Don’t fear driverless trucks
The advantages are overwhelming. But the adjustment may be rough.
For generations, the open road has provided good jobs for Americans, whether truckers, novelists or country-music lyricists. Soon it may be crowded with less sympathetic protagonists: self-driving robots.
Trucks with some degree of automation already are plyingmines, hauling freight and making beer runs. Investment is pouring into the industry. As Congress debates a new law to promote self-driving technology, however, it may exempt big commercial vehicles, hoping to save trucking jobs. That won’t work. But it might succeed in holding back innovationand growth.
Automation doesn’t only replace jobs. It can stimulate job growth, too, as the combination of human and robot labor improves productivity. Many automated systems now in development drive trucks on highways but require a person at the wheel on urban streets or when thingsgo wrong.
This suggests that trucking jobs are less likely to disappearthan morph into techand-logistics work — requiring new skills, but also offering better pay and working conditions. That should appeal to an industry with high turnover, long hours, low wages, a persistent labor shortage and often-burdensometerms of employment.
As technology improves, the benefits may become even more pronounced. Given that most accidents result from human error, more autonomy should reduce the 350,000 crashes involving large trucks on American roads each year. That should drivedown insurance premiums, reduce repair costs and —not least — save lives.
Self-driving big-rigs also wouldn’t be subject to rules limiting driving hours, so they could deliver products faster and more predictably. Given how integral trucking is to the U.S. economy — delivering some 70 percent of goods and producing $700 billion in revenue a year — that couldbe transformative.
A final advantage is environmental. Automated trucks can move in “platoons,” with a lead vehicle setting the pace and others trailing in a coordinated caravan. Wireless communication allows them to follow each other closely, reducing wind drag and congestion. Such convoys can improve fuel economy by up to 10 percent, which means savings of perhaps $8,000 per truck per year.
Congress should, of course, help displaced truckers learn new skills, find other work and otherwise adjust to a new economic reality. Strengthen apprenticeship programs and community colleges. Expand wage subsidies, retraining loans and incentives for workers to move where the jobs are.
These remedies won’t be easy, but the work should start now. To paraphrase a trucking enthusiast: There’s a long way to go, and a short time to get there.