With the autonomous cars taking efficiency at hand, one area that could see a good deal of change would be the streetlight and how the new technology would make them of a more archaic nature.In one Readwite article, this topic gets some deserved attention, and this is one where I agree that this change could be for the better. Since the cars will be doing the communication amongst each other, it makes for more systematic decision making, therefore working off of those reliability and efficiency factors.
One point to make is how since the basis of these self driving cars is the interaction with its environment, including other cars, will work to make more efficient use of the surroundings to make better judgement of when to turn than current stoplight technology permits. The current system of wrapping cars together that are going one way and working with another group going another is a lot more general and occasionally more time consuming. With autonomous vehicles taking over the control, more individual decisions can be made, and therefore it would become much more organized than our current system.
While I don’t believe that all traffic lights will become obsolete with them, those where the car can make better judgement that not only benefits the passenger but also other drivers I feel will not necessarily last the test. What these cars wil do better than a traffic light is take into account the individual cars rather than clustering as a whole. While this will not be so much an immediate change as not everyone will change right away to the autonomous cars, it will be one to keep in mind as the technology becomes further widespread in the years following the release.
JMcQueen 