
Would you send your kids to school on a self driving schoolbus? - tuxguy
https://www.fastcodesign.com/90150756/would-you-send-your-kids-to-school-on-a-self-driving-school-bus?utm_source=postup&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Fast%20Company%20Daily&position=4&partner=newsletter&campaign_date=11282017
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nakedrobot2
As long as the device is safe, yes. As long as a device is statistically safer
than a human, yes.

Would I let 20 kids sit in a room for two hours unsupervised? No. Should a
school bus full of kids be supervised by someone who is supposed to be
driving? No. Should the school bus driver be sending texts while driving, and
while supervising 30 kids? No.

------
jlos
Don't know how many people on HN have ever driven a school bus full of kids,
but its a lot more than "Point A to Point B". Its fairly common for kids in
K-6 to not know:

\- Home Address

\- Home/Parents Phone Number

\- Last Name (you'd be surprised at how common this was)

Thats not to mention what to do in the event of an emergency. Just play out
the follow events in your mind with a bus full of kids and no trained adults:

\- Fire

\- Break down on a major highway

\- Collision with another vehicle

(Edit for formatting)

~~~
ryanlol
>\- Last Name (you'd be surprised at how common this was)

How does this happen? Is knowing your surname just a weird European thing?

~~~
tzs
Young kids in the US are usually addressed by first name at home and at
school, so maybe they simply do not get enough practice with their last name
to automatically remember it?

I bet that with most kids who don't remember when you ask them their last name
_would_ remember if you asked them what people like appliance repair people,
exterminators, receptionists at the doctor's office, or their parents' bosses
call their parents. They may hear those enough to remember them.

~~~
fusiongyro
My son gets his last name and his middle name confused for exactly this
reason. He's 5 and rides the bus.

~~~
fusiongyro
I checked last night when I got home. My daughter just said "I don't know"
when I asked her what her last name is. She turns 3 today. My son did know
though, so that's good.

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avryhof
Sure. 1\. Put a bus monitor in an official looking uniform on the bus instead
of a bus driver. 2\. Have the bus route programmed into the bus. 3\. Have each
student badge/scan in to the bus, and determine which stops to make based on
that. 4\. Announce which student the stop is for, and have them badge/scan
out. 5\. Have a (opt-in) system that can alert parents if the student fails to
scan in to the bus on the prescribed route.

This system could also be used for management of permission slips for students
going home with friends, and help homeroom teachers determine which students
came to school, but decided to skip class.

~~~
Overtonwindow
_An enterprising student has been disciplined for taking money from other
students in exchange for scanning their bus passes....._

/s

With a wry smile I cannot wait to see what the next generation of preteen
hackers do with school-related automation.

~~~
adanto6840
Can't help but concur, indeed. Sadly, I feel that I need to warn my children
against this now. Plenty of harmless, curiosity-minded things that I did in
high school 15 years ago could potentially result in a prison sentence these
days. =(

~~~
Overtonwindow
My wife and I have a list of things our children will NOT have. Near the top
of that is anything with a webcam or camera. I wonder if there are internet
safety classes/camps for kids. Kind of like the scared straight prison visits?

 _Ok everyone, today we 're going to meet John. When John was 13 he sent a
"selfie" to his girlfriend. Now John is on the "Sex Offender List" and he
can't get a job, or use a computer, or even live in most places..._

I think children should be taught, aggressively, about the dangers of the
internet, and in particular how easy it is for them to become victims. Fourth
Period Internet Class.

------
JoeAltmaier
So many obstacles to this working! Vandalism, no adult supervision, even the
extremely goofy design point that it can go forward or backward - both ends
can be the front end - so others in traffic can be completely fooled about
where its going next. Let's put our kids in a problematic tin can and make it
move erratically! Not a genius idea.

~~~
ControlledBurn
You say that like those are impossible obstacles. It's been a while since I
rode a school bus, but the driver wasn't exactly adult supervision, and there
was plenty of vandalism already. If anything, a self-driving school bus would
be a positive as it would then allow the former driver to actually focus on
the kids.

Not sure I agree with the idea that others could be fooled by where it's going
in traffic, given that it's programmed to obey traffic laws.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I didn't mean to imply 'impossible'.

