Don't stop!

I was pretty excited, a couple of months ago, when California approved some rules for allowing autonomous cars to be certified to drive on the roads (previous tests by Google, and others, were run with people behind the wheel, even when the car was driving). Not for the approval itself, which, being well outside of California, has little to no effect on me. But to talk about that, NPR interviewed a Google engineer about the system, and he indicated that autonomous vehicles would be on the market within five years. That was so exciting, because that's about five years closer than I thought, and because I'd love to have one (my commute isn't bad, but being able to read a book during it would be fabulous). Tacking on to that, I just saw an article about an intersection control system being designed by some Virginia Tech engineers that would allow control of vehicles to be handed of from the car itself to the intersection, that would keep all vehicles flowing at top speed. One bit of skepticism is what happens when one vehicle that isn't under intersection control attempts to go through; I suspect that is, at best, a messy problem. Still, it's cool to see people are working on that sort of thing. I can't wait.