Will Driverless Vehicles Mean the Decline of Railways

Hi everybody.
With Volvo announcing that limited numbers of driverless vehicles will be running on the streets of London next year (2017) on an everyday basis (not trials), the press and media are now turning their thoughts to the effects on personal and commercial transport not only here in the UK but worldwide.

In the above, Volvo are to distribute the driverless cars to “selected people” who will use them as a replacement to their normal cars in everything they do. In Cumbria the trials of the driverless trucks on the M6 motorway and in towns along the route of the M6 have gone extremely well and the trials are now ready to move into their next “commercial” phase.

Here in the UK the insurance problems in regard to driverless vehicles would now seem to have been resolved. Along with the foregoing, legislation is now passing through Parliament allowing the person in control of a driverless vehicle to sit elsewhere other than the conventional drivers seat. Therefore, everything would seem to be coming into place which will see driverless vehicles becoming a very common sight on Britain’s roads within the next 3 to 4 years and possibly sooner. Other European countries are passing similar legislation to the UK, and no doubt the United States and Australia etc will be similarly on-board. So, what affects will all the above have on transport overall especially the railways.

In the UK the press have been identifying two passenger groups who they feel will be among the first to purchase driverless vehicles on a large scale. Senior pensioners whose advanced years mean that they either dislike driving or have lost their driver’s license through ill health or disability will be in the “first rush to buy”, with business personnel who travel widely in the course of their occupation also it is felt will be joining the initial purchasing group.

Both the above groups are large users of Britain’s passenger railways and would have a serious impact on passenger numbers if alternative transport is used by them. In terms of freight transport, driverless trucks will mean those vehicles can continue operation 24 hours per day (with the exception of fuelling stops) as driver’s hours regulations will no longer have any effect on their running.

So, will the above see the start of another 1950s/60s decline for the world railways, or do they have a continuing future?

Bill

I don't know about anyone else, but Stephen King's movie "Trucks" comes to mind. There are too many variables in driving for me to think this is going to go well. Automation isn't necessarily a bad thing, but a computer can only do as its told. Just my $0.02.

“I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.” Albert Einstein

Driverless vehicles, and automatic braking vehicles will make for more accidents, when a speeding tractor trailer rear ends an AI (stopped for no reason at all), driverless vehicle on the highway or turnpike, and after many fatalities where a driverless vehicle enters a hazardous area, causing a fatal huge collision, or running down of pedestrians and children ... You will see a ban on the ridiculous automatic driverless vehicle dream.

Trains will always be useful in inner city areas, where automobile and taxi driving is totally ridiculous, and parking is totally non-existent (like in NYC)

Only when all electric cars, replace gasoline and diesel cars, then will passenger trains suffer more decreased ridership.

The reason why US passenger trains suffered reduced ridership was a multi-corporate criminal conspiracy between many US major automobile manufacturers, oil and gas companies, and President Eisenhower, with his conspiracy plan of laying down a US Interstate Highway System, where he set in place a conspiracy of nationwide buyers, who purposely bankrupted and sabotaged "ALL" of the US trolley system(s), by deliberately tearing up the RR infrastructure ... so as to sell more and more cars, and gasoline.

Get a grip ... A nation of robots piloting cars and trucks ... lol

Just because the technology is there (and is still in it's infantcy of preliminary testing) ... and works on a controlled environment "Test Track" ... does not mean it will work in the real inner city envionmet with pedestrians all around, crossing streets, and colliding with AI driverless vehicles.

What next ? Driverless Trains ???

Went to London last year, Docklands Light Rail had no drivers, when we got to Paris the subways had no drivers either, this is old stuff.

Luv Karen

Hi everybody.
Well beyond "test track" testing of driverless cars and trucks here in the UK. Driverless vehicles have been on the roads of many cities in Britain for best part of the last two years under trial. Next year they will be in full everyday use with nobody in the driving seat at all.

Driverless trains, as stated above, they have been operating on the Docklands railway for over five years, on the London Underground for at least the last four years on the central and circle lines. Their is still a qualified driver in the cab but all that person does is monitor the running and open and close the doors.

