Every person crossing the road will have a small Transmitter Device, it could be your phone, or a completely separate device.
You press it whenever you want to cross a highway or a busy road.. All the surrounding car gets a ping, slows down/stops, and lets you cross.
So,
everyone else should adapt to self-driving cars then? ...
I have also heard the idea that cities that have stood for several thousand years and will stand for thousands more should tear down houses and reorganise their streets into grids with separate lanes for pedestrians and carts for that small fraction of time in that city's life just after carts are no longer driven by horses or oxen but are not yet flying.
BTW, the place where I was almost run over by a taxi-driver on the phone was
at a zebra crossing. Signs. Marks on the road surface. Other people crossing right in front of me. More than enough light to see. No red lights but the other signals should be more than enough.
If his mind is somewhere else, a self driving car would be a better solution since it would at least try to avoid you. It's mind doesn't wander.
The point was not about driver fatigue but about
communication between actors on the road. About social interaction and not acting like a zombie or a self-absorbed douchebag.
Robot drivers don't communicate like human drivers do. When there is a "driver" in the car, it is important that the "driver" does not send mixed signals!
There have been research projects about cars with a face, that could communicate.
In Total Recall, the self-driving taxi "JohnnyCab" does have a robot face which is somewhat expressive.
But none of the automatic cars that are out on roads today do this yet. They have a passenger in the "driver's seat".
Another thing: Every car is required to have a horn. But would a self-driving car ever
use a horn? Would it be programmed to be able to detect which situations in which the use of a horn is warranted?
Also, would a self-driving car be able to understand why another driver uses a horn, for good reason or the wrong reasons?
It seems to me more and more as if the idea of self-driving cars is not really about cars, but a conspiracy to change the world for people on cell phones. A way to prevent cell-phone zombies walking into the street to be run over, and a way for people in cars to spend more time on their cell phones.
Cell-phone zombies will still walk off quays, off bridges, into fountains and onto railroad tracks though ... but you can't blame that on the cars.
