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Re:Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never ... by anticensor on Sunday January 19, 2020 @12:33AM (#22089662)
> A lot of this is because railway signalling operates on a brick-wall principal

That applies to old style -though still in common use- signalling. CBTC (every railway should use, but very few uses it) has similar, or even tighter, margins to road signalling.

Re:Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never ... by gsnedders on Sunday January 19, 2020 @02:13PM (#22093273)
No, the gains from CBTC come from two factors: one, it being a moving block system, rather than an absolute block (really you can think of a moving block system as an absolute block one where the length of the block approaches zero), so spacing matches the braking distance required; secondly, as with many modern in-cab systems, it is down to the individual trains to compute their braking curve, rather than the length of the blocks being dictated by the worse-case braking performance of any stock on the line.

I'm also unaware of any freight or mixed traffic application of CBTC, which makes it a stretch to say every railway should, though plenty of proven in-cab systems provide many of the same benefits (and you can decrease block-length substantially to get much of the way there).