Why Did Operators And Customers Reject Self-Driving Coaches?

Ordering a luxury coach hire is not just about getting to your destination, but doing so with significant comfort, convenience and enjoyment, because the journey experience is essential to making any holiday, business trip or event special and stress-free.

Much of that can be credited not only to the use of a fleet of luxurious coaches designed for chauffeuring a lot of people long distances with comfort as the priority but also to the people at the wheel, who are diligent, punctual and adapt their driving style to any given situation.

Despite this, many coach companies have looked at the development of self-driving technologies with curiosity but also acutely aware that the limitations of the technology when it comes to the most important parts of coach journeys will cause it to have less of an effect on coaches than, for example, buses, taxis or cars.

However, the fate of the first-ever autonomous bus service suggests that it is far from guaranteed that customers and operators will even be interested in the concept.

Firth Of Five Buses

The CAVForth project, a joint venture between the Bristol Robotics Lab, Napier University, the coach-builders Alexander Dennis and Fusion Processing, was designed as a solution for the infamous congestion across the Forth Bridge near Edinburgh.

Built at a cost of over £6m, the five single-decker buses were designed to operate by themselves and carry around 10,000 passengers a week.

At a time when the usage of buses has grown in Scotland due to the availability of free passes for both the over-60s and under-22s, this appeared to be a prime opportunity to showcase the worth and value of driverless buses in real-world conditions and highlight the potential technological, cultural and economic case for them.

The Forth Bridge sees over 80,000 vehicles a day as well as constant congestion during peak times, so a bus that could reduce the need for quite so many low-capacity vehicles would be more than desirable.

The project, therefore, was variously described as having global significance and being amongst the most ambitious autonomous projects in the world.

It was also a particularly unsuccessful one, lasting barely over a year before its main operator Stagecoach withdrew the service.

Part of the problem was that whilst the vehicles were allowed to use their self-driving technology, two members of staff needed to be on board each of the five buses in the fleet for safety reasons.

The technology operates at SAE Level Four, the second-highest classification which suggests that the car can operate without the intervention of a driver under most conditions, including being able to stop safely by itself.

Not only is that twice as many people as there would be on an ordinary passenger bus or coach, adding to the overhead cost of running the automated service, but it also has an unintentional psychological effect.

There are two members of staff, trained to manage or take control of the automated Alexander Dennis Enviro200AV in the event of an emergency, but the fact they are there at all can potentially be intimidating to passengers and cause them to focus on the relatively unlikely event of a malfunction.

This is a similar issue to the ones faced with autonomous aircraft. Whilst, as an article from The Smithsonian reiterates, 75 per cent of aircraft accidents are caused by pilot error, and aircraft are capable not only of flying effectively at cruising altitudes but also during take-off and landing, few people would be willing to get on a plane they know does not have a pilot.

Indeed, certain disasters such as United Airlines Flight 232 could have been far worse without the heroic efforts of the flight crew, who improvised when the controls failed to land the plane in a way that allowed a chance for survival.

With just a single pilot, or indeed no flight crew at all, Flight 232 and other disasters relating to control or sensor malfunctions would have been almost certainly fatal.

Something similar is observed, albeit to a far lesser degree, with buses, coaches and cars. Whilst there are various types of self-driving technology available, and most modern vehicles will have some degree of driving assist, there is a distinct difference between augmenting an existing driver and replacing them.

As has been seen on far too many occasions with self-driving technologies, a malfunction can lead to a potentially dangerous situation, as has been seen with driver-assist features in certain brands of electric cars.

This could have been a contributing factor to lower interest in the Forth Bridge route, leading to it being quietly discontinued having, according to Stagecoach, failed to reach expectations.