But an autonomous truck can just go slower, no? It never gets tired, so unless there is a logistic pressure, it would be reasonable to trade speed for safety.
No one will tolerate self-driving trucks that are limited to lower speed than human-driven trucks. Since human drivers have time limits by law, they need to be able to move relatively quickly. Human drivers attempting to move around super slow autonomous trucks is a guarantee for a lot more accidents, more than erasing whatever safety benefits self driving would get in the first place. Also, slow trucks would not be preferred by the logistics managers that arrange truck delivery in the first place. So self driving trucks would have to be a lot cheaper to be competitive. I don't think labor is 90% of the cost of a truck delivery.
50mph or whatever speed you'd still see on the freeways is not that slow.
> Also, slow trucks would not be preferred by the logistics managers that arrange truck delivery in the first place. So self driving trucks would have to be a lot cheaper to be competitive.
Why would they "not be preferred" to such an extent? For short trips it might be an hour difference, is that such a big deal? As you approach a full shift of driving, a human driver spends up to 20% of that shift not driving, so the difference isn't as much as you'd expect. And as soon as you go past 11 hours at human driving speed, the self-driving truck gets there much sooner.
> I don't think labor is 90% of the cost of a truck delivery.
