The era of the self-driving car is undoubtedly coming, according to a slew of recent articles. In this coming era, the rules of the road are in for a drastic rewrite.
For one, according to Badger, "we won't need traffic lights at all (or stop signs, for that matter). Traffic will constantly flow, and at a rate that would probably unnerve the average human driver." And glancing at a computer model demonstrating such a scenario, produced by Peter Stone, a computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin, certainly provides a sense of unease.
Comments
Inevitable?
I question the word "Inevitable" in the title for this post. By what rationale are driverless cars a certainty for the future?
How about instead of driverless cars, we could work toward car-free cities?
Note that the simulation in the article has 12 lanes of traffic in each direction and no pedestrians, bicyclists, or mass transit. Who is funding this research?