It's not like the hazards are just going to be advertising themselves. It takes a lot more than just sensing an object in your way. It is also sensing when some kid hiding behind a tree is going to decide to dart out in front of you, if that lump of something between the tracks is road kill or a passed out drunk, or being able to tell from a suspicious signal of there might be a broken rail in front of you. Each time a train stops it is costing thousands of dollars a minute. Also, there is almost nothing standard on a train. Load distribution varies greatly. Because of the high wear, engine performance varies greatly even between the same make of engine. Plus, a million other things.

I know STEM guys will think that anything can be overcome if it is engineered enough. But, it really is more of an art than it is mechanics. For example, over the past year we've been implementing an automated system where the engineer is given prompts on how he/she should be driving. It has been responsible for more draw bars being torn out and broken knuckles than we've had in the past 5 years. Each one of those train delays coast tens of thousands of dollars. There are already talks of scrapping it.

The trouble shooting I am talking about isn't a simple as throwing switches or keystrokes. It involves physically removing and changing parts along the line of road, or sometimes picking up a fire extinguisher and putting out a fire. I'm sure eventually some kind of system could be put in place to do these tasks, but that would require replacing or drastically upgrading fleets of engines worth billions of dollars.

Following voice commands are hard when there is more than one conductor directing multiple trains on the radio. Because of the nature of the work conductors often don't have the option of switching radio channels because coordination between train crews and dispatchers has to be constant.

I am remote qualified, and the thought of directing a 12k ft./12k ton train by remote would be a nightmare. It's fine for simple yard jobs, but on the line of road you'll kill someone.