PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - How soon the pilotless airliner?
View Single Post
Old 22nd Aug 2013, 19:00
  #39 (permalink)  
tdracer
 
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Everett, WA
Age: 68
Posts: 4,420
Received 180 Likes on 88 Posts
There are no main line automatic rail services. The worlds first automatic metro is nudging 50 years old and yet the technology has still not been applied to real main line railways.
Based on what happened in Spain last month, one could argue that we're killing people by not increasing automation on mainline railways. I'm pretty sure a computer wouldn't have tried to take a 60mph corner at 120....

As I noted previously, the slow adoption of fully autonomous rail has more to do with union featherbedding and public perception than in real technical shortcomings (with union spread miss-information contributing heavily to the public perception).
tdracer is online now