Self-Driving Vehicles -- Are They that Great a Threat?

[IslandMan]

tree68

If anything will shoot down the concept of driverless delivery, that will (levity intended).

There are already folks who drive around looking for unattended packages on porches, and possibly even follow delivery drivers around.

Never mind free merchandise - if the drone is delivering a pizza, it's a free lunch!

And there have already been cases of thieves stopping trains by various means in remote locations and emptying entire containers before anyone in authority can reach the location.

On the surface, it sounds like a good idea, and might even work in some locales.  Not so much in others...

 

No doubt driverless trucks will carve out a niche for the transport of low-value goods such as gravel, cement, lumber and so on - things not worth stealing! For higher-value products such as smartphones the cost of insurance to cover the risk of theft might well outweigh the saving in wages.

 

As for drones, anything that a drone can deliver will be small and probably valuable (jewellery, a watch or a smartphone for example) so intercepting drone deliveries is likely to be something that thieves will think about.

[Norm48327]

I see self-driving cars on the road every day. They must be self-driving because the idiot behind the wheel isn't paying attention.

[gregc]

i'm having a hard time thinking of a technology the exceeds driveless automobiles in complexity.