Driverless trucks are coming to a Louisiana roadway near you
21st August 2019 · 0 Comments
By Susan Buchanan
Contributing Writer
Heads up, long-distance truck drivers. Your job could change or disappear in the next five to ten years. Trucks with no one at the steering wheel are coming down the pike. Louisiana’s regulations for autonomous commercial vehicles began on August 1. Self-driving laws are in effect in 29 states and the District of Columbia.
This spring, U.S. Postal Service trailers were hauled autonomously between Phoenix and Dallas in a project with San Diego-based TuSimple. A driverless truck operated by San Francisco-based Starsky Robotics delivered corn recently to Grand Prairie, near Dallas. Autonomous trucks have been highway tested in the Netherlands, other European nations and Singapore this year.
In a 2017 study for lawmakers, Louisiana State University civil engineering professor Chester Wilmot and doctoral student Marlon Greensword said autonomous trucks are harnessing technologies used in conventional vehicles. These include Light Detection and Ranging or LIDAR sensors, video cameras, GPS and broadband communications, along with computer processing, sensor fusion and data interpretation. Autonomous trucks will encounter hurdles before entering the U.S. market, however, they said. Public trust, interaction with human-driven vehicles, image recognition and interpretation by sensing devices, liability in crashes and costs are some of the obstacles.
Louisiana’s new law, Act No. 232, from a House bill sponsored by Democrat Terry Landry in New Iberia, lets a commercial vehicle travel without a human driver inside if it’s registered, complies with federal and state laws, and is insured for at least $2 million. The bill received almost unanimous support from lawmakers, some of whom said this year that self-driving trucks are inevitable. The state’s Department of Transporta-tion and Development will have jurisdiction over these trucks.
Under the new act, a commercial vehicle must be able to reach a “minimal risk condition” in order to avoid a crash during road trouble. That condition can be slowing down or stopping.
In a March report, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said automated, long-distance hauls could be a reality in five to ten years. Driverless trucks might also be developed for local routes, say from a port to a warehouse.
Starsky Robotics plans to conduct tests in Louisiana soon. “We should be testing autonomous trucks instate by the end of the year,” Stefan Seltz-Axmacher, Starsky’s CEO, said last week. He thanked Representative Landry for his efforts in crafting the new law.
Starsky is employing truckers in Louisiana and Mississippi. “The drivers we hire start out over the road, and some of them will be selected to become safety drivers in our autonomous trucks and then eventually remote drivers assisting with off-highway portions of freight pickup and delivery,” Seltz-Axmacher said. The company hopes to expand its testing along the entire I-10 corridor.
GAO discussed types of automated long hauls. Platooning trucks would follow a lead vehicle and be linked by wireless communication. The lead truck’s driver would control braking and acceleration for the platoon, and the other trucks would control their own steering. Benefits from platooning include fuel savings and increased safety, for example because of the trucks’ faster braking reaction times, GAO said. But safety hazards exist too. Other drivers may need to speed up in order to change lanes around a platoon.
In a different scenario, a truck can be self-driving for part of a route, mainly on highways and in good weather. A driver might be in the truck for the first and last parts of the trip to receive and drop off trailers. When there’s no driver, software in the truck gives instructions about when to steer or brake. Cameras and other sensors on the vehicle’s exterior provide a view of surroundings. LIDAR sensors use lasers to map exteriors.
GAO said none of the developers it interviewed had plans to unveil trucks that are self-driving for an entire route. The agency interviewed representatives from truck manufacturers, fleets, national industry groups and a safety organization. Its researchers visited autonomous truck developers in California.
“Stakeholders identified potential benefits of self-driving for part of a route, such as increased safety, labor cost savings, and addressing what they said is a truck driver shortage,” GAO said. An automated truck could improve productivity by letting an employee sitting within it do other work or rest.
The outlook for the workforce is uncertain, GAO said. Technology developers that GAO interviewed predicted that long-haul jobs would decline with the adoption of trucks that are self-driving for part of a route. Drivers represent a big operational cost, and a rationale for autonomous trucks is to employ fewer people to move freight more cheaply.
