Personally I think a "forward blinker" would be useful, in the middle of a car/bike. Many times at a 4-way stop where all the cars arrive relatively simultaneously, if a car doesn't have any blinkers on, I have to guess if they intend to go straight forward, or have forgotten to signal -- or they start signaling after they begin to accelerate for some reason. If I had to guess, I'd say that up to 1 of 10 cars may fall into one of these categories. People at busy 4-way stops (incl. myself) tend to want to increase flow by a self-organized optimization of allowing more than one car in the intersection at a time if they don't interfere w/each other- such as two cars across from each other going straight or turning to opposite roads.
I think that's one of the unappreciated features of self-driving cars, is that they will always signal their intent, whether to other human drivers and cars via lights, or directly via data.
> People at busy 4-way stops (incl. myself) tend to want to increase flow by a self-organized optimization of allowing more than one car in the intersection at a time if they don't interfere w/each other- such as two cars across from each other going straight or turning to opposite roads.
The algorithm is pretty easy (but sadly, not universal) once the intersection becomes congested, you switch from whatever you were doing to opposite sides enter the intersection simultaneously, straight and right turns exit first, left turns turn after passing the opposite traffic; then the perpindicular direction has a turn. Easy peasy, unless you live where the convention is to maintain first arrival order per entry direction, even when congested.
When all cars are self-driving, it gets even better because the cars will exchange information with each other over short-range RF networks. Paxos-like intercar signalling of intent will be a huge safety boost.
But as long as self-driving cars share the road with human-driven cars, the automatic cars will still have to drive defensively, assuming every other vehicle is potentially a Byzantine adversary.
I think that's one of the unappreciated features of self-driving cars, is that they will always signal their intent, whether to other human drivers and cars via lights, or directly via data.