My kid’s school bus was almost an hour late this morning. It’s been about that late all week. He’s also been coming home very late as well, sometimes around 5:30 even though school let out about two hours earlier, and I know it’s not because of any after-school programs, because my kid’s whole modus operandi when it comes to school seems to be spending the minimum amount of time there. The reason is that there happens to be a pretty severe bus driver shortage where I live, though it’s not just in my area; there’s a shortage of school bus drivers nationwide. There’s a lot of reasons for this, like the absurdly low pay school bus drivers tend to get, and there really aren’t clear solutions just yet. Which is why I started thinking about this: Maybe school buses would be an ideal platform for automated driving?
[Editor’s Note: This is a reminder that Jason Torchinsky is an expert on the social elements of self-driving cars, having written the critically acclaimed book Robot Take The Wheel. -DT]
Now, of course I realize that we still haven’t fully developed self-driving cars; in fact, I think we’re a pretty long way from fully developing them, and I think that the semi-automated systems (SAE Level 2, where a human must be monitoring and ready to take over at any moment) that have been deployed onto public roads so far are deeply and inherently flawed. The more fully automated cars (Level 4, fully automated within a specific area) that are currently being tested have had plenty of their own issues, too. So why the hell am I even considering the use of autonomy for the vehicles that we entrust our precious offspring to?
The Bad Reason
Well, there are really two reasons, one admittedly terrible, and one that’s not so bad. Let’s get the terrible one out of the way first; it’s worth considering because, come on, it’s not like we’ve always had such great school bus solutions as it is, anyway. Look, most school buses don’t even have seatbelts. The drivers are woefully underpaid and overworked, and, get this, I grew up in an era when school buses were driven by high school students who could drive a bus instead of taking a couple classes!
That’s right, in North Carolina in the 1980s, until it was banned in 1988, 16- and 17-year old kids with maybe a number of months of driving experience under their belts were asked to drive us kids to and from school. I saw so many mailboxes decapitated by these barely-experienced burnout teens, and more than one flipped bus. They weren’t particularly safe, but, really, how much of a shock could that be if you stick a kid with six months’ of wheel time in their dad’s Chevy Citation and then plunk them down into a huge, top-heavy school bus? Of course it’s going to be a mess.
But this was the ’80s. People didn’t really start to love or give a shit about their kids’ well-being until well into the 1990s. So, I guess my point here is that trying out automated school buses shouldn’t be so alarming, because we have a rich and robust history of just kinda winging it when it comes to busing kids to and from school, and, while it wasn’t always perfect, it generally turned out fine. I’m alive, right? I mean if you call this living.
Okay, I told you the first one wasn’t really a great argument, but I had to get it out there, just to set that bar nice and low. I think whatever happens, it can’t be worse than letting 16-year olds drive the buses.
The Good Reasons: Regular, Predictable Routes
My real argument is that, among all of the possible contexts and use cases for automated driving, school bus routes may be one of the most ideal. I mean ideal for a very controlled Level 4-type of setup. Level 4 is full automation, no human driver needed, but only in a specific area. School buses are even one step better, because not only are they restricted to a given area, they follow the exact same route, every single day.
This is a huge deal for helping out with automation: you could pre-map and plan that route down to the inch if you wanted to, and the computers driving that bus would be programmed to follow that one route, and that’s it. Of course there would still be the need for sensors and cameras and all the associated AI that deals with other cars and obstacles and humans and all of that object avoidance, but knowing the exact situation, geography, and context for the drive is a massive help.
The Good Reasons: Low Speed
There’s also temporal regularity as well, in addition to geographic: School buses follow the same routes, at the same times of day, every day. All systems could be optimized for traffic and light conditions for each leg of the route, and adjust for changes in lighting throughout the year. Add to all of this the fact that school bus routes tend to be primarily low-speed driving, which adds an extra buffer of safety to the whole process. Sure, there are bus routes that require some highway stretches, but generally it’s pretty slow.
The average speed of a school bus on a route is 23 mph, with a minimum average of 13 mph, and the maximum average of 54 mph. School buses keep it slow, and for AVs at this moment in time, that’s ideal and gives a significant margin of safety.
