Hacker News Reader

AFAIK It's the lack of a human making the close doors / start moving decision that leads to a need for platform doors.

(The Central, Jubilee, Northern and Victoria lines also use automatic operation to similar levels as the DLR, it's just less obvious as the train operator still has a separate cab).

View on HN

> AFAIK It's the lack of a human making the close doors / start moving decision that leads to need for platform doors.

There is no such need. Lyon's line D has been running fully automatic since 1992 without platform doors[0], the only major accident has been a drunk falling on the train having jumped from a mezzanine.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubdJ35NBrbE

Same in Copenhagen[0], but they do appear to have LIDAR units monitoring the track edge at stations without doors.

[0] https://youtu.be/R8QvM000uyE?t=151

Copenhagen has since fitted platform edge doors to all stations, above and below ground.

Of course there is no such technical _need_, most kinds of these needs are driven by _legal_ requirements founded in fear of full automation. Fully automated systems were realized before your example already in Vancouver's SkyTrain (1986) and even BART was supposed to be specified to be fully automatic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com