What about commercial airline pilots then? a computer can fly a plane, land it and take off yet they earn ^100k. Are they overpaid?
Train driving is a skilled profession. We're not paid for what we do, we are paid for what we know and the risks involved. Less than 3% of people who apply for a train drivers role will actually pass the initial assessments.
There will never be totally driverless trains on the Underground network. A computer will never see passengers trapped in a door before they're dragged under a train, a computer will never be able to fix faults on trains, will never be able to deal with out-of course situations like signal failures, will never be able to safely de-train passengers in a tunnel, will never be able to spot potential track defects before they become a major incident./
If an emergency occurs on a driverless train and a passenger pulls the emergency alarm, what happens? does the train stop automatically or keep going?
Completely aside from the tube driver discussion though. The average London salary is ^34k. To get on the house market in London, first time buyers need to have an annual salary of ^77k a year. House prices in London are predicted to rise by 30% over the next 5 years. How is our NHS going to attract the best nursing staff in London if their salary means they can't afford to live in London? This is why they should be fighting for their pay and conditions now.
Yes, a computer can fly a plane, computers can do most things, but airline pilots are required to have in depth knowledge of relevant aspects of physics & maths, principles of flight, navigation, meteorology, ability to process information in 3 (well, 4 really) dimensions, a minutely detailed knowledge of a machine some orders of magnitude more complex than a train - have you not seen typical flight deck instrumentation and/or the inside of an avionics bay compared with a train drivers controls?! And if something does go wrong in the air, you have to have the knowledge & skill to overcome that issue calmly and rationally, you're effectively alone. You can't just pull up at the next signal and phone someone for help with everyone sat behind you safe and sound. To compare airline pilots with train drivers is, has and always will be a ridiculous comparison.
To illustrate, I would draw your attention to some of the many videos available on youtube taken from the flight deck jump seat during bad weather manual landings, or from manual landings at difficult airports such as Funchal, Hong Kong Kai Tak, Toncontin - you will clearly see how and why airline pilots earn their money.
And besides, it's generally only Captains at airlines such as
BA» that break into the 6 figure salaries, to get to that level you need in the order of 1500+ hours on type. The rest are on the sorts of figures being paid to train drivers.
I would also be interested, using you arguments against driverless trains, as to how you can explain why the
DLR▸ has such a good safety record - someone recently posted the incidents to date on that computer controlled railway, and the only collisions between trains occurred when a human was at the controls of one of the vehicles involved.
