Would you send your kids to school on a self driving schoolbus?

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.

- 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)

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.

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.

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.)

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 ...

(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.

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.

-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.

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

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.