Smart City or no, buses should have drivers
Andrew Jordan walking across an intersection when she was struck and killed by a self-driving Uber car going 40 m.p.h.
Is a RoboBus carrying passengers coming to the streets of Columbus? I hope not. It would be unnecessary — and dangerous.
Technology can be used to make our streets safer and bus travel quicker. Onboard sensors, for example, can detect and alert a bus operator that a pedestrian is hidden from his or her view, or that a bicyclist is entering an intersection, or a car has suddenly stopped up ahead.
Onboard communications equipment can manipulate traffic signals so buses travel with fewer delays.
But you still need a bus operator.
Computer systems do get tripped up, and wireless signals do get broken. Hackers — including hackers affiliated with hostile foreign governments — have hacked into supposedly secure systems used by federal and local agencies and some of the biggest companies.
Atlanta’s municipal government was brought to its knees in March by a cyberattack that paralyzed the city’s computer systems.
A computer glitch in September, meanwhile, knocked out the check-in systems at approximately 100 airports around the world, Thousands of travelers were grounded.
Robotic buses would be a very attractive target for cyberattacks.
There’s a lot that a computerized driverless bus can’t do. A driverless bus can’t help an elderly person get on or off the bus. It can’t report a crime in progress, or report a child that appears lost and alone on a street corner, or alert authorities to a suspicious package or person.
There’s one more reason to be against the RoboBus: It would eliminate good bus-operator jobs that offer Ohio residents the ability to enter the middle class, obtain affordable health care and retire with dignity.
Some officials apparently don’t value these good union jobs.
In its Smart City Challenge grant application, the city of Columbus wrote, “a major benefit of a fully autonomous vehicle is the reduction in cost achieved by eliminating the operator and all onboard equipment necessary for human operation…”
Let’s not get too smart for our own good.
Keep bus operators on the buses. As we say at TWU Local 208, “a bus is nothing without us.”