The Good Reasons: Promo for AV Companies, Free For Schools
Companies like Cruise are already operating Level 4 rideshare cars in cities like San Francisco and Phoenix; what is demanded of an automated school bus should be an order of magnitude simpler than what their cars are already doing in San Francisco, where they operate at night and anywhere in a large, crowded, chaotic urban area. This is do-able, now. And, also importantly, I think companies like Cruise should be the ones doing it, and I think they should do it for free. At least at first.
There’s a lot of good testing and R&D that an AV company can accomplish by operating a fleet of AV buses for a school system. Companies like Cruise or Waymo could learn a lot, and it would offer them some fantastic PR and marketing opportunities. Think of the visibility of a Cruise or Waymo-branded school bus! Think of all the good press that would come from everyone knowing that, say, Waymo has solved North Carolina’s bus driver shortage with their miraculous technology! That’s gold right there.
Safety Challenges
Now, there are some specific challenges very specific to the job of a school bus. The biggest is that the moment any kid gets even remotely hurt by one of these, it’s all over. I know it probably shouldn’t need saying, but the safety of the kids is the most important part of this. And kids walk in front of and all around school buses; that’s just how it works. So there would need to be pretty stringent safeguards; if the bus door is open or the illuminated STOP sign is deployed, for example, there should be a mechanical switch that cuts power to the motors.
That way, if the bus stops and opens the door to let kids off and on, it physically cannot move, even if the sensors or computer systems make a mistake. The door-open-entry-exit time is the most dangerous phase of a school bus route, so that needs a very strong safeguard.
Dealing With The Kids, Maybe With Wasps
There would also need to be live monitoring of the buses on their routes, with feeds from external cameras to act as a failsafe for the bus’ own systems (there would be the means for an emergency shutdown, too) and internal cameras, because part of what a bus driver does is maintain order on the bus.
I think it’s possible to have a bus with no adult on it if the inside of the bus is monitored well. It may not be enough, of course, as it’s possible shit can really go sideways in there, but even in that case, a human bus driver is often also unable to do anything because they’re, you know, driving the bus, and can’t just get up and break up fights or whatever.
Loudspeakers could be on the bus so monitoring agents can inform students of things or let the jerky kids know that they’ve been caught. I’m also not opposed to having a large box of wasps on the bus with a remotely-actuated lock, and using that as a deterrent from kids acting like fools. Just make sure the kids know that if there’s any bullying or other bullshit, a code is sent and then the bus is full of angry wasps, and then nobody is happy.
Of course, that’s kind of absurd. All you really need is an opaque box labeled ANGRY WASPS and some buzzing sound effects and a very convincing and well-spread rumor that some kid’s friend’s cousins’ brother was on a bus when they remotely released the wasps, and it was absolute hell. The kids just need to believe in the threat of the wasps, you see.
Okay, I’m maybe being a little silly about the wasps, but I do think there are likely some options for school buses to operate without direct adult supervision; they would of course be GPS tracked and have remote adult supervision. I’mm not sure how many parents may be comfortable with that, but the whole point of this is that there simply aren’t enough people to take these jobs, so an automated bus that still needs an adult supervisor would still have that issue. Of course, it could open the job up to people unable or unwilling to take a bus driving job, so perhaps it could be helpful even with the requirement of an adult on board.
So, here’s my elevator pitch: make school buses automated, even with existing Level 4-ish technology because the low-speed, consistent-route school bus use case is ideal for really optimizing what AVs are good at; this can help alleviate the nationwide school bus driver shortage, adequate monitoring can be implemented to keep the kids safe, and besides, it’s hardly the most reckless thing we’ve tried when it comes to busing our kids to and from school.
I should probably leave out the bit about the wasps.
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It’ll never work if there’s no on-site adult supervision. Automating that would be even harder than autonomous driving.
(how much do you think they will have to pay to change the wasps everyday?)
This is why you’re a national treasure. I think this is a brilliant fucking idea which could actually be functional within about three years mechanically.
With respect to the child supervision issue, once you take the driving chore away, I bet you could actually get volunteer parents and grandparents to handle most of it. In such a scenario I imagine the buses returning the volunteers to their pickup points once the kiddies are disgorged. Enjoy some coffee, spend time with a bunch of kids – it sounds like grandparent or PTA parent heaven to me…
Back to the mechanical issue, because there’s probably no sensible way to retrofit the massive existing fleet of large buses, this whole scheme would almost certainly require construction of entirely new buses. However, if the child supervision needs can be solved, you can almost certainly get away with smaller buses and hence, better optimized routes which could also increase efficiency and safety even more.
