What if the ability to communicate freely with other drivers made the experience closer to walking in a crowd.

In a dense crowd, the information being exchanged amongst the crowd is enormous. It is a constant negotiation, of different parties trying to get somewhere but also trying (hopefully) to respect other people’s space. And the stakes are lower, because bumping into someone is fine at 1 kph but totally unacceptable at 50 kph. And humans are dynamically adjustable, like raising ones arms so that a stroller can pass more easily. Cars can’t really do that (except Transformers: Robots In Disguise).

In a crowded bazaar, the bandwidth from reading people’s facial cues, from seeing whether they’re distracted by goods on display or from their Instagram posts, plus what people actually say – and what they don’t say – and how quickly or slowly they walk. All of that is context that is necessary to participate in the activity of passing through the crowd, and I think that cost-optimized technology to exchange the same amount of info while also needing to react 50x faster and deterministically, with safety standards suitable for 2-tonne machines that already kill and maim thousands per year, that’s not really feasible.