The future of driving?

I once read a ?stupid human? story discussing why a man had gotten into a crash. Apparently, he thought the cruise control feature of his car was more all-inclusive than in fact it was. He set the cruise control and climbed into the back seat to catch a nap.

Of course, this is the future. Well, growing up in the 1980s tends to make you think of this as the far future. The other day Washington City Administrator Brent Hinson was talking to me about a project that isn?t due until 2020. My first response was this was decades off. In fact, it is slightly over three years away. In any event, we have technology now that you can see displayed as flights of fantasy in science fiction movies from just a couple of short decades ago.

Once people work out a solution to some problem, it seems to be in their nature to carry it forward as much as they can. Something to think about ? it took 66 years from the Wright brothers? first flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903, until we put a man on the moon in 1969. That is well within many people?s lifetime. Unfortunately we also seem to worry more about whether we can accomplish something and not enough about whether we should.

Back to the subject of someone catching a nap in the back seat of a car. That is exactly what someone did recently as the 21st century cruise control drove a semi loaded with Budweiser beer. Uber Technologies and Anheuser-Busch teamed up to create a self-driving truck, dubbed ?Otto,? that traveled 120 miles down Colorado?s I-25 to deliver the load while the driver hung out in the sleeper area of the cab. This is experimental technology and the route had to be carefully planned out prior to the trip, but this is a taste of what is on the horizon.

Anheuser-Busch says that a team of self-driving trucks could save the company $50 million per year. If I were to read between the lines, I would say that is $50 million that the company would have paid as salaries to over-the-road truckers that wouldn?t be paid with a self-driving truck. In fact, a self-driving truck could run 24/7, while we mere mortals can?t.

In the U.S. we have about 3.5 million truck drivers (about 1 percent of the population) and there is a shortage. This means those jobs are relatively secure. The average salary for a rookie truck driver is about $40,000 per year. This is a solid job for people to make a decent wage. These jobs will be a thing of the past if the self-driving truck takes off.

I am a huge fan of capitalism and I believe it is the greatest economic system in the world. It is responsible for most of the greatest developments in history. The problem with the system, which seems to get the most press, is the somewhat predatory lengths that some companies will go to. The saying is that they want their customers rich and their employees poor. This arrangement may be good for the short term, but over the long haul they are killing the goose that is laying the golden egg.

We all want to see the U.S. economy flourish, but the powers that be need to understand that every part is impacted by every other part. If there are out-of-work truck drivers, that means there will be people who won?t be spending money.

If companies want to make a Johnny Cab (pop culture reference from the movie ?Total Recall?) semi, that is great. I hope the people making the decisions realize this is just a fascinating novelty and stick with good old-fashioned manpower to get the jobs done right.