Come on Cascade, you can do better than that.
Bill

Until the inevitable death occurs from faulty software. Artificial Intelligence is only capable of doing what programmers tell it to and they being human are extremely likely to make mistakes, if Microsoft and Apple can't produce anything bug free I doubt anyone can and as we know the automotive industry has already been caught out over "fixing" emission levels by messing with the onboard computers code wouldn't take much to hack a driverless vehicle to create chaos.

Wonder what would happen with all these driverless death machines if the was a large solar flare and the associated Electro magnetic disruption.
heck they can't even get Sat Navs to work properly, sending people down dead end roads or into fields, don't hold out much hope for a driverless car truck or whatever. GPS is not accurate enough to keep a vehicle with the confines of a road let alone on the right side of it. At least with Trains they are guided by tracks and there is a control room that controls or monitors what they are up to.

And according to this driverless cars are not exactly anywhere near safe http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35301279

Wow....You all expressed my thoughts and concerns to the nth degree.........I have worked around and on the Railroads, and unfortunately I have never felt comfortable since they took the Caboose away, let along an engineer down to one, or non at all!!!!I'm a geek to the hilt, but due to my age, I still have many old school traits in me,,Computers, nice, yes, automation, cost cutting, yes, nice,,,profitable yes, but I ended up doing 3-5 peoples work????? And my pay didn't reflect it very well, but in my mind, always a Plan "B" in place if I need to go to Manual operation, and over my career in several jobs, with Earthquakes, etc, bet your behind I had to do it!!!!! Or in some Companies, sorry you don't work today, go home and will call you when we start up again!!!!

I say never solely rely on computers......I recall a day when a certain Company lost their network for a few days, and the retail side had to shut down, because they didn't know the price of their food and drink on the menu????Say what, yup,,,,the help couldn't make change, nor did they know what to charge????

Safety wise, I'll keep driving till I die, hell no am I ever converting to driverless car!!!!!

Hi everybody.
Well with every respect to some of the above postings, there certainly is some high-pitched hysteria in those replies. We read of “driverless death machines” and “associated Electromagnetic disruption” bringing down the whole Internet and every organisation and companies software until eternity. However, I think we have heard the electromagnetic disruption scare story ever since the first Internet transmission was carried out

In regard to “driverless death machines” of course we have to remember that human beings are so good at driving road vehicles that not a single soul has ever been sent to an early grave by someone making a mistake while driving a road vehicle. In the foregoing, those that believe anything resembling the above statement should just listen here in the UK to the BBC road traffic reports on any day of the week, or corresponding reports in other countries to very quickly get a different opinion.

It may well be that accidents will occur with driverless vehicles, but the road trials in the UK with both trucks and cars have accrued a combined mileage total of well over a million miles with only two minor incidents being in any way held up as the computerised vehicles responsibility. I believe that two minor incidents should be viewed as a great achievement with initial hard trials of any new innovation, which in this case it truly is.

Throughout history people have always been afraid of technical development often with good cause. However, when the first motorcars (or horseless carriages as they were known) were introduced onto the roads of Britain people said that they should be banned as they “frighten the horses”. It was therefore decided that a person should walk in front of those first cars with a red flag to restrict the speed of the vehicles and warn the horses (LOL). I am waiting to hear that someone has again suggested the above as a safety restriction on the new driverless vehicles

What has to be remembered would be that driverless cars and trucks are now already on the roads of the UK and undoubtedly will become a common sight on those British roads and the roads of many other countries within the next 3 to 4 years. Sales research has demonstrated there is a huge market ready and waiting for such vehicles to be available for common sale.

So, to bring the thread back to its original topic, what effect do forum members feel that the above fact will have on the railways of the world. Will there be a second 1950/60s disastrous decline in passenger and freight traffic or can that be avoided this time around in the face of this new situation.

Bill
Posted from the Walton Park Hotel where we are celebrating the ManU glorious cup winning victory this evening along with the rest of the civilized world (HIC).

Probably won't make any difference to Rail traffic as that will probably be driverless as well in the many years or so it will probably take to actually produce anything that is safe enough to use on the UK road network.

Might want to research Solar flares before stating disruption is not possible http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/sun_darkness.html

I am not anti technology, I am anti it being used stupidly.