You really may be onto something real here that leads to an entire paradigm shift in student busing. If you stick any non-sex-offender adult in the buses with these kids, it could work quite well. No wasps needed.
Disclaimer: No other posts were read by I before this was written, so please forgive any unintentional redundancy.
Have you seen the videos of kids beating the crap of other kids on the bus?
Easily solved. Kids get on the bus and strap in to a straitjacket
Yeah i would rather drive without the kids than babysit other peoples kids. Especially like teachers you arent allowed to do anything to discipline them. But are 100% responsible
I’m not for robots schoolbus drivers (as another commenter said, it would be better to give drivers a fair pay), but I think you forgot arguments in your favor. The first is US schoolbuses beeing all pianted a distinctive yellow, it would be easy to give them some right of way, the other is that if it’s allways the same route, you could make a sort of “connected lane”, so the robot bus isn’t reliant only on it’s systems.
If it’s just a few miles of surface streets let Otto drive the Changli. It’s top speed is 25 MPH ferchristsakes. It’s basically a big Cozy Coupe. Kids gotta learn sometime amIrite? Why not now?
But what about safety?
Cover the thing in layers of foam and bubble wrap, throw in a gazillion point racing harness, a helmet and send him on his merry way.
Oh he doesn’t have a driver’s licence? Well YOU do. Just wire the thing up with remote control and cameras like one of those parent remote controlled ride on top toddler cars and run it over your smartphone. Or your Amiga.
Come on, do it, what’s the worst thing that could happen?
Well?
Anyone?
The PE teachers should be the bus drivers, they go get the kids and then take them home after school. They just stand there and shout things at kids all day anyway. There might need more busses for some schools but it helps.
Thirty minutes.
That’s how long I’d give it before some kid would hack the bus and drive it to Mexico.
Or wherever kids these days want to go.
This is fine as a thought experiment, but the correct solution to the problem of a shortage of bus drivers is working conditions and pay that make people willing to take bus-driver jobs.
Better working conditions?
Hilarious it is the kids that are the problem. The job is transporting the kids. So what pay them to drive around on empty buses?
Within hours there will be videos all over tik tok showing all the ways you can make an automated bus get stuck by placing an object in front of it or jamming the door open or whatever so kids can skip class.
Aside from all the other factors involving kids being stupid and weather variables, I’m surprised that you, Torch the author of a critically acclaimed book, actually believe that Level 4 can operate on a route that is not fully controlled. School buses don’t operate on a monorail.
Plus, when I was a kid, I would have totally figured out a way to fuck up the automated system to miss even 10 minutes of class. Which brings up a whole other question…what happens if the bus gets a flat? If things are so automated and centralized, who’s gonna get all the kids stuck in front of the pot shop/arcade? Good luck finding those kids any time before Wednesday (assuming this happens on a Monday).
I love most of your wackadoo ideas, but this one isn’t it! The best solution is the easiest. That’s to make it a better/more desirable job. Pay those people more. It’s too valuable of a job to chintz out on.
The first rule of fight club is, get on this bus with no adult supervision.
This isn’t good folks, your gonna need a monitor these kids. And if you got todo that just drive the darn thing. Now im not troubled now I goto to mass, I pay my taxes, I love my kids and I served my country. Back then I was NOT good I smoked I tore the cushion out of the back ov seats I farted in the ventilation systems I proudly took a sh*t in the very last seat ally I got into fist fights. And I told the driver and the county cop toF*ck off and I escaped out the emergency door. Folks your a driver……
You pointed out the real issue in your very first paragraph, “… like the absurdly low pay school bus drivers tend to get.”
If we actually believe in a market economy, and if having our kids driven safely and on time to school, was actually a priority, then we would pay drivers what it takes to get enough of them to do the job. Problem solved. No expensive or risky technology required.
Yes, this means that state budgets would actually have to fund schools. I’m stopping here and not taking the root cause analysis any further though, as it quickly gets political.
