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Tuesday, July 19, 2016
Why Does a Driverless Bus Need a Huge Windshield with Wipers, and Steering Wheel?
The new driverless bus from Mercedes:
Maybe it's because a mechanic would need to drive it away from its crash site.
Plus it appears to have been designed by a cartoonist...
A driver might be necessary if the buses need to be moved or a route completed with the navigation system disabled, say if the computer or sensors needed repair or the software suffered a glitch. Making room for an emergency driver is better than ditching passengers on the roadside halfway through a route or turning the bus into an immobile roadblock on a busy street or freeway while a tech does some troubleshooting. It's also possible Mercedes simply adapted a "general use" concept bus to accommodate the driver-less systems, and will sell a very similar model without it installed.
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A driver might be necessary if the buses need to be moved or a route completed with the navigation system disabled, say if the computer or sensors needed repair or the software suffered a glitch. Making room for an emergency driver is better than ditching passengers on the roadside halfway through a route or turning the bus into an immobile roadblock on a busy street or freeway while a tech does some troubleshooting. It's also possible Mercedes simply adapted a "general use" concept bus to accommodate the driver-less systems, and will sell a very similar model without it installed.
Note also the driver's seat and steering wheel.
'Course, the cynic in me says the windshield is there so the passengers can see the cliff the bus is barreling toward.
Right. Because everyone knows there's a worldwide critical shortage of bus drivers and this is such a safe, fiscally sound way to deal with it.
Seriously, does anyone building these things even think about whether anyone else will buy it?
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