The next hit to the labor market: robot lorries

Autonomous cars such as the GoogleCar tend to get our attention, but the autonomous vehicles most of us are likely to interact with first are going to be lorries and trucks. The big rigs that haul almost anything consumed will be much safer if drivers do not get fatigued on long trips. They are also far more efficient if they can "platoon" together, drafting behind each other.

So check your rear-view mirror: the driverless truck is coming, and it’s going to automate millions of jobs -- I mean, eliminate! From TechCrunch:

A convoy of self-driving trucks recently drove across Europe and arrived at the Port of Rotterdam. No technology will automate away more jobs — or drive more economic efficiency — than the driverless truck. Shipping a full truckload from L.A. to New York costs around $4,500 today, with labor representing 75 percent of that cost. But those labor savings aren’t the only gains to be had from the adoption of driverless trucks. Where drivers are restricted by law from driving more than 11 hours per day without taking an 8-hour break, a driverless truck can drive nearly 24 hours per day. That means the technology would effectively double the output of the U.S. transportation network at 25 percent of the cost.

Robot trucks?! If you just passed a truck glowing blue on the Nevada highway, it means that a robot is at the controls. For testing, autonomous models have LED lights that turn different colors according to whether a human – or the computer – is in control. From the BBC: Daimler’s truck is capable of “level three” self-driving – on a scale that goes from zero to four - which means it can take over the driving itself if required. But the company says the driver will only become a passenger under a controlled set of circumstances.
The system was first demonstrated in Germany last year but on a closed section of road. When BBC Future joins the testing team, it’s on a section of a public highway. And on Nevada’s freeways, the driver can now chill out, or even take care of paperwork on the truck’s built-in tablet.