TECHNOLOGY

Self Driving Cars May Never Work, but Cars Can Be Made Better with Tech

Safer and maybe faster, too

DALL-E 2 image by author

It’s beginning to look like we won’t be seeing real self-driving cars anytime soon. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if over-reaching AI like Tesla’s is banned — all it might take is a few more deadly accidents. Even without that, Level 5 driving AI doesn't presently seem attainable. It’s just too hard.

But we could still improve safety and perhaps even speed right now, and it wouldn’t be hard.

Communication

First, we need smart cars to know about each other. That requires a communication standard so that vehicles can advertise their location, speed, and bearing to other vehicles.

Even just this alone provides benefits, and would do so with only a tiny percentage of vehicles equipped with this ability. Imagine just two capable vehicles several miles apart on a highway. The lead vehicle has to stop because of a sudden traffic jam. The trailing vehicle becomes aware of that and might suggest a detour to its driver.

If dozens of capable vehicles were on the highway, they might all slow down in an attempt to avoid making the jam bigger. The human drivers in these cars would not be able to drive as fast as…