Self Drive Hgvs Next Year On Our Motorways

[TWR]

That's going to be very interesting, there will be a Driver within the cab, will you feel safe?

[Hopkirk]

So how does the driverless lorry get onto the motorway to form up in the convoy?

If the convoy is formed when it leaves the depot, what happens if it goes through traffic lights which turn red as the first one crosses the white line?

Assuming the convoy gets to the motorway slip road, how does it join if there isn't a huge gap in the busy traffic?

What if one of the second vehicle of three has a technical fault, and the engine cuts out?

They are currently making 'smart' motorways with no hard shoulder and 'refuge areas' only just big enough for one lorry.

[trt]

Whats the poor hitchhikers going to do?

[EDDIE51]

FF your accident happened because there was a driver!
A driverless truck will NOT 'plow into the car in front' . The car in front and the truck will be in constant contact with all other vehicles in the area and will report what they intend to do continuously.

[mikey4444]

As I said on my thread earlier....ruddy daft idea.

[EDDIE51]

trt ,You can't hitch hike on a motorway!

[EDDIE51]

Hopkirk, The convoys will form up at a service area and drive to a distant service area where they will disband again. If an engine cuts out the auto driver will just bring the truck to a halt and call for help as a normal driver would .

[goodgoalie]

I can understand these road trains in a huge country like Australia, with vast distances and long empty roads, but densely-populated England? Spaghetti Junction?

[EDDIE51]

The principle will soon spread to aircraft. There have already been trials of computer controlled fighter aircraft that have proved to be impossible for piloted aircraft to shoot down yet can shoot any down any conventional plane.

[Baldric]

Someone misguidedly mentioned RTAs earlier, there is now no such thing, they are all RTCs

[Baldric]

Whhat does 'any down any conventional plane' mean?

[EDDIE51]

^ shoot down any conventional plane !

[trt]

## trt ,You can't hitch hike on a motorway! ##

Eddie,
Yes you can, but its illegal, anyway they have to drive on a normal road, to get to a motorway!

[Hopkirk]

Imagine there has been an accident, and lanes are closed. All traffic is having to merge into one lane (a regular occurrence). How are the driverless lorries going to do this? The public won't give way to let three lorries into their lane in one go.

[ToraToraTora]

utter madness, will it take death and carnage before they abandon this stupidity?

[ToraToraTora]

ron: "Anything that is correctly controlled by a faultless computer" - ever worked in computers ron? The computers themselves are merely slaves executing instructions written by anything but faultless people.

[vulcan42]

For this to be effective, every computer on every vehicle has to work correctly 100% of the time all the time and that doesn't include other mechanical defects adding to the chaos..

[vulcan42]

Meant to add,it seems very strange to me that this idea is to replace the human element, which causes most accidents, yet what's in the cab to take over when something goes wrong?

[ToraToraTora]

eddie: "Life in OZ Would be impossible with out the road train." - what's that got to do with self driving truck convoys? They are just a long truck.

[EDDIE51]

TTT self driving trucks and cars are on the way, you have just got to accept it, there is no way you are going to stop it. 25 years from now we will look back and wonder how we ever allowed people to drive cars.

[ToraToraTora]

I'm looking forward to it eddie, I'd love to get my car to take me on a pub crawl round the countryside on Sundays. Sadly I cannot see how it can ever be made to work. I work in IT, computers may be faultless but programmers are far from it. But even if they solve the tech issues, the legal ones still loom large.