Juniper Driver
Established Member
Got to agree.^^^^
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Driverless Trains
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GatwickDepress
Established Member
With the exception of self-contained secure lines like the DLR, driverless trains won't really work. Drivers are always paying attention, always in total control of the train. They make decisions in a split-second. I don't think a computer, at least in our lifetimes, will be reliable enough to or a Train Captain vigilant enough.
If the driver is removed, the computer would have to be able to react to every situation in the way a human would. A car on the line, broken rail, distinguishing people running across the tracks from animals; and who do you blame when a fatal incident occurs?
If a member of staff is retained as a kind of Train Captain, how can you guarantee he'd be able to make decisions as quickly as a normal driver?
Picture the scene, a train is thundering down the line at 100 mph. The computer doesn't recognise the presence of an object on the line about 800 metres ahead. The Train Captain has been on this service for the past two hours sitting in front of a computer console, bored out of his mind, pushing the beeping vigilance unit out of pure reflex.
He's not in control of the situation. By the time he notices the object ahead it could be too late and boom. Derailed train, plenty of casualties.
Technology is best suited to aid drivers, I think, not to replace them.
If the driver is removed, the computer would have to be able to react to every situation in the way a human would. A car on the line, broken rail, distinguishing people running across the tracks from animals; and who do you blame when a fatal incident occurs?
If a member of staff is retained as a kind of Train Captain, how can you guarantee he'd be able to make decisions as quickly as a normal driver?
Picture the scene, a train is thundering down the line at 100 mph. The computer doesn't recognise the presence of an object on the line about 800 metres ahead. The Train Captain has been on this service for the past two hours sitting in front of a computer console, bored out of his mind, pushing the beeping vigilance unit out of pure reflex.
He's not in control of the situation. By the time he notices the object ahead it could be too late and boom. Derailed train, plenty of casualties.
Technology is best suited to aid drivers, I think, not to replace them.
TheKnightWho
Established Member
Only someone who is yet to experience redundancy would say something like that. I say 'yet' because by your analogy whatever field you've grafted to be in soon wouldn't need you! Hope you fair better than some. Feel free to prove me wrong however.
Not sure how you can substantiate that claim either, do you think everyone who gets made redundant finds another job the following day and carries on as normal?
Again, no idea
What are you going on about?
This has been going on for hundreds of years. Read my previous posts and you'll see what I'm getting at.
Or would you rather we were all Luddites? They made similar arguments.
Juniper Driver
Established Member
Never mind, I don't think I'll go there!
Technology is best applied as an aid rather than fully automate and remove all human interaction is what I'm getting at (IMO)
Luddite? I'm a year older than yourself if your profile is correct so I can't see that being the case!
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Most of the people on here who advocate driverless trains live in some fantasy land that all us drivers would just easily find other jobs to slot into. Get real. That didn't happen with the mines or the steel plants in various places. Go against it and your a Luddite. Fine call me a Luddite. But I'm still seeing the daily effects of mass job losses to the place I live and wish not to see mass culls of a job again. I'm giving my kids a great chance in life thanks to my job. I'd like to keep that going without this endless banal stream of nonsense about a technology that would never pass a confidence test in the wider public area.
TheKnightWho
Established Member
Never mind, I don't think I'll go there!
Technology is best applied as an aid rather than fully automate and remove all human interaction is what I'm getting at (IMO)
Luddite? I'm a year older than yourself if your profile is correct so I can't see that being the case!
A Luddite isn't someone who's old, it's someone who's against technology because it makes people redundant. Most of the original Luddites were quite young.
And sure, it can be applied as an aid but it's also completely automated many jobs that used to employ thousands (if not millions) of people. That isn't necessarily a bad thing.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
And most people who are against it seem to portray everyone as evil Thatcherites who have no real understanding of the world.
Or maybe some of us actually have an understanding of the difference between individual cases in the short term and a long term trend :roll:
I swear some people here would have us all working in the fields or gathering berries if they could. Times move on.
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Indeed they were although I'd rather not digress further into history but keep it in context, as such it is fairly safe to say I am not a Luddite, but that'll remain one of the more trivial things I've been called recently!
My first point was missed and was only that peoples jobs fulfill them - be that 'working in a field' or driving a train.
It has automated many jobs but again keeping it in context of heavy rail I can't see it being possible at the moment.
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Yet you still misunderstand the most basic point...it's still neither possible or financially viable to go driverless!
