Garbage in, garbage out
The rate of the technology evolution is incredible – mind blowing, really, if you think about it. I’m a member of the feral Generation X. We, generally speaking, were the last generation to grow up without computers dominating our lives.
A lot of us had three television channels to choose from. We had “party lines” for our home phones. For me, that meant waiting on neighbors Rita and Dixie to quit gossiping and free up the line in our neck of the woods for me to call a friend. We lived outdoors with little supervision. It really was a simpler time and a time in which wild children like myself would be caught doing nefarious things only when someone in the network of moms caught wind of our shenanigans.
But I also grew up during the computer revolution, at least the tail end of it. I remember sitting in a high school computer lab with green-screen computers whirring all around us. As much as we were taught to work with the technology, however, we were equally encouraged to be wary of it.
That was the phrase used to describe the lack of trust we should have in anything computer-generated. The code being used to spit out the end product was only as good and accurate as the programmer writing it. If the code was, well, garbage, the final product likely would be as well.
It’s hard to find an adult without a smartphone these days. These pocket-sized phones serve as messenger systems, music libraries, computers, photo and video cameras, compasses, calculators, health monitors, mapping systems … You get the drift. They do everything.
They aren’t perfect, though. How many phone updates do you go through – or should you go through – in a month, a year. A lot. There are always “bugs” to be fixed. The garbage has to be taken out.
It’s one thing to experience frustration from being without your technology Swiss Army Knife for a few hours. But it’s a different story to have naïve reliance on emerging technology.
We have a pair of stories on autonomous trucks in this issue, starting on Page 38. One covers a tech forum in Texas where autonomous companies really tried to promote driverless trucks as the solution to nonexistent or mischaracterized problems. We follow that up with a breakdown on Page 40 of where the industry really is on advancing to driverless trucks.
The autonomous companies remind me of the kid who breaks out the latest and greatest gadget to show off to friends, only to have the gadget fail. There’s enough data out there to suggest that brakes really need pumped on turning loose the first generation of Maximum Overdrive trucks.
Garbage in and garbage out can be applied to regulations mandating other technology, too.
For one: Automatic emergency braking is a pet project of the current administration that needs to hit, well, the brakes. There has been acknowledgment that the technology isn’t ready, and plenty of truckers who have experienced it are raising big-time red flags. We have more on that on Page 18.
Emission regulation is another hot-button issue on which it seems the current administration is just blindly charging ahead. For those of us who were around when the previous flurry of emission regulations on trucks rolled out – boy, can we tell you some horror stories. Yet even with engine makers saying the new expectations are virtually impossible to meet on the prescribed deadline, here we are. You can read more starting on Page 36.
Annette Sandberg, one of the first administrators of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, talked about the “pace of regulation.” She commonly used that phrase when talking about the need to move slowly on new mandates. It’s important to know the crystal-clear reality of where we are and what effects previous regulations have had (both intended and unintended).
That message has fallen on deaf ears through many administrations since she was in office. But it’s high time we stop the cycle of garbage-in, garbage-out regulations. LL