Planes have been flying themselves for years, they still have pilots though.
There’s too many variables for a computer to cope with. The human brain (even that of a lesser evolved trucker) is far superior to any computer.
muckles:
I think you’ll see driverless commercial vehicles before loads of driversless cars. People buy cars on many levels pratical and emotional, they might be releuctant to give up what they see as control fo their vehicle to a computer.But commercial vehicles are run by businesses and for the big companies it’s all about reducing costs and increasing profits, it doesn’t really bother them on how many, so called professional drivers this might actually put out of work as long as the shareholders are getting a return.
This is what I believe: It will start off road in freight yards - difficult manouvres would be no problem for a computer guided system. They already do it in factories between work stations and the yards would have to be kept clear since the managers can’t rely on drivers to avoid the random pallets and skips.
Once that system is up and running the next logical step would be inter -depot. With an ‘attendant’ at first in case of problems but eventually without. A sophisticated sensor system would probably be better at anticipating the mad BMW than we are and would take the appropriate avoiding action. The truck would always be driven at the best compromise between time and economy and would not need breaks.
The next step would be RDCs - Logical thing here would be to swap trailers. Maybe trailers would be rented on a system like Chep pallets - who knows but I am sure as I can be that it will be here in the forseable future.
‘Driverless cars’?
The way I see cars driven these days, I think they’re already here! 