Gord Magill article in The Blaze exposes the real motivations behind the push for autonomous 18-wheelers.
Americans have become strangely accustomed to driverless cars. In cities like San Francisco and Austin, people casually summon Waymo robo-taxis the way they once called Uber.
Now imagine the same technology attached to an 80,000-pound tractor-trailer moving at highway speed.
It’s happening; large carriers are already purchasing hundreds of robotically operated highway trucks as they prepare to eliminate one of the country’s most common occupations: the truck driver.
Supermarket swindle
Those pimping the technology tell us it is the necessary solution to a catastrophic shortage of truckers, with the additional benefit of making the roads safer. As I explain in my new book, “End of the Road: Inside the War on Truckers,” neither claim holds up under scrutiny.
This hardly matters, as the demand for more road robots is hardly organic. Instead, it is the product of a massive marketing campaign designed to acclimate us to a radical new future, one that may ultimately curtail the rights of all American drivers. Picture something like the “motor law” envisioned in the classic Rush track “Red Barchetta.” The late Neil Peart was a man who understood the precious freedom of the open road.