It's not as simple as people make out. Making he train go and stop is easy but there is far more to it than that if completely removing the driver. It would be a safe system, yes but very unreliable indeed with the most minor occurrence that goes unnoticed currently becoming a major issue causing delays (like a bird strike which a driverless system could never differentiate from striking an object as quickly as a driver could).
If it were a realistic idea to go driverless on the main lines it would certainly have been done by now somewhere in the world however even the most technologically advanced and wealthy countries continue to build main lines and trains with drivers up front.
NSEFAN
Established Member
It may not be financially viable yet, but do you think that it could ever happen?A-driver said:
This is an interesting concept. Why does having a job fulfil us? Is it just that we need a routine, or is it the need for some kind of aspiration and sense of achievement? Could this not still be possible in a world where every manual or procedural task was automated?SPADTrap said:
Indeed it is and I certainly don't know why but speak to anyone who is unemployed looking for work and get a sense of how damaging it can be.
When I finished my Aeronautical Engineering degree one of my lecturers told me I was free to 'go out there and design myself out of a job' so after a stint flying turbo props I became a driver
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Not really out of the world of thunderbirds and captain scarlet.
It's fine to say that trains can be automated, and they can, but driverless, no. Looking at what I do everyday, getting a computer to do all that wouldn't work. Controlling the train can easily be done by a computer but the driver up front does far moe than that.
We could be paid a heck of a lot more than we are now before the level of technology needed to completely replace us works out any cheaper!
As I say,it's the little things computers can't easily replace.
Technology has its place and is welcomed into the train cab in my opinion but the human being also has their place in the cab along with it.
As I say, if it was remotely practical or possible it would have been done by now somewhere (and I'm talking mainline/heavy rail/high speed, not metro which is a different kettle of fish).
What job do you do?
carriageline
Established Member
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Or maybe SOME of US know what the railway is like every day, as we actually work on it every day?
And then, in certain situations having a driver at the front can be helpful. For example, getting them to examine the line, getting them to shut a crossing gate, them moving trees/obstructions from the line, spotting defects/obstructions on passing trains and adjacent lines. And then, when you have a complete loss of signalling, and temporary block working is implemented. I can't think of a work around in driverless world!
No doubt a train can drive and stop it self, and look out for obstructions thats fine, we know technology can do it. But 1) the cost (the North still has pacers..) 2) how it would deal with degraded working and things a driver would deal with will probably stop it until technology gets more advanced and cheaper. Then what's the point of paying the billions it will cost, and still have a driver up front?
Will it happen? Yes. when? Not in my lifetime.
TheKnightWho
Established Member
Of course, but I wasn't talking about that at all.
I've said what I've had to say on that in another thread, because I can't be bothered repeating myself. I understand the technology quite well.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Indeed they were although I'd rather not digress further into history but keep it in context, as such it is fairly safe to say I am not a Luddite, but that'll remain one of the more trivial things I've been called recently!
My first point was missed and was only that peoples jobs fulfill them - be that 'working in a field' or driving a train.
It has automated many jobs but again keeping it in context of heavy rail I can't see it being possible at the moment.
If you want to talk about jobs fulfilling people that's a whole other kettle of fish, but I wasn't really talking about that.
I'm not really sure where I stand on that kind of situation, but I think if something like that ever happened us being fulfilled would be the least of our worries.
notadriver
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You mean you're a qualified engineer with experience designing and implementing driverless train systems ?
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TheKnightWho
Established Member
No, but I'm a student who has significant experience with automated systems and a familiarity with the problems involved.
I'm not really sure I want to say much more about myself, what with other things I've said on other threads making it quite easy to identify who I am if I say much more.
Right, but no railway experience so you could talk automation as much as you like with great expertise but can't fully appreciate driverless (not automatic but driverless) trains and what it would involve as you simply don't know what a train driver does when sitting at the front of a moving train...
carriageline
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Okay fair enough, but do you have any experience with railways? Not meant to sound begrudging or belittling, but whilst (as it has been said over and over) it is possible to have a train drive it self, it's whether it would be worth the cost, because you would still NEED a driver in the cab. Technology for automation is there, or at least very nearly there. But it will only work whilst everything is running great and working. Even then, the railway is full of variables, I would be interested to see and how they combat them.
TheKnightWho
Established Member
That's pretty presumptive. A railway is a complicated system, but it's not divorced from the rest of reality. A lot of the problems with driverless railways are in common with driverless cars, for example. Obviously they're not the same, but a lot of the "insurmountable" issues that people keep raising are possible to solve. That doesn't mean you'd want a completely unmanned railway, but that isn't really what anyone's after - it's more to do with capacity and speed.
