Im going to guess its a proportional cost issue. Drivers take up a much larger percentage of the cost of shipping a ton of cargo by truck that the cost a human engineer on a train.
Comment on Will pilots-less airplanes happens first, or driver-less cars? Why?
RegalPotoo@lemmy.world 6 days agoI’m surprised it’s not already in place for rail freight. Pre-defined, well known routes, automatic right-of-way. You’d need some exception detection - spot things on the line or if any part of the train is behaving abnormally, but like cars you can “fail safe” - do an emergency stop if the computer or a remote operator decides that something has gone sufficiently wrong which you can’t do in a plane
jrs100000@lemmy.world 6 days ago
refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org 6 days ago
Not exactly easy to stop a train, but yeah.
Granted, that’s also an issue with human conductors, though.
gnu@lemmy.zip 6 days ago
It already is for some specific rail freight, iron ore haulage in Western Australia being one example. Rio Tinto has been running them in WA since 2019.
The Sydney Metro is also driverless, albeit a passenger only line rather than freight.