Holy liability Batman! Self driving cars are bad enough, and people get in them voluntarily and they aren't designed to crush-compact what they pick up.
I disagree, I'd rather have a computer driving a trash truck than a tired human being at 4AM.
Depending on where you live and how involved unions are, they already have trash trucks that do not require a human to pick up the garbage. The driver activates a mechanical arm as it picks stuff up.
Unions will be the problem with a lot of the robotic implementations.
I've always had my garbage picked up by at least a two-person team.
I would be extremely wary of mechanical arms activated by a sole operator at 4 am, but that might be just my privileged socialism bubbling up again.
Going from one human to zero humans has a large impact on who's responsible for any screw-ups. I'm not sure the insurance will make it worth it to either the manufacturers or the operators anytime soon.
