They won't, it's something AV proponents love to claim though. The claim is that cars will be able to drive closer at higher speeds or something. But, 2 tons o

They won't, it's something AV proponents love to claim though. The claim is that cars will be able to drive closer at higher speeds or something. But, 2 tons of steel is still a deadly weapon no matter who's driving it. A car can still suffer a(n unpredictable) blowout or mechanics failure, malicious people can still screw with traffic, roads and infrastructure will still be poorly funded, and even wildlife (deer specifically) still exist. Any of these things will cause huge problems to cars travelling too close together. That's even ignoring the fact that traffic going inbound to dense urban centers is limited by the infrastructure of the city and layout of those roads, parking garages, and businesses- not the speed at which people can travel closely on the road. By the time we get level 5 autonomous vehicles, we'll have robots performing most minimum wage jobs (picking crops, making coffee and hamburgers, retail) and culture will probably have shifted to a remote-work-friendly mindset. The fact that there just won't be that many jobs for people to work will reduce traffic more than AVs will "because they can go faster".