zlacker

>>ilamon+(OP)
Fairly recently, Bernie Sanders complained in The Guardian about the risk that AI will destroy various jobs, including truck driver jobs.

Am I alone in thinking that truck driving is an arduous job that ideally shouldn't be done by humans at all?

* long hours and days spent in loneliness, away from family and friends,

* possibility to stretch and move your body is very limited,

* bad hyper-processed food, hence so many drivers are obese,

* the need of humans to sleep and relax means that the trucks cannot legally move for majority of the day, thus there is a need to have more of them,

* plus, as mentioned here, both the drivers and their managers are incentivized to break and bend the law, resulting in unsafe driving.

All of the above would be mitigated by robots taking the wheel.

>>inglor+T8
Ideally, long-haul freight transportation would be handled by trains and trucks would only be used for last mile deliveries. Ideally.

>>lo_zam+W9
This is a bit complicated even in Czechia, with its densest network of railways in the world.

Trains are most efficient when they are long. 30+ cars, ideally. Capacity of railway lines is limited and lines tend to be shared by passenger traffic as well, so freight mostly moves at night and short freight trains are economically unviable.

It might take a long time to gather enough stuff/containers to fill 30 freight cars in one particular railway head (obvious exceptions such as Port of Rotterdam apply). Which means that you may have to wait for 10 days before your shipment actually starts to move.

We aren't that patient anymore.