The end of traffic lights, stop signs, and stripes on the roads


As I was pondering the future today, it occurred to me that my little suburban neighborhood will look different when cars become self-driving. There won't be any need for the kind of visual instructions that have developed over the years to guide drivers, the cars will simply move around in a logical way.

This is, of course, what city streets used to look like. Drivers just looked out for stuff, and tried to avoid running into things. There were no traffic lights, no stop signs, no lines on the road. When the trolley came by, they moved out of the way. Of course, this system couldn't last as roads got more crowded, cars started going faster, and more and more people got driver's licenses. Driving changed from being as difficult as pushing a shopping cart through a grocery store to a maze of confusing signs and signals, done at high speed.

In the future I imagine that there will still be some human drivers, but they'll be the ones that I see who drive the big rigs - the real pros. And they'll be able to share the road with automated cars the same way they share the road with people-driven cars, by watching out for them. And the automated cars will be programmed not to try to pass them on the right during a wide turn!

I'm happy with my little suburban neighborhood now, but I know that it will look nicer without the traffic lights, stop signs, "do not park" signs, stripes on the roads, and all that other stuff. Hopefully the then-available space will be planted with trees and flowers.

Of course, some people will miss things like old traffic lights, and stop signs, and will probably put them in their garage, or make a flower planter out of them. And old-timers will tell of a time when those things were a common sight on city streets, to the amazement of the young 'uns.
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