lane assist, cameras, an automatic distance feature where his speed to stopping distance is calculated and the if he crosses that threshold the truck will apply the brakes to slow him down to a safe driving speed (I think he mentioned he can override this feature). He also said there are alarms to let him know when he gets to close to a lane line, etc. I imagine that eventually there will be sensors in the steering wheel that can measure his condition&amp;#x2F;attention and relay that back to dispatch so they can monitor his wellness and how alert he is, etc.&lt;p&gt;Lots of interesting technology is making its way into the cab to help the driver be safer on the roads and probably is the result of some of this new self driving tech filtering it&amp;#x27;s way down.</text></comment>