Bramling as I said in the OP I'm a lay person - I understand the brake rate from your later post but what do you mean by the Central line tolerating overruns and does this not have safety implications?
The Central Line's mitigation against adhesion is to run sandite trains in the autumn, and having fitted a wheel slip/slide protection (WSP) system to the trains. The latter was done after it was found the trains were sustaining severe levels of flats (costly to repair, as well as taking trains out of service - see the recent Picc Line issues as an example of the problems flats can cause).
Other than that, there are large amounts of station overshoots and/or SPADs attributed to the ATO. Whilst every one is investigated, it's not a major issue because providing the train was in ATO then it doesn't require the driver to be taken off for investigation, and the WSP should reduce the likelihood of flats (doesn't eliminate it though - WSP only reduces it). Like most signalling on LU (the exception being the Jubilee and Northern), the signalling has overlaps which are designed to contain a train from maximum attainable speed, therefore even a full-speed SPAD *shouldn't* result in a collision/derailment, although of course never say never. On the mainline, overlaps are a nominal length and are simply designed to guard against misjudgement. The faster the line speed, the more difficult it becomes to provide full-speed overlaps, realistically the limit for this is about 50-60 mph, before you start seriously eating into capacity.
It's worth noting that on the Central Line drivers generally use their judgement and start driving manually if they suspect adhesion may be an issue.
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It seems that the mostly likely solution to this type of issue would be remote control of the vehicle, as we do with UAVs. That way you could have 1 driver at a central control room babysitting 50 trains.
What happens when the control room loses communication with the train?
but the challanges for automated cars are just as high, if not higher, than the challeneges for automated trains, and the technology needed strongly overlaps.
I'm not sure it does.
I suspect that the driverless car revolution will transform society in ways we can't even picture, as notverydeep says, trains may not be automated, because they may just shut down as cheaper and more convienient alternatives come along on the majority of the network. We may well end up with a network when todays new recruits retire that looks more like Serpell Report option A.
I can say that I will *never* accept using a driverless car. I'm sure many others feel the same.
Let's wait to see driverless cars, in daily use, meeting the same requirements as today, before judging how successful the concept proves to be. Personally I have my doubts.