Autonomous Vehicles

There has been a lot of talk about autonomous vehicles, something which I would quite enjoy, and lots of outfits are working on developing one.    One of their alleged 'virtues' is that they will be 'safer' than cars driven by humans.   Hmmm.   Have you noticed how much you use eye contact with other road uses when you are driving or walking around?  There's a junction I have to use on my way home from work and the only way you can ever join the traffic stream is if you engage with a motorist in it by eye contact and they then let you in.  Is that going to happen with robots?  This also applies to pedestrian crossings, or even just some hooray deciding to cross the road randomly.   Apropos of this, Dutch research ( and actions https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2017/sep/22/what-happens-if-you-turn-off-the-traffic-lights ) showed that making it more necessary for road users to engage like this, rather than relying on traffic lights and other traffic management techniques, reduced accidents and made people happier.   Perhaps we'll have to wait for proper autonomous vehicles until they can benefit from Sirius Cybernetic Corporation GPP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_in_The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#Sirius_Cybernetics_Corporation ) .  If so I don't think I want a depressed one..   Ho hum.