It is however, interesting to me to confirm they are aware of other AVs and can sync with them, enable better safety, and potentially could optimize routing through traffic with the combined data. Imagine if the car in front could warn the car behind of an incident, enabling it to take action before a human driver would even be aware of the incident.
> Imagine if the car in front could warn the car behind of an incident
They can, that is why cars have all this pretty lights in the back! They can warn of several things, like intention of turning, braking, accidents, is amazing.
And it works wonders if the human driver focus on the trafic ahead of the car just in front
Yeah, the lights in the back of your car can warn of exactly four things:
- The car is going to turn left (one blinking yellow light)
- The car is going to turn right (one blinking yellow light)
- The car is stopping (three solid red lights)
- An unspecified error occurred (two blinking yellow lights).
It's not exactly a high - bandwidth form of communication. Most of the purpose of the lights behind your car is to remind other human drivers of your continued existence. As you point out, some of this deficiency can be made up by not looking at them.
Imagine a world where you could automatically talk over an intercom with the driver in front of you about traffic conditions. I bet you'd find safer, better-informed driving. Self-driving cars make that theoretically easy and humanly pleasant.
