To Unions: Let's Start Job Training Now

Driverless vehicles - including buses, taxis, and trucks - are coming in a few years. This is a fact, an inevitable revolution about to take place. At some point, the vast majority of human drivers will lose their jobs, whether that comes after union negotiations or at the end of a long contract or whether it is the immigrant Uber or taxi driver being giving the shaft at the end of his shift. 

Driver unions can help their members. I hope some politician somewhere powerful can assist those drivers without a union or any worker protections. 

Just saying no will not work

However, unions merely declaring that driverless won't happen or that human drivers do so much more than drive and therefore should not lose their jobs - these might stall the inevitable, but they will ultimately be losing arguments.

And the first arguments are just being spouted. An article from Vancouver, shows that the Translink drivers' union and Translink itself are the first in North America to be arguing labor rights as a reason to reject driverless transit. 

Their energies would be better spent considering and providing job training to the thousands of drivers who will be out of a job. 

Remember actual shoe stores, airlines with good service (outside of first class), small hardware and electronics stores and restaurants before cheap no-frills big box stores and fast food took over? Fortunately or unfortunately, cheap service - that means driverless vehicles without wage and benefits drivers - will also win out. I just hope we remember to replace this step on the economic ladder and to protect those who will be mid-career when they lose their livelihoods.

O' Henry in Australia

This is already happening in a Chinese and Japanese-owned mine in Australia. All vehicles working in the mine are driverless. According to an article from down under, these bot trucks do not get bored and make mistakes. They also eliminate accidents of humans and vehicles working side by side or inside of the the vehicles. [Editor's note: I had trouble getting to the article the second time. Seems the publication prefers readers to be subscribers and not those just occasionally interested in reading a local article.]

Sunshine state

Not everyone is thinking of the unionized drivers or their unrepresented brethren (and sisters). Florida, for example, is doing whatever it can to attract the vehicles and the companies working on them, including hosting an annual autonomous vehicle summit, now in its third year. Here's a video of a self-driving Army vehicle. And an article with more summit details. Okay and a second video below.