Wednesday 8 June 2016

Self-Driving Trucks Too?

With self-driving cars in the horizon today, one can't not think of what next to expect. What would we have to make use of our hands for besides occasionally clicking on stuff, seeing that voice commands are also a major part of operating systems and gadgets nowadays.
With autonomous cars and voice command systems that let you summon your car, the use of one's hands in the operation of these gadgets would pretty much be old school. Kind of. Lol!
I guess that's how and what we get to live with in a tech age. Awesome!

Speaking of self-driving, have you heard about driverless trucks? Not until now. Just recently, and by recently I mean last month, a group of self-driving trucks drove across Europe arriving at the Port of Rotterdam.

Wow! You're looking to take our cabbies from behind the wheels and now our truckers too? Way to go!
I'm not a truck driver or anything like that, but I'm concerned for those who would probably be out of job because of this. No offense. Then yet again, I think this technology is awesome for a lot of reasons.
OK tell us what we want to hear already and stop being such a technophobic technophile all at the same time.

Anyways, think of what this would mean for us here in Nigeria If trucks had to drive themselves. OK maybe I'm taking us way into the future but it's necessary cos someone dreamt of it first and others helped out or went on to work at it. It all begins somewhere.
We would start thinking about autonomous cars someday in the future. Or would we? 😗 *whistling*

The trucks can drive nearly 24 hours per day which is very good as that can double the output of the transportation chain by doing the job for less and with less human labour. How economically cool is that?

Looking at our country today, how many young people would be interested in taking a truck driving job? Uhm! Sincerely not me. So who? Hence the usefulness of this technology. Now there's nothing wrong in truck driving and I think it's a noble job. But thank God for technology.

Also look at the safety factor. We know how some truck drivers behave on the road here in Nigeria. Reckless and also cause a lot of accidents and deaths on our highways. And most annoying is that they just don't know the right spot to break down.
Surely you've noticed that they tend to break down in the middle of the road or at some turn or bend.

Also annoying is the fact that they move sometimes at such high speeds and don't let other vehicles overtake them. Literal vehicle-to-vehicle intimidation. Again, I say annoying.

I'm guessing they would require lanes dedicated to these driverless trucks as they move at certain speed range and could obstruct other vehicles and possibly pose a threat to other drivers. Most highway accidents in Nigeria are truck-related or generated and as for the most vehicles that run off course into the bush or cause others to do so? You guessed right. *Trucks*

Then again, truck driving in Nigeria is one job that has been saving lives since the 60's and still is, and I say we don't need this particular technology in this country, at least for the now.
Besides we've got more dire needs to meet and other things to do with what technology we have available to us.

Major supplies of all kinds across the country are made via trucks as cargo trains - which would have been quite efficient in doing this - are not really in use for this purpose over here.

This technology would put more families at risk than it would those on the road with the human driven trucks. Well, I guess we will be happy for yet another wonderful technology for the good of humanity, but let's just save it for the near future hopefully, until certain things are put in right places over here. Awesome technology keep at it but we'd hold on to our manually-driven trucks for now. Auf wiedersehen!

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