The Transport Workers Union of America’s 165,000 plus members work across the entire transportation sector. At transit agencies, airlines, railroads, bikeshare systems and elsewhere, TWU members see their jobs change drastically as new technology once again mushrooms across all modes of transportation. This is not a new phenomenon. Every few decades the next wave of innovation shifts how we move, but each successive wave of technology has reinforced the central role humans play to make our transportation systems safe and efficient. 

Tech companies, along with their associated boards, investors, and cheerleaders, have claimed that this latest round of automation is unique. These voices, who often stand to make billions on automated transport, argue that current rules and regulations are unable to account for their new technologies. Instead, they argue for as little regulation as possible, asserting that rules developed decades ago cannot possibly encompass their latest technology. These same advocates will also claim that the consequences of unregulated deployment, job losses and a reduction in safety, are somehow unavoidable and a necessary cost of innovation. We should collectively reject that line of thinking just as we did when these same arguments were made regarding commercial jet engines (first produced in the United States in 1958), autonomous subways (1963), and any number of other “cutting edge” technology from the previous century.  

In reality, the philosophical cornerstones of our transportation oversight regime were designed specifically to address automation and new technology. The most critical safety component of every vehicle is a qualified human to oversee the system and intervene, as necessary, to keep it running without incident. 

A tour through some of the newest transportation innovations emphasizes the core role that qualified humans should be performing at all times. Robotaxis are designed to stop and query a human when the onboard computer doesn’t understand a situation (a circumstance that is happening constantly for these vehicles and that deserves more scrutiny from policymakers). Railroads are using brake inspection portals, equipped with dozens of cameras, to feed data to qualified mechanical inspectors to determine where those humans need to spend their time fixing problems.  In these cases and hundreds of others like them, the presence of a qualified human, or lack thereof, is making the difference between a safe outcome and a reckless one. These examples show policymakers and the traveling public that automation without human input and control across the transportation sector is unworkable and unsafe.  

Eliminating human control of our transportation systems inevitably leads to disaster. In 2018 and 2019, an automated system onboard the new Boeing 737-MAX aircraft (the “maneuvering characteristics augmentation system,” or MCAS) repeatedly overruled commands from its pilots based on false sensor data – data the pilots visually confirmed was wrong. Two plane crashes at Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines led to 346 deaths. Pilots in the U.S. faced identical problems in their automated aircraft systems. However, proper training and federal requirements allowed them to simply turn off the malfunctioning system. In public transit, the National Transportation Safety Board attributed a 2009 crash of Washington, DC’s Red Line train – which killed 9 people and injured 52 others – to an automated system because it didn’t detect another train on the tracks ahead of it and kept the second train moving at full speed. The operator of the Red Line train tried to use the brake to prevent the impending collision caused by the automated system, but the system’s failures prevented the human operator from stopping the train. 

Today, workers are facing attempts, large and small, to introduce automation in all our sectors. Many of these initiatives have strong support from the frontline workforce who are subject to the same safety threats as the traveling public. But unlike technology such as LiDAR systems designed to prevent collisions that augments and assists human workers, Big Tech boosters are pushing technology designed to eliminate the need for a qualified human worker — and they often argue a “need” for a federal waiver or exemption. That should give us all pause. Autonomous shuttles, aircraft inspections completed by drones without a licensed mechanic’s sign-off, AI-rail car inspections, and other naked attempts to use federal exemptions to decrease labor costs will not increase safety.  These kinds of corporate giveaways have potentially different outcomes for the human workers on the job but they all share the same underlying assumption: that employers can, at their sole discretion, determine the appropriate safety measures for people in and around their vehicles. We all lose when our safety is left solely to a profit-driven entity. 

It is essential that human workers have the ability to oversee, override, and control new technology precisely because safety depends on redundancy. Broadly speaking, our transportation safety systems rest on an agreement between safety regulators, the owners of the infrastructure, and the frontline workers who operate and maintain it. All three have a mandate to run a safe system, but each group has different responsibilities. Eliminating human oversight would destroy the checks and balances inherent to this system and deny regulators the first-hand experience in these systems needed to judge safety proposals. When an aircraft maintenance technician clears a plane to return to service, they know they can lose their livelihood if they behave recklessly. That is a very different sense of responsibility than their employer has towards the same piece of equipment. Our transportation networks become less safe without the oversight of human workers.  

The TWU doesn’t fear technological developments in the transportation sector that could change the day-to-day nature of many of our members’ jobs. Technology that enhances safety, provides additional data, and helps to avoid collisions are welcome developments. But technology is not a substitute for human judgement and control.

John Samuelsen is the TWU International President