With all this focus on self-driving cars, nobody is looking at the low-hanging fruit - cameras on the traffic lights. No, not for ticketing people, but for changing the signals in a way that maximizes flow. This will save time and an awful lot of gas. With all the sophisticated camera algorithms these days, this should be a relatively simpler problem to detect the speed, number, and distance of cars coming from each direction.

It can also be used to save lives - the light for the cross street need not turn green when the other turns red if there looks like a car is going to run the red. If there are pedestrians in the intersection, the lights can also remain red.