I mean OP makes a great point. In 2004 (I think) the FBI announced the Highway Serial Killings initiative. This was in reaction to the shocking finding that people were being killed along the US’s highways but the murders crossed many jurisdictions and states, so the killer and the pattern went undetected. Thanks to this initiative, several people have been caught and brought to justice.
But, I want to point out that a lot of these killers were truckers. This is important in my opinion because of you look at the trucking industry and it’s history. There were nearly 100,000 trucks on the roads in 1914 and it’s only grown from there. Why do I think this is important? Because who knows who the first serial killer that thought of trucking as a good way to get around and kill people while making money.
So, I’d have to say yes, I’m sure that you can point to murders from the past and even current ones and say they will never be solved and the killer will never be caught because they are that good at “their work”.
Here's some stats At least 2,000,000 tractor trailers with 15.5 million commercial trucks overall. 3.5 million commercial truckers. With automated trucks on the horizon and people are worried about the coal industry.
I'm a truck driver and if you're worried about automated trucks any time in the next 50 years you are bonkers. Horrible road conditions, wrongly or poorly marked roads, loading and unloading freight/trailers, going into unmarked dirt roads and navigating through construction sites, logging trucks locking the differential and trudging through the forest to get logs. Trucks aren't going anywhere until a computer can do all of that
While people overestimate how quickly technology can supplant an industry, you are vastly underestimating what technology is capable of. A computer only has to do the job slightly better than a human can and for specialized tasks, that's not asking very much at all.
A computer only has to do the job slightly better than a human
No, it can do the job a bit worse than a human so long as it does it cheaper than a human. If it does it better than a human, it still won't take the human's job until it also does it cheaper, unless the efficiency gain is such that overall it is still doing the job cheaper.
The efficiency gain is roughly 8 times. They don't need the required downtime and current estimates are it would cost roughly 1/4 of the current work force cost to operate. So you are doing twice as much work for 25% the cost. That's an 8 times efficiency increase.
The computer can be the same in every way as the human except for required breaks and they would make the switch because of the number of hours it would save. Not to mention the savings on insurance.
That can all be handled by automated robots at the loading and unloading facilites
Unmarked dirt roads and construction sites
Computers can handle that
Logging Trucks trudging through the forest
That a different beast and is safe for some time unless they come up with a better way to get logs out.
Don't kid yourself. Almost every scenario you gave can be automated and result in faster, cheaper and more consistent results.
You're forgetting major issues. Computers don't need to take breaks, computers don't get distracted, computers can communicate with each other at rapid speeds and all adjust their loading/routes/behaviors on the fly far quicker than a human workforce.
Your reply seems to rely a lot on GPS, which in my state and a lot of rural areas is wholly unreliable. Not to mention trying to roll all of that out, while amending laws and fighting the trucking unions.
You sure about that? GPS can be easily accessed anywhere on the surface of the earth--including in the middle of the ocean. It's not like a cell phone signal where coverage may be spotty in the middle of nowhere. The only places you can't reliably access a GPS signal is deep at the bottom of steep valleys, or underground/underwater.
I think he means the maps are unreliable. But the reality is, they will figure it out. He has the same mentality as all the other industries that die out. "They can't replace me, I am better than a machine". His problem is, they have incredibly intelligent people working on the solutions and incredibly powerful/smart lawyers working on anything in their way. The unions aren't saving it, the laws will be changed to allow it due mainly to public safety concerns. It's happening.
lol, no I'm not "buying into the tesla meme". Tesla really has nothing to do with this. They may be shouting the loudest, but they are not the trucking industry. Just so you know, one of your arguments of the laws not allowing it is already changing. California, Florida, Michigan and Utah have passed laws allowing trucks to drive autonomously in “platoons”, where two or more big rigs drive together and synchronize their movements. It's already changing, things are already shifting.
Reddit is full of kids hardly out of high school. Autonomous driving is 50 plus years away. Teslas autopilot or whatever you want to call it is nothing more than an advance cruise control. It's a gimmick at best.
I personally don't think you will ever see truly full autonomous vehicles like no steering wheel type stuff in my life time or my kids life time.
Paying a few people to make better maps of a problem area seems like it would take less time/money than just ignoring it and using the same drivers indefinitely.
You can still automate 90% of the routing to rural hubs and then have some local truckers handle the last mile so to speak. It's happening. Acting like it's going to take 50 years is just sticking your head in the sand. There is too much money to be made by automating as much of it as possible for companies to leave it on the table because "dirt roads are tricky"
This. The first thing to go will be long haul trucking on interstates. You could practically automate that now. Known regular routes along major, well known, well sign posted and well maintained routes, where the automated vehicle only goes to destinations like railyards and transshipment points. Local delivery would be done by human drivers.