Adult supervision for extraordinary events (fire, collision, sick kid) is very
feasible on an ordinary bus. We're not talking singing songs around the
campfire, but a baseline of a responsible adult is very important.

------
maxerickson
If there is no driver to pay it probably doesn't make sense to put 20 or 30
kids on one bus.

Around here (a larger rural county) there are kids that ride the bus for
really long periods of time, like more than an hour each way. Much of that
time is picking up other kids. I mean, I fully expect penny pinching to win
the day, but it would be evil not to take the lower operating costs of a self
driving vehicle and give it to those kids as time.

~~~
simcop2387
Part of the problem with doing that is that it's not quite about filling the
bus before going to school. It's usually done because there's only so many
buses and they have to get X number of kids to the school on them, so the
routes they take end up with some kids getting on and then riding for so long.
That said more smaller self driving buses would help in dealing with that,
which they can't do now due to the extra cost in personnel costs for drivers,
but it'd also need cheaper buses to be able to afford enough of them. I'd also
then expect them to try to convince other normal staff members to also ride
the bus and act as a monitor instead of driving in themselves to further
reduce costs.

~~~
majewsky
> it'd also need cheaper buses to be able to afford enough of them

Tesla to the rescue! /s

------
pavlov
I remember walking to school myself when I was six, and taking a regular city
bus every day since age seven. It was fine, never had a problem really.

A self-driving bus from door to door would have been fun... But on the other
hand, getting familiar with the city environment by walking was useful at that
age too.

(This was in Finland. I know Americans don't really let their kids outside on
their own anymore.)

~~~
rubidium
It was fine because there were adults around. 30 kids unsupervised would be
chaos.

~~~
pavlov
Good point!

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fataliss
Knowing how many school bus accident there are, between sleepy/drunk/drugged
drivers and other factors, I'm ready to bet that once the tech is there, it'll
be a WHOLE LOT safer for your kids. So, heck yeah.

------
jaclaz
Just kidding of course, but a new paradigm shift ;-) is still possible.

We could lock each kid in a (shockproof and fireproof) "capsule" with a seat
(to which the kid is tied with belts) by the parents at home and released by
the teacher at school and viceversa on the way back.

The capsule would have a QR code, a smart tag and possibly also a two way
communication cellular system (besides of course GPS).

The kid inside would have a tablet with Wi-Fi [1] so that he/she is
entertained during the transport.

At this point there is no difference between the (poor) kid and a "package"
and he/she/it can be loaded and unloaded by a robotic arm.

There would still be issues with the kids suffering from claustrophobia,
though, and probably - from time to time - some slight incident involving the
lack of prompt access to a bathroom/WC ...

[1] More seriously, I noticed in the last few years at the restaurant/pizzeria
the trend of entire families where father and mother are immersed in their
smartphones (each on their own), the bigger kid(s) are playing games in (each
on thir own) tablets and the smaller kid(s) watching some cartoons on their
tablet, sometimes fixed with a support/arm to the stroller ...

------
simonsarris
In Japan lots of children already do this. The autonomous buses are called _"
ressha"_, or _a train._

(That trains technically have operators, somewhere, is not the point. They
aren't minding the kids on carriage 6.)

It is amazing what we must come up with because we have botched both a high
trust society and public transport so very, very badly.

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b0rsuk
This is missing the point. You can't leave children alone for a long time
without supervision. There may be bullies, or they may bring a screwdriver and
start pulling the bus apart, drink beer, stick chewing gum, piss on seats,
leave trash. Someone has to keep them in check. What if kids refuse to leave
and block the bus ?

~~~
conductr
In my mind there would be supervision. It might just take the form of cameras
and a remote monitoring system like how security guards watch multiple feeds.
Then the parents/school admins will be notified of bad behavior for
disciplinary reasons. In such a way, kids will learn fast they can’t get away
with much.

------
Verdex_3
This is a side note:

It's really interesting to me that whenever anyone talks about homeschooling
children the point that is always raised by someone is that if children never
leave the home then how will they learn to socialize with children their own
age.

Similarly, whenever people talk about skipping grades for exceptionally bright
children someone always brings up socialization.

Yet here we see many people talk about how leaving children unsupervised in a
self driven bus is a recipe for disaster. Which seems to suggest that children
socializing with their own age is a detriment to both society and the children
themselves.

I'm sure nobody is using data to come up with these conclusions, but I find it
interesting that the expectation is that kids socializing with kids is both
the most important thing AND the worst possible thing.

