I'm sorry, but do people actually think human drivers in autonomous vehicles will make them safe?

Imagine sitting and watching a robot do its job for hours - do you think you'd be attentive to safety problems after all that time?

union leaders and truck drivers said would save hundreds of thousands of jobs

There might be good reasons to have human drivers in autonomous trucks, at least for a while. But “saving jobs” is not one of them.

Can't believe they bothered to try to pass it. From an outside quick glance, it seems like a brilliant idea. But then you have to remember WHY they're doing this. They want to ship 24x7 and not have to pay a person. Slapping a co-pilot in there is counter-intuitive to their end game. Not to mention humans do NOT have the required attention span for this. We can often do stupid shit, completely sober, while driving, with DECADES of experience.

If the autopilot is even 80% effective, we're going to get bored, sleep, read, fuck around on our devices. Maybe jerk off? Who knows?

We're not ready for this step, not yet.

Bet they'll be needing a lot of mechanics when the time comes, though.

Safety be damned! We have corporate profits to consider here.

We've entered the Twilight zone. Where Ben Shapiro and Gavin Newsom are on the same side of a debate, and they're fighting against Tucker Carlson and the unions.

Edit: piped link

"Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, head of the California Labor Federation, said driverless trucks are dangerous..." Well are they dangerous? Is there any data to back up that claim? And is there data to back up the claim that keeping the driver in the vehicle makes it safe again?

I hate this "save the jobs" attitude. How about we not save the jobs and pay them to get other jobs or even pay them to stay home?

Having a required human driver in the trucks for if/when the self-driving portion of the truck suddenly bugs out or gets into a situation where it cannot get itself free would probably save them a lot of headache and business when suddenly that truck gets into a situation it cannot correct itself.

Hell, we've already seen times when that would've saved lives like the time self driving taxis ended up blocking an ambulance en route.

This can only end well. I can't wait for the personal injury lawsuits to start rolling in.

Also, having worked in a warehouse, who the hell is going to hand over the paperwork? Do you know how many places don't use electronics that talk to each other? Do you know how many times I, working at a modest size business, had to sign my damn name? Half the time it doesn't even need to be there, they just use it to make sure somebody looked at the pallet of merchandise to make sure it was correct. This is going to blow up in everyone's face, literally and metaphorically.

Companies will put the staff back in the trucks when it becomes apparent how easy it is to stop them and steal everything from the back.