I drive a school bus for a living, as well as train people on getting the required license and endorsements to do so, and I can tell you flat out there are so many absurd variables both in the routes, and dealing with the kids that I can’t forsee automation for a long ass time. Just the weather/road condition variables one make it not even remotely viable. Today we had muddy rutted roads, which require their own approach, it’s supposed to freeze and snow tonight, which will create a whole different scenario. You spend a lot of attention trying to predict the actions of other motorists when picking up and dropping off kids, while keeping an eye on said kids, as well as the ones that are using your being occupied to cause trouble everywhere. If you wanted to hear all the other reasons why it is sadly not workable for AI, I’d be happy to talk to you about it.
That was my immediate concern. Kids are chaos agents, and you can’t fix the way the immature brain is wired.
Ya know, an actual article from you about your experiences would, I think, be a good read. Consider pitching it, will you? You could talk seriously about the issues you face-how little support you get for one-then throw in some good horror stories for us to chuckle over. Yah: do that, please.
Oh, and seriously, thank you for safety transporting our spawn & grandspawn.
You are truly the ones we need to thank for your service.
We already have private school bus companies where I am and ooh boy do they suck. If you need to call the bus company you’re talking to someone out of state, so I’m sure they really know what’s going on with the zebra route at John Glenn Elementary in wherever. I would be far less concerned with the actual operation of a self-driving bus than I would be with keeping the kids in line on the bus. This is an area where bullying, harassment and assault could easily happen even more than it already does. We have cameras for evidence in busses already, but they don’t always catch it. A monitored video feed would be flawed in the same way but without an adult to step in if a kid actually yels for help or something.
My proposed remedy would not be self driving busses, but longer routes with higher capacity accordion busses that could be fitted with more traditional school bus seats. Just need one driver to scoop and drop a whole bunch of kids. More kids per bus means fewer busses per district and thus fewer drivers needed. You could smash a whole ass marching band onto just two of them instead of 3 or 4 normal busses. As a bonus you could then have a true girls bus and boy’s bus which cuts down on some of the shenanigans.
“…16- and 17-year old kids with maybe a number of months of driving experience under their belts were asked to drive us kids to and from school.”
Wow, even my part of rural Oregon didn’t do that and this was in the early ’70s to early ’80s. Now I feel like I was deprived of a valuable life lesson or two, maybe more.
This was a thing in Alabama and Mississippi during my school days in the 70s and 80s. many of my classmates were also bus drivers. Even my brother drove the school bus for Trade School from Sumter County to Tuscaloosa between 1981 and 1983.
This came to an end in 1983 when the age to obtain a CDL was raised to 23. The kids who had obtained their CDL licenses before the new law took effect were grandfathered in, so they were fine.
It was common throughout the rural South. The Department of Labor ended the practice in 1988 by mandating that bus drivers be at least eighteen. This decision was prompted by multiple deaths of children while riding in a bus with a teenage driver.
Not to get all math-y and stuff but didn’t anyone involved notice that eighteen- and nineteen-year-old drivers are still, you know, teenagers?
We need school buses because lousy parents leave parenting to nannys and drive to work. Drop your kid off on the way. Start a carpool. Every lazy Karen can drive the bus before spending her first husbands alimony. So many answers but government needs to solve it.
Unfortunately I think you nailed it in your “reasons not to” section. Making the bus go is just a small part of what a school bus driver does. Maybe start with like a bread delivery van or something, we can even still use your box of wasps to keep the muffin thieves away.
I just thought of a hilarious Amazon thief surprise box.
A million lawyers are licking their chops at the very idea.
You won’t have automated buses for the same reason we won’t see automated trucks in the near future, regardless of who is actually doing the driving- liability laws. The second one of the buses gets into any sort of accident where little Timmy or Jessica gets a boo-boo, someone is suing. Even if the bus was stationary and a drunk driver rammed it, there will be an argument made that a human driver could have avoided it, and a jury will buy it.
Just saw a story where flooding occurred during bus time. Who considers the unplannable?
