In Chicago, there was a case some years ago where a woman was pulled under a train by a door.
She was carrying a very expensive violin. She got off the train and the doors closed between her and the violin, with the strap around her shoulder. Because the strap was thin, it didn't activate the door's obstruction detector.
Because the violin was so expensive, she didn't want to lose it, so instead of crawling out of the strap, she stood there and waited for the conductor to notice her. One of his jobs was to verify visually that there were no problems in the station before the train started moving -- but he didn't do that. She was dragged under the train and the wheels sliced off her legs.
Point being, those people are likely serving an important safety function. The conductor didn't do his job on the Chicago train and so a woman lost her legs. But a system with no human conductor would be an unsafe system by design.
As your story illustrates, humans and machines both have failure rates. Sometimes the presence of humans actually makes a system less safe. The meltdown at Three Mile Island, for example, would not have happened if a panicked human operator had not overridden the automatic emergency cooling system.
> The conductor didn't do his job on the Chicago train and so a woman lost her legs. But a system with no human conductor would be an unsafe system by design.
Perhaps, yes. But in this example, with no human conductor, the woman would have just sacrificed her violin instead of relying on the unreliable human conductor.
The system has an automated track safety system. It can get a little annoying at times as a rider — I've heard blowing leaves on the tracks can trigger the system, which is significant given the large majority of stations are elevated and can be exposed to the elements. This article from a few years back has described some of the more unfortunate cases: http://thetyee.ca/News/2008/11/18/SkyTrain/
Unions aren't against technological improvements they're just against how quickly those improvements would be put into place because a LOT of jobs would be lost. If driverless subways for example were phased in as workers retired, I'm sure there wouldn't be a problem. Or if re-training were provided for the workers before they were let go, that might be acceptable as well. It comes down to the fact that humans have to eat and educate their children: machines don't.
Also (as a separate issue) I thought the governments of the world wanted to create more jobs, not fire everyone who is currently working... ;)
