Even if the truck did drive itself, would it also load/unload and deal with flat tires and other vehicle damage conditions? I don't think these problems are insurmountable but I do think they will further extend the life of the truck driver profession.
I mean trains and subways don't even drive themselves right now somehow, so I think truck drivers will be fine.
Self-driving (though human monitored) trucks are already operating:
https://www.wired.com/story/embark-self-driving-truck-delive...
I think the first step will be replacing long-haul truck drivers with autonomous trucks, they'll start at a depo near a freeway and end at a depo at the other end, then a human will drive to make the local delivery. Freeways are (relatively) easier to navigate than local streets.
That takes a 30 hour long haul job and turns it into a 30 minute job -- a single driver can do 10 of those a day.
Autonomous trucks will handle flats and other roadside breakdowns the same way many human drivers do -- pull over and wait for the repair service to come.
There's less incentive to replace train/subway drivers due to the high driver to passenger/cargo ratio (plus union rules get in the way) -- 1 truck driver to 40 tons of cargo versus 1 train engineer to 10,000 tons of cargo
I mean that is possible but I'm skeptical about us being that shortsighted with so many jobs on the line.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but you clearly have no idea how the trucking industry works.
Which part of what I said do you disagree with? That Company Drivers ask dispatch to send the a tire service truck when they have a flat?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_...
To take the truck driver thing, here's a plausible scenario (to me anyway).
First of all, "top job in X states" seems like a really weird way to express this. It honestly feels like a way to make it seem as dire as possible.
There are something like 3 to 3.5 million truck drivers in the US. That's a lot. However, BLS reports that only about half of these are heavy and tractor trailer truck drivers [1]. So maybe the rest are driving smaller trucks and vehicles around town? Those seem safer from job loss to me, I suspect that any job that requires driving a truck here and there and loading / unloading things will not be replaced by AI as fast.
Side note: BLS is predicting 6% growth in this job from 2016 to 2026, which is about average. But let's assume they're wrong.
So let's say that 1.8 million are long haul truckers that can be relatively easily replaced by AI. How long will that really take? I know everyone thinks that self-driving cars are around the corner, but I'm really not convinced. We've been hearing that for a few years now, and it seems like lots of teams are hitting some roadblocks (heh) in terms of their ability to solve some of the remaining issues. Just my ambient observations though, I'm no expert.
Even if we do get there with some cars in the next 3-5 years, are we really going to be ready to put heavy loads on highways unattended? We're going to handle the technical issues, security issues, legal issues, insurance, in a few years? I'm really skeptical. Maybe we can do point-to-point on highways in 5 years, but then what? Do we have huge lots where these trucks park and then drivers ferry them to local warehouses to be loaded / unloaded? What about fueling these things along the way with no drivers? How do we keep these loads safe from theft? None of these are insurmountable, but are we really going to solve these things in the next few years such that we're ready to start laying people off?
I think 10-20 years is much more realistic to put the majority of truckers out of a job. Not all, but the majority. But truckers are already old (49 average) and many will be retiring over that period anyway. Why can't we just not replace them as those jobs dwindle?
1. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/h...
It's hard to tell what the average tractor age is, but it looks between 6 and 10 years old so you have the same rough math in the 6-10 years after we have fully autonomous self-driving trucks where we'll still have half the trucks on the road as human-driven.
Plus if autonomous trucks increase capacity and/or efficiency and cut shipping costs, that might also stimulate shipping demand and therefore keep human drivers on the road longer as well.
Your 10-20 years guess feels right to me, but only after we actually have the autonomous truck thing fully sorted out, IMO.
How many of the people whose jobs are destroyed will be able to move into the jobs that are created? In something like 30 states [0] 'truck driver' is the largest single occupation; where would those skills be re-applied?
I agree that nothing will be done regardless due to a lack of political will, but I don't share your optimism. I suspect that the change will be gradual to begin with, but that suddenly there will be a whole category of people unable to earn a living with their skills, and unable to afford to re-skill into something that can be used.
[0]: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-...