According to the news self driving trucks are about to hit the road with no driver on board.
But according to this book that is not going to happen. The author says that the real purpose is to get rid of the skilled drivers and replace them with underpaid button pushers.
Will they really do that? What’s going to be the situation few years from now?
It will likely be a mix. E.g. you might have 10 trucks on a particular run. You put a driver in the lead truck, as a human-in-the-loop safety. The rest play duckling to the mother duck.
What it will do is lower the skill level needed, and lower the stress. A driver having a nap isn’t a problem anymore. They just need to be able to get involved either if the autopilot has issues and has to stop, or if they need to fill out paperwork at the destination.
The duck-duckling model would probably work okay on the highway, but not so well once you arrive in a town or city. You can’t reliably get ten semis through a set of lights in traffic without getting split up. I guess they could have a depot outside of town where human drivers would meet the ducklings for the final leg of the journey.
I believe it’s common to have separate long haul trucks and last leg trucks. If the depot is right next to the motorway/highway, then it provides an obvious place for a handover. It also means drivers can stay in 1 area, and so go home each night.