Yes there are vehicles being badly driven and causing accidents but they are not being driven by an AI incapable of thinking outside of it's programmed limitations.

wholbr said:

Hi everybody.
Well with every respect to some of the above postings, there certainly is some high-pitched hysteria in those replies. We read of “driverless death machines” and “associated Electromagnetic disruption” bringing down the whole Internet and every organisation and companies software until eternity. However, I think we have heard the electromagnetic disruption scare story ever since the first Internet transmission was carried out

In regard to “driverless death machines” of course we have to remember that human beings are so good at driving road vehicles that not a single soul has ever been sent to an early grave by someone making a mistake while driving a road vehicle. In the foregoing, those that believe anything resembling the above statement should just listen here in the UK to the BBC road traffic reports on any day of the week, or corresponding reports in other countries to very quickly get a different opinion.

It may well be that accidents will occur with driverless vehicles, but the road trials in the UK with both trucks and cars have accrued a combined mileage total of well over a million miles with only two minor incidents being in any way held up as the computerised vehicles responsibility. I believe that two minor incidents should be viewed as a great achievement with initial hard trials of any new innovation, which in this case it truly is.

Throughout history people have always been afraid of technical development often with good cause. However, when the first motorcars (or horseless carriages as they were known) were introduced onto the roads of Britain people said that they should be banned as they “frighten the horses”. It was therefore decided that a person should walk in front of those first cars with a red flag to restrict the speed of the vehicles and warn the horses (LOL). I am waiting to hear that someone has again suggested the above as a safety restriction on the new driverless vehicles

What has to be remembered would be that driverless cars and trucks are now already on the roads of the UK and undoubtedly will become a common sight on those British roads and the roads of many other countries within the next 3 to 4 years. Sales research has demonstrated there is a huge market ready and waiting for such vehicles to be available for common sale.

So, to bring the thread back to its original topic, what effect do forum members feel that the above fact will have on the railways of the world. Will there be a second 1950/60s disastrous decline in passenger and freight traffic or can that be avoided this time around in the face of this new situation.

Bill
Posted from the Walton Park Hotel where we are celebrating the ManU glorious cup winning victory this evening along with the rest of the civilized world (HIC).

Click to expand...

I think you have to remember the global warming bit and pollution, per ton / distance travelled trains still have a large advantage, especially when you consider the advantages of electric power. Both can be driverless, the truck market is more aimed at North America and the freeways than anything else and I think for the foreseeable future there will still be a driver in the cab somewhere. Conventional road trains offer much of the advantages without the extra cost etc.

What is interesting is even places such as Southampton in the UK now have a major air pollution problem so you might well see more restrictions on trucks in the UK a bit like London to keep the smog down. Most of North America doesn't quite have the same air quality issues.

Currently rail is held to much higher safety standards than road transport, especially for passenger traffic, there is a feeling that if you are driving then you are more comfortable with a higher level of risk than if someone else is. I think driverless cars will face similar issues. I don’t think we are ready for a driverless double decker bus near a major shopping centre yet. We do have buses that are not controlled by the driver on special bus ways so maybe. Buses by the way are a nice target, 70% of the running costs are associated with the driver.

There is a new method of positioning based on wifi signals that is much more accurate than GPS, and not plagued by the problems of GPS.

I assume that these vehicles use GPS, you are aware that GPS jammers are now being sold. Truck drivers use them to defeat GPS recording devices but they can cause widespread problems to other users. Tall buildings tend to throw out GPS as well you get the signal reflected so you end up 100 metres out even with accurate GPS equipment. They sort of work best on freeways and motorways but in mixed traffic environments they aren’t nearly so good. Google cars have been pulled over for travelling at 15 km/h, they screw the normal traffic speeds up. The Docklands light rail as has already been pointed out uses them fine but it is a controlled restricted environment.

There is a lot of hype at the moment but it will take ten years for it to get sorted out and I wouldn’t bet my pension fund on it.

Cheerio John

clam1952 said:

Probably won't make any difference to Rail traffic as that will probably be driverless as well in the many years or so it will probably take to actually produce anything that is safe enough to use on the UK road network.

