A thought about transportation automation...

[bluecollar2]

I retired almost four years ago after 30+ years as a mechanic for one of the few remaining major airlines.

Before I retired, I think it was in the late nineties, I had to go to JFK airport on a field trip to "ferry" an aircraft that had just undergone a maintenance modification and required a "post maintenance check flight."

The flight was relatively eventless... an empty Boeing 767-200 with a pilot, first officer and a couple of mechanics on board.

Due to weather and pilot qualifications we ended up spending more time aloft than necessary but in the end all was well and we delivered the aircraft without incident.

The return flight was in an unmodified Boeing 767-200...

What was interesting about the flight is that it was entirely flown by computer.

The pilot was in control until we were airborne...from that point on until we touched down at our destination and came to a rolling stop on the runway at our destination neither he or the first officer touched the controls....

I bring this up because I was reading a thread earlier about driverless trucks.

While the technology exists to make transportation "human-free" at what point should we draw the line?

Railroads are already operating driverless trains in yards and pushing for driverless or one-man engines on open rails.

At what point do we decide that human influence is no longer a factor in transportation

As I said earlier, I'm retired now and was on the maintenance side so was not really affected. The airplane still cant change it's own tires or replace it's own lightbulbs or fuel itself but it won't be long before those issues are automated.

Thoughts?

[mopinko]

1. humans arent that good at those jobs, either.

[democratisphere]

2. Aircraft will no longer be necessary when no one has a job or the money

to buy a ticket. Problem solved.

[Recursion]

3. People fly a LOT more now than they did in the 1960s and 1970s

There's no reason to believe that trend is going to stop

[Recursion]

4. Want to see some ugly data for the trucking industry?

https://www.dat.com/industry-trends/trendlines

Ouch.

Spot rates down 12% from last year, which was itself down 10% from the year before.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

5. Interesting post.

What I can't tell is if you're suggesting humans need to be on the flight deck at any point.

I am myself a former airline employee. I was a ticket agent at DCA (National Airport) from 1969 to 1979. Towards the end of my time check-in kiosks were beginning to show up. I recall thinking that while they made our job somewhat easier, they also replaced real humans who would be needed down the line.

A few years later during the Christmas rush, my former airline got bad publicity when a number of flights cancelled and there were not enough ticket agents to deal with the stranded passengers. Guess what? Ticket agents were already being phased out by those kiosks, meaning when things went belly up, there simply weren't very many real human agents to deal with things.

I know what it was like to work when things went totally boffo. Delays and cancellations. I recall one Thanksgiving Eve working until about 1am, with ankle-deep papers, things like the extra discarded parts of tickets. And the next morning, showing up at 6:30 am Thanksgiving day, being back at the counter sending passengers on their way, including the ones who'd been stuck overnight because their flight had been cancelled and was now operating this morning. I think that was the time I slept overnight in our back room on a cot. When the passengers who'd seen me the night before saw me that morning and exclaimed in horror, "Oh, dear lord, did you spend the night here?" to which I cheerfully lied, "No, I did not" somewhat appalled that they could tell.

I wonder how that might have been better handled by robots. Hmmm.

[Voltaire2]

7. The humans at the airport don't do very much now, other than inspect your socks and move a bag onto

a belt.

[Voltaire2]

6. The line goes away when the tech is sufficiently capable.

Until then a human needs to be at the controls, ready to override the computers. The estimates on when the tech gets there vary from 'next year' to 'never'. There is no good reason to prevent the complete automation of vehicle operation. Humans are generally shitty distracted drivers, frequently making irrational emotional decisions instead of operating a vehicle safely.

The loss of jobs will be interesting though. We don't have a society that can cope with large scale mass unemployment.

[radius777]

8. The human brain evolved to deal with unfamiliar situations

that don't fit neatly into a computer program (which is often riddled with bugs and design flaws), thus humans will always be needed to at least monitor and oversee the computer when there are lives at stake.