‘World first’ driverless bus service in Scotland axed due to low passenger numbers

    https://news.sky.com/story/world-first-driverless-bus-service-in-scotland-axed-due-to-low-passenger-numbers-13275514

    Posted by Forward-Answer-4407

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    15 Comments

    1. Loose-Courage-5369 on

      So not only ‘driverless’ but also ‘passenger-less’ 🤣

      Another winner 🏆 🙄

    2. Well, we’ve largely cracked autonomous vehicles.
      This is great, but only a step along the way.

      Now on to the much harder task.
      Convincing people to take the bus over other transport.

    3. tealattegirl13 on

      So Stagecoach are more than happy to spend money and resources on short lived experimental projects like this, but they can’t do that to run a decent bus service?

      (I may be a bit bitter, as I live in a town with a Stagecoach monopoly on public transport.)

    4. The bus ran a route that was not of much use to people that was part of the point, it was used to test the bus driving on the motorway in stage 1 and off it in stage 2.

      I don’t see how the project can be seen as a failure.

    5. This was a grant funded experiment that ran between a park and ride and an out of town train station.

      It seems to have worked fine, and gave then some useful information about how to run it.

      It tells us precisely *nothing* about either self driving technology or the public attitude to autonomous vehicles.

    6. There’s a surprise.

      I certainly would never get on one, I want a proper driver who knows what he’s doing.

    7. I am not sure I understand the benefit of autonomous buses. You need someone on the bus to be responsible for the bus.

      This just feels like the utilisation of technology for the sake of it so that someone can look good in a shareholder meeting.

    8. Hmm. If companies like Sky news are now shooting vertical video, they must feel that the main viewing platform is phones.
      What’s needed is camera tech to simultaneously record in phone and landscape orientations, and output two files for different viewing services.

    9. What is the benefit of a “driver-less” bus? And who’s supposed to help passengers in case there’s an emergency?

    10. I don’t think they can really call it a driverless bus when they still have a driver sitting there just in case. It’s currently only a supervised self driving bus.