UK’s first full-sized autonomous bus takes to the roads of Scotland
I had a chat with a DLR &quot;passenger service agent&quot; a few weeks ago (DLR, or Docklands Light Railway being a &quot;fully automated&quot; light rail system in London). He had opened the driving console at the front and was sitting there, I asked if there was a fault or something that meant they were operating in reversion mode (PSAs can drive the trains in certain failure cases).<p>He said DLR introduced a policy many years ago where after 8pm or so (maybe just on Fri&#x2F;Sat night?) the PSA needs to sit at the open drivers console ready to smack the emergency stop in case of people on the tracks. Before then it&#x27;s optional, but some PSAs like to do it anyway in case &quot;their train&quot; hits someone.<p>Not really much point to this but I thought it was interesting how the PSAs are effectively put in a position of responsibility for the actions of the autonomous vehicle but presumably are not compensated the same as an active(?) driver would be.<p>Maybe a lot of the desire to move to &quot;autonomous&quot; (or really just more automated if it requires a safety driver) is a workaround for union wages by reclassifying drivers as new made up things.<p>Presumably like a DLR these buses will always require a human to take responsibility in case of crash, accident, fire etc - but this way for arbitrary reasons you can pay less!