What's safer, a self driving 18 wheeler semi-truck, or a self driving passenger car?

The car. Less mass.

Are you shitting me? A self driving semi-truck, bad idea, baaaad, really bad. haha

Should be better than drunk drivers?

Well, they have to be at least as safe as a passenger car right? And without human error. So I have to say they’re equal (but both scare the shit out of me. But so do some drivers, so I’m torn.)

Both the same. As in safer than if humans are driving.

There’s no reason to believe that one will be less convincingly controlled than the other.

That said, because of the semitruck’s significantly greater mass, it is more likely to be deadly should something go wrong.

Automated semitrucks would be able to much more precisely adjust for expected delivery time and would never travel faster than needed to arrive at it’s destination exactly on time, balancing factors like speed limits, fuel economy, safety, etc.

A question: Who’s gonna fuel it?

The link. It’s all in the link.

Self driving semi trucks would only be activated on highways, and would be continuously monitored by a driver trained in the auto-drive program. Monitored to be in place, awake, and alert. I’m guessing that the trucking industry is seeing this as a way to reduce the wage of long haul truckers while they are on interstates.
Safer highways. More ignorant, belligerent, and/or incompetent truck drivers in urban areas.
Creating a need for autonomous urban truck drivers.

I disagree with myself! Again. I was all for autonomous semi-trucks when I asked the Q. I’m now against them. Perfect the _technology. Then, if it puts people out of jobs for economic reasons, call it capitalism.__

Im not comfortable with either. Probably never will be. I don’t vote. But if there were a vote to keep these things off the road, I would.

Well, we let passenger planes fly themselves.

The feature is still actually “assisted driving”, not “self driving”, and I submit the safer of the two vehicles is the one that has that yet-perfected feature _turned off. _

That’s a decent point, @Dutchess_III.
Although airplanes have a few hundred miles more margin for error.
But it’s not like it’s a totally new idea, assisted driving.

I think both need more andvancment to be really safe,and both still require a driver behind the wheel to take over at a moments notice.

The big difference being, @SQUEEKY2, is that the drivers of 18 wheeler’s would be trained to be an integral part of the assisted driving system.
It seems that the plan for self driving cars is to just sell them like any other car and people can assume that the car is autonomous.

I would object if I thought the system was going to take jobs from truckers, but if the plan is legit, it might even increase the pay for trained drivers. Boosting wages and safety would be a win, win.
Fewer grumpy semi drivers that won’t yield the right-of-way on interstate entrance ramps!

@Dutchess_III We don’t let passenger planes fly themselves – we let the highly-trained human crew use auto-pilots, but require that the planes be crewed. And as @ibstubro wrote, flying doesn’t involve the many multi-car & object situations that cars are constantly involved in, nor does it have the need to constantly scan for and interpret visual data to know what it’s seeing so as not to hit people, dogs, cars right next to it that may suddenly move, ice versus puddles and other stuff on the road, etc..

Autopilot with a human there watching and able to immediately override is very different from autonomous vehicles with no humans.

However I am already not comfortable with computers taking part in managing the steering, acceleration and/or brakes, especially when the computer can respond to radio communication (cough hackers cough). I don’t even like driving with old-fashioned (or any) cruise control. I’ve been in enough situations where I needed to instantly be in complete control of the car, that I don’t want anything else messing with my inputs. I also almost always disable computer traction controls.

Consider what happens to the tractor cab when the vehicle stops suddenly. Like when you hit a tree or bridge abutment. The trailer (or van body) and the load itself acts like a big hammer when it disconnects from the fifth wheel. Not that being in a car would be much better…

We have an RV. Rick once commented that if we ever wrecked, we’d be wrecking for 15 minutes, with all the stuff flying to the front and whatever.