2021-02-12

Roads for self-driving cars?

Self-driving cars have been an area of intense R&D and discussion for years now, and quite a bit of progress has been made. Theoretically, these cars are being trained to be smart enough to handle the wide variety of conditions on the roads we have. But are you truly comfortable with their safety?

Have people been advocating for changing the roads themselves to make self-driving cars more reliable?

We have more than 4 million miles of roads in the US. Adapting those roads with standardized technology to make self-driving cars safer & more reliable would cost a lot of money and take a long time. Shouldn’t we have started making that investment years ago?

I thought of this a few days back when our streets here were covered in snow. There were far fewer visual cues than normal. Will self-driving cars ever be able to safely handle these conditions? I think there are many other difficult conditions for them as well.

I did manage to find some articles that mention changing the roads, but I haven’t seen articles talking about coordinated efforts to build standard, self-driving-friendly roads. Do these efforts exist in the US?