[slyall]

I really think that self-driving buses will be common long before most cars are.

  * They cover the same routes day after day
  * They are already centrally owned by large companies or governments
  * Driver cost is a big reason you can't have 2 small buses running twice as often
    as a single big bus. Or why buses can't run longer hours.
  * You still have limited space on roads and you need to use PT to get the
    person density up. This will always be hard with just one person in
    each vehicle

[jacquesm]

I think the driver on the bus has more functions than just being a driver. He's also an authority figure and can provide assistance.

[papaf]

There have been self-driving trains for some time now (Nuremberg, London Docklands). There are more people to be responsible for on a train and I do not see why a bus would be a special case.

[leoedin]

The London docklands railway have a staff member on board who opens/closes the doors and starts the train moving. It's a less skilled (and therefore almost certainly cheaper) job than driving a train, but it's still a person onboard.

Apparently not all the trains in Nuremberg are staffed, so perhaps it does work? I suppose the train driver is often segregated from the passengers in a way which makes them almost absent anyway.

It will be interesting to see if completely unstaffed buses are adopted anywhere, and if that proves succesful. I'd imagine that security wise a staff member isn't really necessary during busy day time routes (but then conversely that's probably when they'd be the most cost effective and provide the highest utility).

[jacquesm]

Trainstations are somewhat controlled, bus-stops are not, they can be just about anywhere.

[masklinn]

Which is relevant to the difficulty of designing a self-driving bus, but says nothing about any driver responsibilities outside of driving.

[robryk]

Not really. In case of a problem on board a train (unrelated to train's motion; for example, a medical emergency or a rowdy passenger), the train can usually be met by someone at the next station. In case of a bus, much more often there is no one to meet it at the next bus stop.