TruckersReport: Consumer Watchdog, a non-profit consumer advocacy group has penned a letter to the California DMV asking that they pull all Otto’s self-driving trucks off the road and seek penalties against both the company and its executives “to the fullest extent permissible under the law.”
Owned by ride-sharing giant Uber, Otto made headlines last year when its trucks partnered with Budweiser to make the first commercial delivery with an autonomous truck. Rather than creating a new self-driving truck from the ground up, Otto instead created a kit that can be used to give an existing truck autonomous capabilities.
According to Consumer Watchdog, the company has been testing its technology in California illegally. California only allows testing of self-driving vehicles once a permit is issued and only vehicles weighing under 10,000 lbs can be used to test. In their letter to Jean Shiomoto, the director of the California DMV, “Otto’s robot trucks fail on both counts. They have no permits and they weigh too much.”
What would happen if someone stopped in front of the truck and put down a traffic cone in front of it?
I’m against self driving cars and trucks because every major code advancement will come at the expense of dead victims as the result of poor coding.
I can’t imagine how bad these rigs will screw up traffic.
And then there is the problem of trucks obeying the speed limit. If they do that then people jammed up behind them will freak, thereby adding to the road rage.
If it were loaded with illegals……can it be automatically sent to Mexico??
SgtZim, why don’t you try it then tell us what happens.
Unless they unload themselves too, won’t they still need humans?
@Merry Poppet – Loading is the hard part; unloading is a snap! Simply remotely unlatch the rear doors, put it in reverse, accelerate to about 30 mph, then slam on the brakes. Voila! Empty!
So if one of these uber/otto trucks plows into a liberal protest group of dirty filthy violence prone shit pickles shutting down a California freeway.
What kind of wine would be best for dinner. Red or white.
Let me guess, a Frightliner?
A Sans-Peter-bilt?
A Splatterpillar?
@LocoBlancoSaltine – If it’s California, it must be a LOLVo or a SMack truck.
Oh just wait till one or more of the AI controlled self driving trucks goes rogue, and becomes aggressive because it is not getting its way.
Hey, wait a minute. Isn’t that what the left is doing, except in their case AI is Absence of Intelligence.
@Al 30mph and slam the brakes, lol!
Maximum Overdrive.
Will drivers be pissed there’s no driver to flip off when they get cut off ?
I think they could get pissed enough to try and push it off the road !
why not , no one dies !
It’s a Volvo. And Thank God (a sincere statement of gratitude) it’s being shut down. At least for now.
I don’t remember dreams very much. Hardly at all, really. But I had a nightmare about 15 years ago about being an add-on manager/driver of one of these things and it went off-road and killed me. That was long before they were even talked about in the news. Talk about waking up in a sweat.
I do not see them working out anywhere, except in closed-course circumstances.
I just had four encounters with “self driving,” actually a voice activated ipad keyboard. Not a good outcome.
Last night we drove through miles of construction zone with exagerated twists and turns and narrow lanes on a major highway, in the rain in an SUV. NO. I don’t want to drive between driverless trucks and temporary concrete barriars in a small sports car. My life depends on not getting crushed or pushed over a barriar into a river.
Probably drives as bad as those assholes
texting on the road. I wanna run them off the
road.
Computers never malfunction or get hacked— what could possibly go wrong?