Estimates of lost driver jobs in studies that GAO reviewed ranged from under 300,000 to more than 900,000 jobs nationally over 10 to 20 years or more. That’s out of the nation’s nearly 1.9 million heavy and tractor-trailer truck driver jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2017.
“Several stakeholders we spoke with agreed that any decrease in long-haul jobs would likely not affect many current drivers because most will have voluntarily left driving for a different job or have retired by the time self-driving trucks are widely deployed,” GAO said. According to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey data, truck and sales delivery drivers from 2012 to 2016 were on average nearly 47 years old.
Some stakeholders felt that wages might rise if new skills are needed to operate sophisticated equipment, GAO said. But other stakeholders said wages might not change or could even decline with fewer driving tasks.
Albert Samson, president of Teamsters Local 270 in New Orleans, last week said, “They’re going to make automation happen, but trucks on the highway, like jets in the sky, need human intervention.” An 18-wheeler might be able to cruise autonomously from San Antonio to El Paso, Texas, but would be challenged on the congested I-10 between Baton Rouge and Lake Charles. That Louisiana route, however, might be traveled autonomously at night, he said.
Local routes in cities and towns are fraught with unknowns like pedestrians and pets that need human eyes, Samson said. Teamsters Local 270 has more than 4,200 members, mostly truckers based in south Louisiana.
In Washington, D.C., Teamsters Union spokeswoman Kara Deniz said that as companies develop and test autonomous technology, attracting investment, the union hopes the process will be transparent and will consider drivers in their decisions. Safety shouldn’t be jeopardized in the rush to implement new technologies.
“Our union members have middle class jobs with good pay and benefits,” Deniz also said. Many of them like being behind the wheel and wouldn’t want to become software experts.
Along with TuSimple and Starsky, companies engaged in autonomous trucking include Google’s Waymo in Mountain View, Calif.; Tesla in Palo Alto and Fremont, Calif.; Volvo Trucks in Sweden; Mercedes-Benz, part of Daimler in Germany; Embark Trucks in San Francisco; Kodiak Robotics in Dallas; Einride in Sweden; and Caterpillar Inc. in Illinois. Caterpillar’s autonomous trucks carry raw materials out of mines.
U.S. autonomous developers are focused on the Southwest because of its fair weather and busy, long-distance truck routes. Any future job losses to automation could occur there first, GAO said.
In a national comparison, Louisiana has an average concentration of truckers, according to GAO. West and north Texas and parts of New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas have higher concentrations.
How has testing gone? Waymo spokeswoman Alexis Georgeson said Google started developing self-driving technology in 2009. Waymo launched as an Alphabet Inc. subsidiary in late 2016. “We’ve tested our technology across four generations of passenger vehicles, as well as our self-driving Class-8 trucks,” she said. “Our trucks use the same custom-built sensors – configured differently – and benefit from the same advanced, self-driving software as our vehicles.”
In a pilot, Waymo’s autonomous trucks delivered freight to and from Google’s data centers in Atlanta last year. “We’ve tested our self-driving trucks in a variety of cities and environments from Georgia to California to Arizona,” Georgeson said. Waymo resumed autonomous truck testing in Arizona recently.
At ports, trucks are in and out around the clock. And the enclosed spaces within ports suit internally operated, autonomous trucks.
Last week, Port of New Orleans spokeswoman Jessica Ragusa said as autonomous truck technologies emerge, the port, its tenants and related private entities — including truck companies — together will see that cargo operations are safe and efficient. The port has no driverless shuttles at this time.
In California, driverless UTRs or utility tractor rigs are operating at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. But a proposal to employ self-driving, electric cargo trucks at Los Angeles ran into stiff union opposition this year.
Nationally, truckers may have to adapt to software and hardware that takes over braking, staying in designated lanes and keeping distances, GAO said. They’ll learn to use advanced safety systems. Additional certification beyond the standard Commercial Driver’s License may be required. New occupations, including specialized technicians, mechanics and engineers, will emerge as automated trucks are deployed.
During a July 31 Democratic presidential debate, candidate Andrew Yang said the nation is automating away millions of jobs. He said truckers, the most common job in 29 states, are threatened by robotic vehicles.
This article originally published in the August 19, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
