#The Drive By Truckers

[ghost-mantis]

Truck drivers in Michigan have for years smashed into an undersized bridge called The Big Penny. Normal warning signs have not deterred drivers from wedging dozens of trucks into its hungry maw.

So they put eyes and teeth on the bridge, in part as a further deterrent.

It has not worked…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The “3,000,000 truck drivers” who were supposedly at risk from self-driving tech are a mirage. The US Standard Occupational Survey conflates “truck drivers” with “driver/sales workers.” “Trucker” also includes delivery drivers and anyone else operating a heavy-goods vehicle.

The truckers who were supposedly at risk from self-driving cars were long-haul freight drivers, a minuscule minority among truck drivers. The theory was that we could replace 16-wheelers with autonomous vehicles who traveled the interstates in their own dedicated, walled-off lanes, communicating vehicle to vehicle to maintain following distance. The technical term for this arrangement is “a shitty train.”

What’s more, long-haul drivers do a bunch of tasks that self-driving systems couldn’t replace: “checking vehicles, following safety procedures, inspecting loads, maintaining logs, and securing cargo.”

But again, even if you could replace all the long-haul truckers with robots, it wouldn’t justify the sky-high valuations that self-driving car companies attained during the bubble. Long-haul truckers are among the most exploited, lowest paid workers in America. Transferring their wages to their bosses would only attain a modest increase in profits, even as it immiserated some of America’s worst-treated workers.

But the twin lies of self-driving truck — that these were on the horizon, and that they would replace 3,000,000 workers — were lucrative lies. They were the story that drove billions in investment and sky-high valuations for any company with “self-driving” in its name.

For the founders and investors who cashed out before the bubble popped, the fact that none of this was true wasn’t important. For them, the goal of successful self-driving cars was secondary. The primary objective was to convince so many people that self-driving cars were inevitable that anyone involved in the process could become a centimillionaire or even a billionaire.

- Google's AI Hype Circle: We have to do Bard because everyone else is doing AI; everyone else is doing AI because we're doing Bard.

[stealingpotatoes]

You are trucking today my dude Godspeed soldier 🫡

thank u bro 😤😤

[dailylaurajane]

PRIDE MONTH MAY BE OVER BUT WE FINALLY HAVE LJG TINY DESK

[littleplantfreak]

no one can make fun of Umemiya for being my passenger princess because left to my own devices in the passenger seat, I would commit heinous acts that would get us pulled over probably

[alphabull1]

[shirtlessworking]

Shirtless truckin behind the wheel

[isawthismeme]

Sweet Potato Hitler 🤣

[historictruckingsociety]

[mostlythemarsh]

Friday Records

[fuckthemforthis]

I don't know guys... having spent over 3 years in the company of young Balkan truck drivers, seeing Bojan behind a bus wheel just clicked in my head because he fits the image I have so much haha

Like if music fails, sociology fails and getting married fails... I can see him drive long hours, be exhausted, annoyed, make dumb jokes and live off sandwiches, coffee and cigarettes (hope he never does tho)

[thethinkingman]

#dashcam #baddrivers #travel #travels #traffic #stupid #why #trucker #trucking #driving #driver #truckdriver #cdl #cdllife #bluecollar #truckersofinstagram

[cosmogyros]

"Goddamn Lonely Love" by Drive-By Truckers has no right to go that hard. I mean seriously. This is the kind of song where if you start listening to the lyrics, you suddenly find yourself needing to sit down.

[the-inner-musings-of-a-worm]

man i wish aftg was real (i would fend off any of the characters with a stick if they came within 10 ft)

[bonefarm]

I used to hate the fool in me - but only in the morning - Now I tolerate him all day long…

[musickickztoo]

Patterson Hood *March 24, 1964