Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road


Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid.

Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry!

The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is to go to a grocery store and watch the grocery carts moving around. There's no need to stay to the right side of the road (or the left side for my friends in the UK), and there are no stop signs or traffic lights, people just see another cart and go around it. I don't have the same reflexes that I had in my twenties, but if someone stops their cart ahead of me I can stop. No need for tail lights!

And no, I'm not saying that cars in the future will be going as slow as a grocery cart, but their ability to respond will be better than the best race-car driver in the world. In fact, there'll be no comparison. The human brain is wonderful at many things, but making thousands if not millions of calculations per second to navigate the three-dimensional world isn't one of them - computers can do that with ease, even now, and computers just get better and better.

If you have a car, and drive it, I'd like to suggest that you have a photo taken of you inside of it for future generations to enjoy. They will see a "steering wheel" in front of you that you used to guide the car down the road. And that's because all of it will become history.

Image at the top of this post: 16th Street and Camelback Road, looking north.

Thank you for the encouragement! If you want to see daily pics of my adventures on my recumbent trike in suburban Phoenix (just for fun, of course!) you can follow me on buymeacoffee.com/bradhall, and you can buy me a coffee if you'd like to!

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