Autonomous Cars Hard Time Coping With Anti-Gridlock Laws, It’s Dicey Behavior

Dr. Lance Eliot, AI Insider

Gridlock is fought by anti-gridlock laws, but can driverless cars handle this

Don’t block the box.

If you aren’t familiar with that phrase, you likely have not yet been to a high-traffic locale. The rest of us know that it means staying out of an intersection in a manner to prevent others from being blocked by your presence, almost like playing musical chairs, but with cars, in an intersection, and it is a kind of driving task that seems simple to describe though manages to stymie a lot of drivers.

Gridlock, it’s a pain in the neck, or worse.

When I use the word “gridlock” it is meant to suggest that cars will at times enter into the intersection while the light is green and fail to make it fully across the intersection before the light turns red, ending up stranded in the intersection and serving to block traffic. You’ve undoubtedly experienced being blocked by cars that were momentarily stranded in an intersection. And if so, you were probably irked (pissed off!) that those drivers misjudged the situation and are blocking your fully legal efforts to get across the intersection.

Here in California, we are known for having been one of the first states to enact an anti-gridlock law that specifically prohibits the blocking of an intersection, doing so in 1987, and…