Dont' discount the value of learning a skilled trade.

[SunsetBengal]

(09-01-2017, 01:57 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: You're going to have trucks going through the mountains of West Virginia, going through the relatively uninhabited plains states, through the West coast deserts, Rockies, etc...

There will be a lot of instances of times where an automated semi will be hours from any meaningful response. Even ignoring things like electronics, meats, cheeses, alcohol, etc... a semi full of even something like undershirts or socks would be worth at least a couple hundred thousand.

If a semi gets spike stripped or tire netted on a Wyoming mountain road or barren Nevada desert road, even if you throw in alert sensors that feed to something like a home alarm system-style center who forward it to the police, they aren't going to be there soon.

The infrastructure to maintain a quick response time for ~2.700,000 miles of roads (2008 number, so there's undoubtedly more now) would absolutely destroy any cost savings by automation. It's a big country.

So I think that automation for shorter trips.. like a company in Cincinnati would be able to make automated semis have a trip to Indy or Lousiville or something, but if we're talking long haul? I see too many problems for that.

- - - - - -- -

EDIT: I didn't even touch on automated semis in places like Detroit. Lol

Trucks already ride through all of those places, typically without incident.  You think that Law Enforcement would be slower to the scene of an automated response than to a truck driven by a human?  Most of the truck hijackings occur in the cities.

If we're going the way of automation, wouldn't rail be a smarter, more economical choice for unmanned transfer of goods? (besides the startup cost, or course)