~~~
TRUBtheSCRUB
You're describing two completely different types of socialization though.

The first two are examples of a single children missing out on key childhood
socialization "training" that will help them as they grow older. The third
example is of leaving many children unsupervised to do as they will.

Sure, kids do need to learn to socialize in large groups, but leaving them
unsupervised on a self driving bus is a recipe for disaster, and not at all
the same as kids being home schooled or skipping grades.

------
pizzetta
bus drivers do more than just drive the bus.

-For example, keep some modicum of discipline.

-Help in the event of emergency (health or otherwise)

-Guardian (against kidnapping, etc.)

That is to say, adult supervision may still be necessary.

~~~
reificator
Sure, but if they don't have to drive on top of all that, it sounds like a
boon.

------
greedo
School buses are already extremely safe, and your child is highly unlikely to
have any sort of accident, much less injury while riding a school bus in the
US.

------
dpcx
The only problem I can see with this is when you have a neighborhood of kids
that all go to the same school (which I think is pretty typical in most US
areas), six people just isn't going to be enough. I realize six is a tradeoff,
but at my bus-stop in high school, we had 12-15 kids that all caught the bus.

~~~
cthulhujr
The article implies that smaller vehicle capacities means routes are more
specialized and riders are picked up directly from the home instead of bus
stops. The alternative, picking up 10+ riders at their homes, is quite
inefficient in terms of route length and thus, in most cases, a longer ride
time too. This of course comes at the expense of having a larger quantity of
smaller vehicles.

------
tryingagainbro
Yes...eventually. Not the first obviously. Accidents do happen but like
airplane crashes the self-driving ones will hit the news, ignoring the xxxx
driver car accidents that week /month...

------
GrumpyNl
Great self driving so the steward has 100% focus on the kids.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
No steward in the plan? The plan is, cheaper than busses. Hiring an adult for
every 5 kids (only 6 seats) is prohibitively more expensive than 1 for 60 in a
regular bus.

And volunteers don't work either - if they drove to school to ride along with
the kids, why didn't they just drive them home themselves?

~~~
mathgeek
> And volunteers don't work either - if they drove to school to ride along
> with the kids, why didn't they just drive them home themselves?

Insurance and liability come to mind.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
We all have insurance on our cars. Elementary school soccer parents are
already driving the team around. Nothing new here.

But I agree, its still a bad idea because of the inefficiency.

------
s73ver_
I mean, there is going to be an adult on the bus. There is no way they're
going to put a bunch of schoolchildren on there unsupervised.

------
tmzt
Does it have quick-release seatbelts and/or slow release airbags?

Is it safer than the current offerings in protecting children of different
ages?

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tzs
A few comments have mentioned the problem of bullying and harassment if there
is no adult on board to supervise, and the small size (6 kids) making it
infeasible to put an adult on each bus.

Perhaps this could be addressed by assigning kids to buses in such a way that
a given bus only carries kids that normally spend unsupervised time together?
With such small buses it should be possible to make it so that each bus is
only occupied by people who normally play unsupervised together outside of
school.

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Entangled
With a supervising official on board, yes. And a web enabled streaming channel
just in case.

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euparkeria
Yes, but with one adult supervisor.

------
nickthemagicman
Lol. That schoolbus is is going to be in flames on the side of the road with
20 kids on it with no supervision.

~~~
ramzyo
I'm also in the no supervision would be a disaster boat, but just to clarify
the concept bus only has 6 seats.

"The design was influenced by campfires and dinner tables, and it ensures
there’s no one sitting behind anyone else–likely reduced hair pulling and
teasing as a result."

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>but just to clarify the concept bus only has 6 seats.

And you think that will stop a middle school boys soccer team from tricking
the sensors into thinking there's only six of them when there's really
sixteen?

Kids can be quite smart when it comes to mischief.

~~~
ramzyo
I don’t know if it will or won’t. My intention was to point out information
from the article that the OP seemingly missed. That information would have
further informed their opinion, had they not read the article, but perhaps not
altered it.

FWIW, I agree with you that no doubt kids would find a way to mess with this
thing.

