Update 11: Self-driving cars set to cut fuel consumption. Large-scale test seeks to put humans in the back seat. NEDO says it will start testing several key technologies that allow for autonomous driving between 2010 and 2012.
Update 10: Fighting Traffic Jams With Data. Researchers from different universities are working on ways for cars to better communicate with each other and relay crucial driver information such as traffic speed, weather and road conditions.
Update 9: Accident Ahead? New Software Will Enable Cars To Make Coordinated Avoidance Maneuvers. In dangerous situations, the cars can independently perform coordinated maneuvers without their drivers having to intervene. In this way, they can quickly and safely avoid one another.
Update 8: Great article in Wired on Better Place's proposal for a new electric car distribution system. The idea is to blanket the country with "smart" charge spots. You buy your car from them and purchase a recharge plan. Profit come from selling electricity.
Update 7: Capturing solar energy from asphalt pavements. An interesting way to make the system self-sufficient.
Update 6: Why We Drive the Way We Do Unlocks How to Unclog Traffic. Vanderbilt says: The fundamental problem is that you've got drivers who make user-optimal rather than system-optimal decisions. Josh McHugh replies: Make the packets (cars) dumb and able to take marching orders from traffic routing nodes.
Update 5: Traffic jams are not caused by flaws in road design but by flaws in human nature. Nearly 80 percent of crashes involve drivers not paying attention for up to three seconds. The both good and scary thing about computers is they always pay attention.
Update 4: Volvo Says It Will Have An Injury Proof Car By 2020.
Update 3: Map Reading For Dummies. Europe (again) is developing a system that will read satellite navigation maps and warn the driver of upcoming hazards – sharp bends, dips and accident black spots – which may be invisible to the driver. Even better, the system can update the geographic database. Another key capability of the People Pod system.
Update 2: Road Safety: The Uncrashable Car?. A European research project basic could lead to a car that is virtually uncrashable. An uncrashable car would definitely ease people's concerns over computerized navigation.
Update: Shockwave traffic jam recreated for first time - "Pinpointing the causes of shockwave jams is an exercise in psychology more than anything else. 'If they had set up an experiment with robots driving in a perfect circle, flow breakdown would not have occurred. Human error is needed to cause the fluctuations in behaviour.'"

Traffic in the San Francisco Bay area is like Dolly Parton, 10 pounds in a 5 pound sack. Mass transit has been our unseen traffic woe savior for a while. But the ring of political fire circling the bay has prevented any meaningful region wide transportation solution. As everyone scrambles to live anywhere they can afford, we really need a region wide solution rather than the local fixes that can never go quite far enough. The solution: create a People Pod Pool of On Demand Self Driving Robotic Cars who Automatically Refuel from Cheap Solar.

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