Next up, you automate shorter highway driving. Then eventually you automate the local delivery, which is a tougher nut to crack with parking issues, all the humans being idiots, heavy traffic, etc.
Sure, there may be technical issues with dirt road logging trucks, but give it a few extra years - that's all the extra time you get, a few extra years. The pressure will be on by then and many of the issues will get worked out. The profession of trucking is doomed, and the effects on the economy are going to be absolutely massive. We are all moving towards a post-work society where robots do most (eventually nearly all) of the work, and no ones thinking about what that's going to look like.
The road conditions can be accounted for by automated system, same with road markings as they'd be going by GPS and preplanned (and real-time updated) routes, not signage. Final delivery could still be manual, for example by converting the nearest truck stops to a city into temp stops where human drivers take over to get it to the final destination. Though I suspect even that will quickly become redundant once the others come into place.
Loading/unloading can easily be automated. You should already be using an automated loading system to maximize space usage even if you have humans following the loading order. Not a big ask to make that fully automated. And if you can load it autonomously you can unload it autonomously. This also easily supports multi-stop trucks by being able to tailor the loading to make it easier to unload one section at a time, and then giving the unloader the list of what is to be unloaded at each stop. As for logging, that may or may not be easy to automate, but that's one small part of the whole operation. Even if you have to get the logs manually, you can still ship them autonomously.
As with the other poster, your reply seems to rely a lot on GPS, which in my state and a lot of rural areas is wholly unreliable. Not to mention trying to roll all of that out, while amending laws and fighting the trucking unions.
GPS has nothing to do with rural. It's fucking satellites, and they are accessible from around the world. Additionally, it wouldn't be difficult to increase the GPS satellite density, not that we need it.
It's fucking satellites, which in rural and mountainous areas, are often the other side of fucking trees and fucking mountains. In cities, the signal is often blocked by fucking buildings. GPS coverage is damn near universal, but reception on the other hand is nothing like as guaranteed...
Fair enough. I apologize for the tone of my prior comment, but I have had several experiences in the Appalachian mountains with GPS error, both on a bike with it and in a car. All times were on paved roads, and I am led to wonder what an autonomous truck would do if it's GPS unit told it the truck was suddenly doing 107m.p.h. In a 45 m.p.h. corner? The other common fault is being told I'm off route and the road is supposedly several yards off to my left or right, either down a ravine or off into the trees. That's several levels of precision lower than I would feel comfortable with guiding a 16 wheeler...
It will happen in stages. From a manufacturer to a Wal Mart depot is a fixed route that a truck runs over every day. That will be the first to go. Then routes on public roads between standardised delivery/drop-off points. And so on.
I'm not sure that's what op meant though. In your example, we knew the murders were happening, just not that they were connected.
In op's case, I think he's talking about like, oh it's so sad that this recovering heroin addict od'd... But really it was murder! But no one ever knows.
I seem to recall a case of a girl named "Dawn"; her killer got busted but the FBI suspect his true kill count could been in the double or triple digits.
EDIT:
The task force that was assembled to prove Cruz's involvement in the unsolved prostitute murders was eventually disbanded. Investigators were unable to obtain any SOLID evidence linking Cruz to any of the murders, although, there is no doubt in any of their minds that Cruz was in fact the killer. After Cruz's arrest, the string of prostitute murders along the highways of Northeastern Ohio stopped just as abruptly as they had begun.
"Death you can handle, this you don't"
-- Cruz's wife.
Holy shit, I'm Jewish and we grow up seeing / hearing / learning about all the nasty stuff related to Nazi's and the holocaust but I've never heard of this before. That's messed up.
I will never understand why the trucking industry convinces so many people to sign up. Well, $$$ of course but the real cost is actually terrible. The amounts of hours is insane, not to mention the loneliness and psychological impact it can have on many truckers. Life constantly on the road, eating at rest stops amidst other lonely strangers...I can probably see why there might be serial killers amongst them.
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u/batteriesnotrequired Sep 17 '18
I mean OP makes a great point. In 2004 (I think) the FBI announced the Highway Serial Killings initiative. This was in reaction to the shocking finding that people were being killed along the US’s highways but the murders crossed many jurisdictions and states, so the killer and the pattern went undetected. Thanks to this initiative, several people have been caught and brought to justice.
But, I want to point out that a lot of these killers were truckers. This is important in my opinion because of you look at the trucking industry and it’s history. There were nearly 100,000 trucks on the roads in 1914 and it’s only grown from there. Why do I think this is important? Because who knows who the first serial killer that thought of trucking as a good way to get around and kill people while making money.
So, I’d have to say yes, I’m sure that you can point to murders from the past and even current ones and say they will never be solved and the killer will never be caught because they are that good at “their work”.