I haven’t read the story, but it sounds similar to the horrible incident during the tornado outbreaks of April 2011. Right over in Kemper County, Mississippi, right across the state line from me. All of the school systems in the surrounding Alabama and Mississippi counties had dismissed around noon that day in anticipation of the impending storm, but Kemper County kept their students in school until around 2:30, when the storm was closing in on the area. A busload of students were travelling on a nearly isolated tretch of rural highway when a tornado threw a tree across the road in front of the bus, nearly hitting it. Then another tree fell behind the bus, trapping it. Cell phone reception was spotty in that area, and concerned parents were out looking for the bus when their children didn’t come home. It took nearly two hours to cut and remove the trees and free the bus and children.
The driver and the transportation manager were fired, but the principals and superintendent were not. I still feel they should have been fired as well for waiting until a storm is near the vicinity before letting the buses roll. They had plenty of time to send them home early, or at least waited until the storm passed, keeping them safe.
They fired…the driver? Seriously? What were they supposed to do, levitate the bus?
I do feel badly fr the driver,; he was just doing his job. I’m sure he didn’t want to drive in the storm with a busload of children. But the school superintendent and the principal could have just held the kids at the scholl until the sotrm ahd passed over, since they didn’t follow everyone else’s example and dismiss school earlier in the day.
It’s just another example of putting ass-backwards people in charge. All they want is the money at the end of the week, and everyone else can go to hell.
Just bike to school says the Dutch guy
But then how do I keep my shower spaghetti cold?
Eat it in the shower like David Tracy!
Errr never mind
Dutchland = flat. RedWhiteBlueland = mostly hilly. Hilly = bad in weather. I bike commuted but was definitely in the minority and with drivers spending more time on their phones than watching the road I wouldn’t do it now.
Before drawing a distinction between Dutchland and RedWhiteBlueland, you may want to have a look at the Dutch flag…
Wasps don’t ride school buses; Jeeves takes them in the Rolls. Also, they don’t attend public schools.
why Karen so angry?
Some excellent points — and ones which illuminate the reasons that people who love driving their cars (and therefore might be opposed to autonomous systems doing it for them) might still hope that L4/5 systems will eventually become as safe or safer than the average human driver: times when you need your car to drive for you when it’s not convenient or possible for you to be in it. The article focuses on busses (a great potential use case), but if ADAS driving becomes sufficiently safe for cars, not many people wouldn’t wish their car could drive their kid(s) to and from school at times their schedules are double-booked. The same goes for aging/disabled family members who need to get to appointments, etc. Another scenario to consider: attending crowded events. Most drivers would appreciate the option to have their car drop them off — especially if they’re running late and/or nearby parking options are expensive or full. The car could then go park itself two miles away until summoned.
…oh, and if they get sloshed at the event — no designated driver necessary.
Man such a terrible idea but with one very beneficial aspect.
1. Kids not on time. Does the bus wait forever or leave with a child running after it? Boom dead kid.
2. Not night time all the time but part of the year is quite dark.
3. Not hectic? A bunch of impatient prepubescents running around the bus stop out in front of the bus? Boom dead kid
4. Wasps? Nah my brothers and I would have set them free on the bus. Loud speaker or not.
5. The roads in my area are bad enough washing out crumbling down the hillside it takes a human being to make quick decisions.
On the bright side the population does need thinning if you are willing to offer up your kids life for the rest of us good for you.
My solution every parent drives the bus 1 week. Like car pool. Your kids get a tax payer funded education but where does it say free delivery?
I think so many bus lines could run autonomous, and even when not some routes could be adapted to it with some kind of external sign posts to help the navigation, priority lanes. Not to mention the ones that basically run on segregated lanes already. That could allow cities to run smaller busses but with more frequency in consistent time tables 24/7 if they need to, and would be much easier to increase the fleet on demand
THINK OF THE CHILDREN WONT SOMEONE PLRASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?
How about public transportation for AI driving? Who keeps the pedophiles off the bus full of kids?
Then they hire a security guard to sit on the bus to ensure safety. See, problem solved!
(But now with expensive driving tech, and a security guard shortage.)
Isn’t the great PR from the company branded buses more than offset by the PR disaster if something goes wrong and a bus full of kids get injured?
All the more reason not to injure those kids! That’s what the wasps are for.
The wasps are trained to override the automation and prevent a crash in the case of a system failure? Get serious. Crows, sure. But wasps? I don’t think so.