Q&A: Sabbath Bus
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
Sabbath Bus
Question
Soon, when autonomous cars will probably be the norm, there will presumably also be buses like that (I vaguely heard there are already buses or taxis like that in Japan or China or somewhere).
Do you see any reason to prohibit a Sabbath bus that stops at every stop and with certain systems turned off, etc.?
Of course, when the weight goes up, energy consumption increases slightly.
Maybe one could ask this simply about a non-Jewish driver on the light rail as well (which non-Jews also benefit from), of course on condition that it also stops at empty stations.
Answer
I don’t see any prohibition in that.
There could be a problem of passing from one domain to another on the Sabbath.