An Ugly Truth? If Self Driving Cars Are To Be Successful, Cash Strapped Cities Will Need To Make Major Changes

If there was a cop directly traffic on a highway to a outside lane to avoid an accident crash clean up or a road crew put a sign to bear left due to repaving, can an autonomous car understand human hand directions or read a temporary road sign?

Temporary road signs for sure, human hand directions will eventually happen as well. Self driving cars can already understand what is a construction area even with no signs.

As @QEW might tell you, look for this sort of technological change on a large scale in China first. They have the funds and the means to "decide" that certain highways become intelligent and can control the flow of level 5 autonomous cars. Again, as said before, this is years and years away from happening.

The biggest problem to overcome with this technology - is a problem that many older large cities will not be able to fix - ie - the small narrow streets. While I agree that China might use this technology for rebuilding certain cities - they still have a population to move around that will cause problems. At least one thing - is that the cars will need the ability to detect each other - especially is a grid of one way streets in those old cities.

Obviously - human hand directions are going to need some type of "glove" to be detectable - and they will ALSO need to be reasonably consistent - so retraining a police force. No more directing traffic to some "music" etc.

For years - my elderly mother has often said that cars should not even be allowed into cities (Except "for hire" ones) - there should be several large areas outside the cities to park your car and take a bus or a train or subway the rest of the way. It would be far safer than having all those cars on the roads. THAT might be an option in really crowded center city areas - but It would still cause problems with retail businesses and the arts.

And all this money spent for a short period of use - until the world ends up in the clouds ala the Jetsons.

So to put the socialist utopia of autonomous cars into action, we will need to redesign cities, bulldoze structures, and rebuild. That will really cut into welfare. I wonder which the Alt-Left loves more welfare prisoners or the autonomous future.

If cameras and computers had come before cars, then this would be easy. Our highways would be made for autonomous transport, and humans would not be allowed to drive because of the risk. Instead, we need to somehow teach computers how to act like humans....which will be extremely difficult.