Rush hour traffic is due to human drivers making bad decisions. They knee-jerk the brakes just in case, they rubber neck by accidents, they take too long to ac

Rush hour traffic is due to human drivers making bad decisions. They knee-jerk the brakes just in case, they rubber neck by accidents, they take too long to accelerate, they try to cut other people off from merging, etc etc etc... Computer drivers could make much better use of the existing bandwidth on freeways. I'm guessing 6X better, since my 15 minutes drive takes 1.5 hours during rush hour. It could be a long time before we ever have enough automated cars to realize this benefit. But when that days comes, we could safely increase speed limits too (computers generally have better reaction times).