If you honestly want to see what I've got to say about it there are other threads out there... I really can't be bothered to type it out all over again.
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carriageline
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Throw money at it and it can be overcome, but you are talking far, far, far more money developing and installing technology - far cheaper to pay drivers, even if we get significant pay rises several times in the future.
Jamesb1974
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Theknightwho, could I just enquire as to whether you have some kind of professional or business interest in seeing driverless trains come to fruition? You seem hell bent on pushing this idea on this forum.
pne
Member
Agreed. It must be impossible to maintain the concentration required when most of the time your doing "nothing", just on the look out -- and required to go from "standing by" to "in control" in a fraction of a second.
It's the same whether it's driverless cars or driverless trains; you have to get them fully driverless or it's pointless. 99% driverless just won't work as in the 1% of situations where you need a Real Live Human, they won't be able to "switch themselves on" quickly enough after having been bored out of their skulls for the past couple of hours.
NSEFAN
Established Member
I don't think there's any conflict of interest, he's just pointing out that technology is always improving and will probably one day be able to out perform humans in every task required for driving a train. Of course it is not practical or cheap at this moment in time, but it might be in several decades.Jamesb1974 said:
Agreed. I have heard at least one driver commenting about a similar issue, that his TOC is reducing his route and traction knowledge to save money, but it ends up with him working the same route over and over. He reckons it risks drivers zoning out and actually increasing the risk of an incident occuring. It seems like a reasonable concern to me, but then I'm not a driver and I have no numbers to back up any assertion that it is actually a risk!pne said:
D1009
Established Member
Aren't airline pilots currently required to do that?
Could I suggest you do some reading: the loss of AF447 was caused by pilot error. The cruise pilot demonstrated shockingly poor airmanship and flew a perfectly functional aircraft into a stall and held it in a stall all the way down to the water. Even with the blocked pitot tubes, all they needed to do was fly pitch and power until the tubes cleared - the plane was still under control and in a recoverable attitude when the air data system started giving valid data.
I would rather a pilotless plane than a pilot who can't figure out that pulling all the way back on the control column/stick is a bad idea when you have a stall warning at 35,000 feet.
Easy to say now isn't it :roll: It wasn't just a stall warning they had that night.
Ironic you mention pilotless aircraft in relation to AF447. Far as I can see the automation all but gave out leaving the pilots to deal with it. Had they not been there the outcome would have likely been the same.
Cockpit design and CRM which seem large factors.
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Agreed. The event started with the AP tripping off and an unreliable airspeed warning (for about 1 minute) but they didn't perform the unreliable airspeed checklist. It was the actions of the PF that caused the airplane to enter the stall (from the accident report):
"Following the autopilot disconnection, the PF very quickly applied nose-up sidestick inputs. The PF’s inputs may be classified as abrupt and excessive. The excessive amplitude of these inputs made them unsuitable and incompatible with the recommended aeroplane handling practices for high altitude flight..."
"Although the PF’s initial excessive nose-up reaction may thus be fairly easily understood, the same is not true for the persistence of this input, which generated a significant vertical flight path deviation."
Most tellingly: "With no PF inputs, the aircraft would have gradually rolled further to the left but the variations in pitch attitude and altitude would have been small."
It's day one stuff - if you have a stall warning at altitude, you push the nose down. The PF pulled the nose back and applied TOGA power and seemed to be targeting 12 degrees nose up - this is the recovery procedure for a low-altitude stall.
You won't get an argument there - the ECAM design was potentially confusing and I believe has been improved to make it clearer if the plane is stalling. More importantly the PNF missed opportunities to save the plane (as did the Captain when he returned to the cockpit). At no point did the crew come to a consensus as to what was happening - it seems from the CVR transcript that the PNF realised what the problem was "Wtch your speed" "According to all three you're going up, go back down" but he never gave clear direction to the PF.
It's also note-worthy that the Captain didn't say anything about the stall warning when he returned to the cockpit - you have a point when you say that the PF/PNF had other warnings displayed to them, but the Captain would have heard the stall warning before he even entered the cockpit so the stall should have been first and foremost in his mind.
There is no other way to put it - the crew flew a working aircraft into the ocean.
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The automation didn't 'give out' - the AP disconnected and the plane reverted to alternate mode by design because the pilots are there and are supposed to do a better job. However, Airbus had already developed a system call BLISS that would have continued to provide airspeed data when the pitot tubes clogged. If it had been fitted to the accident aircraft, the AP would never have disconnected and the passengers would have safely arrived in Paris. The mistake, in this case, was letting a human get involved.
And now back to your railway-related discussions...
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