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1 day agoReminds me of an ad from over a decade ago. (For those who speak German: youtube, sorry, I want able to get an invidious Link working )
A woman is sitting at a bar, and a man in a suit comes up and sits right next to her, taps his car keys on the table, and then lays them on the table and moves them towards her.
“400 horsepower, 12 cylinders, top speed 296…” He nods proudly. “Tomorrow evening 7 o’clock?”
She grabs a large key on her keychain and shows it to him: “10,877 horsepower, top speed 330, tomorrow morning, 8:43…” She puts the key on the table and pushes it next to his key. “…track 7”.
The ad was from the German railroad attempting to recruit drivers.
As @myotheraccount mentioned, this is 330km/h, but yes, they still need drivers. On the high speed lines, the train can do quite a bit on its own, but you still need a driver to take care of the stops at stations, for non-high speed sections which generally don’t have the automation infrastructure, and for the case the something doesn’t work or go as intended.
There’s not much of a need to “keep an eye on the machines”, they’re pretty sturdy, made to go at that speed and have gone through a number of tests to ensure everything works the way it should. Unless we’re doing a test run, but that’s another story.