“When thinking about the trucking industry, the first thing that comes to mind about its drivers is that they tend to be older — industry experts say the average trucker is 54 years old. But given the nationwide truck driver shortage, that’s now changing. A high school in California is now training teens to enter the industry through its truck driving school program,” reports NPR.
“Patterson High School in Patterson, Calif., is one of the first non-vocational high schools in the country to offer a truck-driving program for students. The elective course, which is open to seniors, is a part of the school’s Career Technical Education Program — helping students learn workplace skills through hands-on training.”
“‘A lot of [students] who enroll in the course have never considered trucking as a career,’ instructor Dave Dein told NPR. ‘Trucking doesn’t have a great reputation and it comes with a lot of misconceptions about what exactly a truck driver is.’ Those misconceptions include that the work is dangerous, comes with low pay and and that the hours are unbearable.”
“As the supply chain continues to suffer due to the pandemic, a truck driver shortage is adding to supply and shipping delays. Over the past decade, the trucking industry has constantly struggled with a driver shortage. According to the American Trucking Associations, trucks move roughly 72.5% of the nation’s freight by weight…”
“In the program, students are undergoing 80 hours of classroom training along with 30 hours of lab sessions outside the classroom as they get first-hand experience in trucking. Those who want to pursue a trucking career must undergo further training once they’re 18 years old. Currently, truckers must be at least 21 to haul goods across state lines.”
There is no question that the United States will have continued demand for truck drivers. In spite of promises from Elon Musk, it appears that “self-driving semi trucks” won’t be on America’s roads anytime soon. AI Technology is hobbled by several factors. The first is that the binary processors used in modern computers simply cannot match the processing capability of the human brain. There have been a number of accidents involving automated driving systems and it appears those systems may not be able to handle complex situations like slowing down and merging with traffic to get around a lane being blocked off by emergency vehicles because of an accident on a winter day when it’s 5 degrees Fahrenheit with heavy winds, blowing snow and limited visibility.
AI technologies are great for creating assistive technologies like those that automatically apply the brakes if a driver becomes distracted and gets too close to another vehicle, or lane-change warnings that employ electronic eyes to recognize when you’re crossing over the yellow or white stripes in the road, but there’s a big difference between handling those relatively simple, discrete tasks, and all that’s involved in navigating a tractor trailer pulling a 53′ foot trailer and loaded with 60,000 pounds of cargo through all of the different road and weather conditions encountered in the American landscape.