This week I had a conversation with some colleagues about self-driving cars. I reiterated my long-standing opinion about the best way for the idea of self-driving cars to gain traction.
I said that somebody would need to decide to create a “self-driving car only” zone, perhaps in a small town somewhere. The key is to avoid mixing with human drivers.
If the only vehicles on the road are self-driving cars — without the need to account for the unpredictability of human drivers — then the whole thing essentially becomes a cooperative packet switching network. Such networks are well understood, and known to be safe and reliable.
“But what about traffic lights?” somebody asked. “Self-driving cars sometimes get those wrong.”
I pointed out that there would be no need for traffic lights. Cars would all be communicating with each other behind the scenes to cooperatively maintain the most efficient traffic flow.
Eventually I realized that the problem was the terminology. For many people, “self-driving car” is a trigger word.
So instead I think we can just use more appropriate and descriptive language. The future is not about self-driving cars. The future is about a small-vehicle public transportation system.