The self-driving car is on truck
The truck industry correlates with our everyday life in every aspect, whether it’s the food we buy or the house we live in or just our shopping craziness to buy (everything) from Amazon. Trucks are always involved in the process. Therefore, the revenue of this delivery industry is about US$719 Billion!
Let’s dive deeper into the facts and the problems that we are having within this industry:
Human resources:
There are approximately 3.2 million truck drivers in the US. To be a truck driver, you’ll need a special license, which requires going through special training. The more I think about the truck driver, the more I realize that this occupation is very hard and demanding: The drivers are all by themselves in the car driving a fair amount of miles every single day, being far from family and friends. A complete isolation with no stimulation for the driver! Thus, to summarize, to be a truck driver is, to say the least not easy.
Time:
Time is of an essence — as time is money, especially in this industry where you can make more deliveries at this time. There are so many rules and regulations to protect the driver on the road, and thus limit the time he/she is driving to ensure he is refreshed and alert.
The hours-of-service regulations focus on when and how long truck drivers are allowed to drive by placing specific limits on the amount of time they drive the truck and how many total hours they can work before they are no longer permitted to drive a commercial motor vehicle. The drivers must follow three maximum duty limits at all times. They are the 14-hour “driving window” limit, 11-hour driving limit, and 60-hour/7-day and 70-hour/8-day duty limits:
• 14 hours window limit - You are allowed a period of 14 consecutive hours in which to drive up to 11 hours after being off duty for 10 or more consecutive hours.
Example: You have had ten continuous hours off, and you come to work at 6:00 a.m. you must not drive your truck after 8:00 p.m. that evening, which is 14 hours later. You may do other work after 8:00 p.m., but you cannot do any more driving until you have taken another ten consecutive hours off, or the equivalent of at least ten consecutive hours off duty.
• 11 hours limit - Once the driver has driven a total of 11 hours, he has to reach the driving limit and must be off duty for another ten consecutive hours (or equivalent) before driving the truck again.
Example: You have had ten consecutive hours off. You come to work at 6:00 a.m. and drive from 7:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. (7 hours driving). You take a 30-minute break as required, and then can drive for another 4 hours until 6:30 p.m. You must not drive again until you have at least ten consecutive hours off duty. You may do other work after 6:30 p.m., but you cannot do any more driving of a commercial motor vehicle on a public road.
• 60/70 hours limit - An addition to the limits mentioned above is the 60/70-hour limit. This limit is based on a 7 or 8-day period, starting at the time specified by the motor carrier for the start of a 24-hour period. This limit is sometimes thought of as a “weekly” limit. However, this limit is not based on a “set” week, such as Sunday through Saturday. The limit is based on a “rolling” or “floating” 7-day or 8-day period. The oldest day’s hours drop off at the end of each day when you calculate the total on-duty time for the past 7 or 8 days. For example, if you operate on a 70-hour/8-day schedule, the current day would be the newest day of your 8-day period and the hours you worked nine days ago would drop out of the calculation.
https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/sites/fmcsa.dot.gov/files/docs/Drivers%20Guide%20to%20HOS%202015_508.pdf
The best way to explain the insufficiency of the driver’s time is by thinking that most of the day the truck isn’t in use because of the driver limitation hours and most likely can’t be replaced by another driver as he is on the road in the middle of somewhere. Naturally, you can think of other ways to solve this, such as having two drivers — but those will be expensive and complex.
Accidents:
Most of the accidents involving trucks are caused by human error. Unfortunately, it takes the lives of a lot of people as we can see from the table below the number of casualties is growing.
A total of 3,852 people died in large truck crashes in 2015 in the US. Sixteen percent of these deaths were truck occupants, 69 percent were occupants of cars and other passenger vehicles, and 15 percent were pedestrians, bicyclists or motorcyclists. The number of people who died in large truck crashes was 22 percent higher in 2015 than in 2009, when it was lower than at any year since the collection of fatal crash data began in 1975. The number of truck occupants who died was 34 percent higher than in 2009. Since 1979, when deaths in large truck crashes were at an all-time high, there has been a greater percentage decline among occupants of large trucks (56 percent) than among occupants of passenger vehicles (37 percent).
However, Eleven percent of all motor vehicle crash deaths in 2015 occurred in large truck crashes. Thus this is still a very important area to improve for general road safety.
Where are these accidents happening? Fifty-three percent of deaths in large truck crashes in 2015 occurred on major roads other than interstates and freeways, 30 percent occurred on interstates and freeways, and 14 percent occurred on minor roads. This means that most accidents happen in areas that are easier for computers to control (as compared to small city roads with a lot of unrespectable things where humans are better), and thus are probably more likely to be caused by human error.
Source: http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/large-trucks/fatalityfacts/large-trucks
Moreover, the cost of all of those accidents is very high and sums up to billions of dollars, on top of the thousands of lives taken every year.
By now we can read between the lines, and conclude that all of those factors are problematic to this significant industry.
We can look at it from two aspects:
1)Saving lives: More and more people are killed on the road because of drivers!
2)Money
*Pay salary for the truck drivers, who have a very demanding job.
*Insufficient use of the truck because of rules that apply to the drivers’ driving time.
*Cost of insurance and repairing of trucks (because of accidents).
*Logistic to manage the fleet of trucks and drivers.
It’s clear to see how a self-driving truck would solve all of those problems. Although trucks are not easy and creating a self-driving truck is still challenging, the good news is most of the driving trucks do are on large roads that are much more predictable and manageable for a computer (since most interstates, for example, ‘look and feel the same’ — vs. a street in SF, and a street in NYC that may be VERY different). Thus, self-driving trucks that solve the above problems might not only solve a super important need but also might be closer to market than the average self-driving car (as the urban landscape is much more important for a typical car ride than for trucks). These trucks might still need a human touch in the last mile, but this accounts for very little of the driving time of the truck.
A few companies foresee this opportunity and are working on self-driving trucks.
One of them is a Chinese company named “TuSimple”.
TuSimple is very much alike to a self-driving car with some changes to the sensor’s sensitivity and range because of the relatively slow reaction of trucks. AV truck sensors need to be more accurate and precise when the truck reacts to road changes, as it takes a truck (due to its size) much more time to react and break to a full stop, or maneuver to avoid an obstacle.
“Self-driving trucks could cut logistics costs by 40 percent in the U.S. and 25 percent in China as they can run longer than human-piloted rigs without rest and save at least 10 percent on fuel. They could also improve safety, especially in China, where trucks kill about 25,000 people a year, according to the Ministry of Public Security.” Said Chen Mo, co-founder and CEO of TuSimple to Bloomberg. I could not agree more with this critical need.
I can’t finish this article without mentioning “Tesla” which disrupted everything we know about the automotive industry. Now, with the Tesla electric Semi-truck, we can expect dramatic changes to electrified trucks in the future. This will save fuel, and enable better adoption of AVs. I think what Elon Musk is doing is beyond amazing and keep surprising us all. I can’t wait to see their semi-truck on the road.
Thank you for reading!
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