Time to be scared

WOW!

Chief Bob (Retired)

"Imagine a giant battery on one of those locomotives that's taking energy from the train as it's breaking," Mr Vella said.

Even scarier if the trains are breaking rather than braking.

Driverless trains, what's wrong with that? At least it's on a track! 

Right now the post office is testing driverless tractor trailers between distribution centers in the west. Right now a driver is in the seat if there a problem but what about when the project is givin a go and the trucks are on the roadways driverless, yes the same ones you may be driving on. 

its just not the railroads we should be worrying about. 

Dave

Not scary.  Rio Tinto has been using autonomous haul trucks for over a decade.  Expect they have the technology well in hand.

What, me worry?

The driverless train is actually old news. We had a multi page discussion about this a few months ago. The upshot of it was that it's all well and good if the Aussies want to drag ore trains through the outback without humans on board. But that ain't going to fly here in North America, too many populated areas, and too many hazmat loads. 

David, at least it's on a track (until it isn't). 

Some of the more advance features are available, standard equipment, with our 2018 Toyota Prius.  Cruise control monitors the speed of the vehicle ahead, will adjust to a safe distance, unfortunately, I usually get passed, the car cuts-in front of me.  Lane departure, Left and Right, apparently, sees the lines, on the road, will beep and display either the left or right edge line.  It did once yell, and scream, stop, stop, as I was approaching the vehicle ahead way too fast, It also automatically applied the brakes.  I also noted, with ice and snow on the main sensor, which is above the mirror, center of windshield, another warning about the system being disabled.   All recorded in the on-board computer system, which, I'm being told can be accessed for litigation/or insurance information.  World is changing quickly.   IMO, Mike CT.  

So yesterday night I'm driving on the highway and want to get into the right exit lane.  Some psychopath matches speed with me in the right lane, speeding up and slowing down to try to prevent me from changing lanes.  Hopefully he (likely a he) wound up in a ditch somewhere.  This sort of individual crazy behavior behind the wheel, or just plain incompetence (tail gating, cutting in with insufficient margin as above, etc.) will disappear in the future when robotic vehicles are the only thing permitted on the roads .  Sorry for those of you who enjoy driving (I don't, obviously) but 35,000 to 40,000 deaths per year and 100s of billions of medical expenses in the USA alone will go down in the future that's coming.

Sometimes there's just no substitute for a good old fashioned human.

As long as you brought up modern automobiles, I drive a 2018 Buick Enclave with all the bells and whistles. I still haven't figured out how to use half that crap. The one I like is the side mirror warning lights when someone is in my blind spots. My driver's seat has three vibrators in it, right, left and center that buzz my butt for lane departure or parking obstacles. It's a gentle reminder. I know the car can detect other cars ahead, but I haven't figured out how to set following distance. I hate reading the owner's manual. It has something to do with the little green car that pops up under the speedometer. I found out the other day, that the car can detect pedestrians, when a little yellow person popped up there. I've been driving this thing for a year, and hadn't noticed that one before.

These features are there to help me, not replace me. I can live with that. I'll take all the help I can get.

"

Someday, the insurance companies will even start giving a better rate for those features instead of pocketing all the savings.

As for driverless trains, there are several places that already have totally automated metro systems, two that I found are the Copenhagen Metro and the Barcelona Metro line 9 (still under construction).

I like the idea of pedestrian and vehicle proximity and lane departure warnings in our cars.... features that assist the driver are all good and probably should be mandatory on all new cars.  Autonomous driving features....not nearly as valuable and imo will never be as long as there are construction zones with no lane markings and emergency detours present on our streets and highways.  It seems I can't go anywhere anymore during road construction season (spring, summer, fall) without encountering some kind of impediment with re-routing, lane closures, temporary no left turn signs and lane divergences.   Your self driving system will inevitably disengage so often that it would be almost useless much of the time and even if it would do a fantastic job, a person might or quite possibly would be completely unprepared and too distracted to react in time in situations like I have encountered on our interstates and expressways too many times to count.  Just my 2 cents.

Like it or not, automation will prevail in the future, and we will adapt.

"Imagine a giant battery on one of those locomotives that's taking energy from the train as it's breaking," Mr Vella said.

Are we train about the train "breaking" as in not working any more, or "braking" as in slowing down? 

Whatever...journalism is dead.

So is proper English usage.

Gerry 

Landsteiner posted:

  This sort of individual crazy behavior behind the wheel, or just plain incompetence (tail gating, cutting in with insufficient margin as above, etc.) will disappear in the future when robotic vehicles are the only thing permitted on the roads . 

Hopefully nobody will think it is funny to put a line of post-it notes crossing lanes of traffic. Believe it was Tesla who found out what could happen.

  The Australian train snafu is their problem, I guess.  I think we have a similar setup in Arizona or some other place out west.  Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's a point to point mining line delivering ore to a smelter?  Fine, if there's no chance of affecting the public when there's a wreck.

I have to recall the wreck of an eastbound Burlington freight in Lagrange, Il. in the late 1970s.  A car derailed in the middle of the train and caused a huge pile-up, taking out the entire bridge over the IHB.  At this moment a westbound Amtrak was approaching that bridge and thanks to the warning from the crew of the freight, they almost stopped with only the 2 Amtrak SDP40s going into the abyss where there had been a bridge just moments before.  Amazingly, none of the cars on the Amtrak train derailed.   I heard from someone second hand that the crew in the Burlington caboose sent the first warning over their radio that a wreck was happening and without that warning received by the crew on the Amtrak train, I shudder to think what could have been the result.  

What about the engineer and other crew members that used to run that train that are told, we don't need you anymore, go home? Automation could at sometime put almost everybody out of work.

I don't believe any of our trains should operate autonomously if there's any chance that the public could be injured or killed in the event of a wreck be it a runaway, collision or derailment or whatever.          It's like the driverless cars ( and now trucks.).     Phooey on that stuff.  The brainiacs say they have it all figured out and not to worry.  When someone says "don't worry about it" that's when it's time to worry.    The jobs are another matter and I especially hate to see railroad jobs go away.   (I'm retired myself and can't even describe how thankful I am for Railroad Retirement.  I doubt you could find a better deal for working folks.) 

feet posted:

What about the engineer and other crew members that used to run that train that are told, we don't need you anymore, go home? Automation could at sometime put almost everybody out of work.

It's no different at the local supermarket, they just recieved a robot that goes around the market looking for spills and other things on the floor. In the near future you will be able to ask it where items are and  it will also scan the aisles for out of stocks along with ordering for the store. 

It is the first step in eliminating non-essential employees. Who will be next? 

Dave