Camera tech to save energy and time
I've often wondered how this (Google driverless car) project got funded instead of something that seems so much more useful, profitable, and beneficial to the country -- intelligent camera controlled traffic signals.
Recall how many times you've been stuck at a stoplight when you can see that there's no other traffic for miles. Then just as a huge slug of traffic arrives at your intersection, twenty cars get stopped while you get to turn. The amount of fuel and time wasted staggers the imagination.
Now if you had cameras mounted atop (or integrated into) traffic lights, they could act as a really good traffic cop, that could see way down the road and could communicate with traffic controllers in the neighborhood or even across the city.
They could use the best algorithms to maximize flow. The could keep counts so that at any time you could know how many vehicles of what type were passing anywhere in the city.
On "thoroughfares" you could use the camera intelligence to determine the optimum speed limit (or advisory) to smooth and maximize flow.
If Google applied themselves to this sort of technology they would be making a huge contribution to conserving energy and time resources, while reducing the national blood pressure, and I suspect, creating a hugely profitable business venture that would create jobs across the country (world).