Might want to research Solar flares before stating disruption is not possible http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/sun_darkness.html

I am not anti technology, I am anti it being used stupidly.

Yes there are vehicles being badly driven and causing accidents but they are not being driven by an AI incapable of thinking outside of it's programmed limitations.

Click to expand...

Just imagine if N3V programmers had programmed them, how many undocumented system features have they fixed in TANE recently?

Cheerio John

When ever I see stuff on topic's like this I'm always reminded of airlines. Air craft have been able to take off, cruise, and land by themselves for some time now, but they don't get rid of the pilot's because when the computer fails or screws up, the pilot takes over. He also usually takes off and lands the plane himself. While certain case's (maglev's or low speed commuter's) might have fully computer controlled trains, there is still a need for a "back up" engineer in most inter city trains.

One of the advantages of passenger trains, especially commuter trains in a city, is that they reduce the number of road vehicles - this is true even if both the trains and the road vehicles are driverless. No matter how much capacity a city road network has, if everyone has a driverless car which they use to drive into and out of the city in peak hours, then the roads will become just as clogged as todays so-called "expressways". Then of course, there is the question of where do the driverless vehicles go after you have arrived at work? Do we have to build huge parking stations or vehicle warehouses? Do the cars drive around endlessly "looking" for a parking spot (I do that already at the shopping mall) or do we use "community cars" that drop you off and then become available for other commuters to use? I am not a fan of riding on crowded commuter trains in peak hour but I suspect that that will always be faster than sitting in a slow moving stream (if you are lucky) of driverless cars on a freeway in peak hour.

Driverless cars obviously rely totally on "intelligent" software to make decision that can have a "life or death" consequence for their occupants and others - far more than do driverless trains which are restrained by the tracks that they ride on. Current experiences with automated critical control systems, for example piloting aircraft, do not fill me with confidence - at least not yet. It will be interesting to see the results of the first law suites that arise from deaths or injuries sustained while using a driverless car. I just hope I am not a claimant in any of those suites.

I frankly do not think that driver-less cars will make any difference to passenger rail numbers. Here in Gt Britain for the last few decades car ownership has been massive and yet rail numbers are still increasing every and this year still the same. At the proverbial end of the day it is still a motor car no matter how it is driven and roads can only cope to a degree. So a nah!

Hi Everybody.
As opening poster can I express many thanks to john Whelan, bnfc, pware and rj howie for their contributions to the thread and bringing the topic back to the discussion I hoped it would contain following my opening post. I will not reproduce the those postings in answer to the above, but hope those contributors will excuse me if I just reference the thread number for others to read.

In regard to John Whelan’s posting at #11 of this thread, I would 100% agree with you John that the introduction of driverless road vehicles will in no way decrease the worldwide pollution given off by both diesel and petrol engines. However, the increasing use of electrically powered vehicles may well go hand-in-hand with the computer technology used in driverless Conventionally powered vehicles as of now.

With trucks there are now hybrid vehicles up to 14 Imperial tons which use diesel powering out of town and electric powering within them. Above those weights there seems to be nothing on the horizon at the moment as far as I am aware as it seems the world is waiting for a breakthrough in battery technology which at the moment would seem not to be out there.

In regard to navigation of driverless vehicles John, the trucks on the M6 have several systems for navigation and guidance which involve GPS , mobile phone technology G3 and G4 when available (cannot think what the proper name for that is at the moment), but also the ability to download Google maps for route navigation which the technology can even use Street view as comparisons to where the vehicle really is in conjunction with the on-board cameras. I was up on the M6 last week and did have a chance to look at this technology which as a non-geek person really is amazing. You would love to see it John I am sure.

In regard to bnscf posting at #13 of this thread, at present the truck trials on the M6 are being carried out with the mandate that there will always be a backup driver in the cab in case of system failure however unlikely that may be with numerous failsafe systems on board. However, the road transport employers are demanding that the hours spent by the qualified driver in just monitoring the systems and travelling with the vehicle are not counted under the European Union drivers hours regulations. The foregoing is the reason I was involved with the trials last week, being an independent road transport safety company we are in discussion with the British health and safety executive on the matter along with others.

