In our glorious future in which fully capable level 5 automated vehicles are common, I assume school districts will start switching to them to transport students. Do you think that it will be like current school buses, but just AV versions? Or will something like auto-cabs for individual transport become the norm? A mix?
I suppose only middle and high school students will be trusted on board fully driverless AVs. Younger kids will probably still need an adult on board, only now the kids can get the adult’s full attention during the ride. Or maybe the U.S. and other places will take inspiration from the Japanese walking school bus practice.
AVs can shuttle back and forth without any occupants at all, so they can move where they’re next needed. This might result in a large reduction of vehicles owned and maintained by school districts. There might be an expectation that a student will ride in the family AV and then it returns home by itself for the parents to get to work.
School districts will definitely adopt them. Up until very recently, I was actively hunting for teaching jobs, and every school district employment website I’ve ever seen has advertised immediate openings for school bus drivers.
It’d probably be a very good idea to still have an adult on the bus to monitor the students, but that’s a lot easier than a driver, since a bus monitor doesn’t need a CDL. And even if they don’t, it wouldn’t be any worse than the current situation where there’s already nobody on the bus to supervise the students (the bus driver really can’t do that; they’re already busy driving the bus).
Full busses are far more fuel efficient than a separate vehicle for each student. Certainly the school district wouldn’t be springing for individual vehicles for each student, and in a sane system, there’d be some incentive for families to use the bus rather than sending the family vehicle to pick up the kid.
Middle and high school students really need adult supervision on the bus, if you don’t want kids arriving to school high and/or bruised. It would still be wonderful to have automated vehicles, since most school districts now rely on one person to drive the bus and supervise the kids, which is, of course, impossible.
The obvious solution is to have all the children operate telepresence robots, which themselves ride the bus.
Serious answer:
Most individual public schools in the US mostly serve students who live in a limited area. Even with autonomous busses, it will probably still be most efficient to do pickups every block or two, and put lots of kids on a single vehicle. The alternative is sending multiple vehicles on essentially the same routes.
Schools that don’t fit that pattern, such as magnet schools that take kids from a much wider area, might run smaller vehicles to collect the more sparsely distributed students.
Flippant answer:
Some people buy lottery tickets to enjoy a fantasy, but I spent $2500 to feed the fantasy that I’d be able put my kid in the car, have it deliver her to school, and then come home all by itself. That won’t be necessary until Fall 2025, so a certain annoying tech CEO has until 1.5 years to make good on his promise that my fantasy would become true.
If level 5 autopilot does become a reality, I imagine that many families will live my fantasy. Instead of sending their kids out to wait for a bus, they’ll stick them in the family robot car, have it do the dropoffs while they get started working (from home, of course), and then the car will come back.