Pware, as usual I feel that your posting at #14 of this thread exactly describes all that there is to be debated in regard to the use and ownership of these vehicles into the future. Uber (the new kid on the block in regard to taxi cabs around the world) are now investing heavily into this technology in the hope that the need to actually own a car will disappear as we just call a driverless pool vehicle to pick us up, take us to where we wish to go and then it will go off to its next customer.

Of course the car manufacturing companies do not wish the above to happen under any circumstances. In the foregoing they would wish that we all buy their vehicles with driverless ability and then use those vehicles either in driverless mode or that being a backup to driving them conventionally ourselves, or a combination of both. However, as you so rightly state pware that there is little that these vehicles will do in regard to road traffic congestion. That stated, they may actually ease parking in city centres if large car parks are built on the outskirts for them to drive out to after dropping off their owners.

In regard to rj Howies posting at #15 of this thread, I feel it is without doubt that driverless vehicles will be taken up in large numbers by the senior/pensioner age group worldwide. Many of the foregoing group lose confidence with age in their driving or simply lose their licences through disability. To them driverless vehicles will prolong their mobility and independence and in their use that may have detrimental affects on the rail passenger numbers here in the UK. As regards business users, I believe that they may well remain as predominantly rail passengers as that gives them such things as guaranteed times of arrival at destinations which they can plan their days around.

So, I believe there are big challenges to the railways in regards to this technology and for which they will have to be “at the top of their game” to compete with. However, there is much to be debated as the developments pan out, and it should be remembered that these vehicles are coming onto British roads NOW and not 10 years into the future.

Bill

> However, there is much to be debated as the developments pan out, and it should be remembered that these vehicles are coming onto British roads NOW and not 10 years into the future.

Bill buy a decent computer and play with TANE ideally one with the new nVidia GPU.

Yes you’re retired now and have nothing to do but you could at least research your subject.

Google cars are driving in North America. I live there. My residential street is 7.5 meters wide, it has sidewalks of 2 meters either side, additionally there is a 3 meter council owned grass bit that is clear of obstructions to dump snow on. Most houses have a double width drive so can provide off street parking for four to six cars. Curbside parking is rare.

95%+ percent of the cars are travelling to or from within 100 meters of the road. This we know as it has a traffic problem so its been studied in depth.

It has 237 cars and 18 bicycles per eight hour day and the average speed is 11 km/h over the speed limit. So on average a car every two minutes. I’ve seen a number of accidents averted by driving on the 3 meter wide grass bit by the side of the road. The traffic problem comes from the local high school at the end of the road, 16 year old teens have been known to drive at three times the speed limit when school breaks up for the day.

This is the sort of environment that Google cars have been driving in. It is not the more narrow streets found in the UK. They are programmed to wait 7 seconds at traffic lights when they turn green to avoid red light crashes. They are programmed to obey speed limits, fine except they cause traffic delays and accidents as frustrated drivers try to overtake them. When they have to process more information they slow down, 20 km/h is not unknown.

This a solution looking for a problem.

Then you get to senior whatevers. Most enjoy the social side of catching the bus especially the special buses that take them to hospital appointments. One I know will rent a car but never touch a car share car. “At least you know its clean when you rent, some of those car sharing ones are in a terrible state.” Most don’t like change and it’s a big change to trust a computer with driving a car. So possibly some might like it but not many.

Lithium batteries, they’re fun. Try dropping a bit of Lithium in a glass of water, not too big a bit as it will burst into flames. It’s suspected the recent airline that went down over the Med was caused by a Lithium battery, possibly an Ipad caught in the chair arm. Bigger Lithium batteries are treated as hazardous material when you ship them and you want to fill cities with them?

Before driverless cars can be used in narrow streets and the heavy traffic conditions of the UK there will have to be legislative change. Personally I doubt if a driver could sleep in a truck cab as it went along, the noise and vibration would be too much. Also we are talking about throwing a lot of people out of work and politically there probably isn’t that much appetite for raising the number of unemployed at the moment.

Trains move a lot of people at a time, cars don’t. There has been some research into pods that take two or four people at once on a track. The conclusion of the traffic experts was they wouldn’t work for peak periods or the number of fans wanting to leave a sports event. They couldn’t carry the volume of passengers per hour.

The niche market for driverless trucks is North American freeways there GPS interference is low, lanes are wide and forgiving and the traffic is fairly light. If you want to look at GPS problems buy a Garmin eTrex Legend device they’re one of the most accurate consumer models available and walk in a straight line in a city next to a tall building taking a trace. Copy the trace to a computer map such as OSM and compare the two. Normally the trace will be that of a drunken man. In the suburbs they work fine but not near tall buildings. Cell phone towers aren’t too bad but locally hackers and the local police forces have been known to set their own honey traps to intercept cell phone calls, these are is different locations so they aren’t reliable either.

Streetview, it can be three years out of date. OpenStreetMap has problems where a local mapper will add a bridge or other feature to the map then an armchair mapper will delete it because its not on Bing street view.

Currently what I’m hearing is pub talk after too many beers when someone sets themself up as an expert and predicts what will happen next year. “Leicester City will win the cup.” Well yes but at least two bettors have admitted they made their bet by mistake.

Driver assisted cars are here now, driverless cars are not.

John

ARHHHHah Harah Harah !

Anyone who thinks that robot driverless cars will be driving the expressways and backstreets, in mass, in the future, had better start smoking some serious medicinal MJ !

Sounds like a Popular Mechanics magazine story from a 1960's "Pipe Dream"

Driverless cars... You make me laugh so hard !

Who are they gonna put in prison for a vehicular slaughter charge, when there is no driver in charge behind the steering wheel ? I guess UBER will just write the victims, survivors, a check, then take it to a higher court and dismiss the case ?

Just because they are trying it out in Britian (and Pittsburgh)... doesn't mean that the whole driverless car program will not be banned, forever !

Fail, Fail, FAIL !

I guess the next Popular Mechanics magazine prediction fad will be, the population will have self driven, heliocopter whirley birds landing in their own driveway parking lot ... LOL !

I think that even allowing for the feeling on Senior Citizen driving will not be any practical base for say a positive argumentative attitude to that leading to train decline. Many older people would equally be a bit more timid on driver-less cars if anything! The same kind of stance could be tried to be used if one considers the number of actual motor cars on this relatively small island which is massive and still growing. Indeed the same idea does not work because at the same time as more cars for individuals are breaking records here so too is the railway system!

An interesting and pleasurable challenge in this thread but the constant train passenger rise, longer trains needed and the fact that lines re-open are the norm and you cannot keep building roads. Trains are in practice perfectly safe...but a nice try!

Hi everybody.
Johnwhellan, in regard to your rather personally disrespectful post ref myself, can I respectfully sugest that you reference the following links in regards to the inaccuracies in your posting #17 of this thread:-

[url]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/04/26/look-no-hands-driverless-volvos-to-hit-britains-streets/[/URL]

As can be seen from the above one hundred Volvo autominus vehicles will be running on all roads in London in 2017.

[url]http://www.transportsfriend.org/hours/rest.html[/URL]

As can be seen from the above lgv drivers are already allowed under the Drivers Hours Regulations to take rest periods in the vehicle while it is moving when the vehicle is double manned in the Uk.

[url]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2710370/Driverless-cars-British-roads-year-ministers-change-law-allow-trials-Google-style-vehicles.html[/URL]

As can be seen from the above link no change in the regulations with regard to driverless vehicles will be required as that legislation has already been approved by the British paliment.

John in regard to other matters mentioned in your above posting such as lithium batteries, grass verges alongside roads etc I find rather incomprehensible as none of the forgoing was addressed by me in any of my postings. In regard to Google vehicles causing delays to other road users because they complie with the speed restrictions, well are not all vehicles supposed to comply with those restrictions?

John I have always respected your postings on this forum, therefore can I respectfully request that you address the subject matter in future when responding to my postings and leave out the personal subjective matters. Again with every respect, you do not know me personally, as I do not know you personally.

I am “supossed to be” semiretired and not as you stated “retired”. Therefore I have no desire to buy any new graphics card or PC and spend the rest of my time on this earth playing Trainz as interesting a pastime as that may be. I feel I am far more active in mind and body than that.

Bill