Rules of the Driverless Road

The flow of traffic should not and cannot depend on the emoluments of courtesy or the vagaries of hand signals. In fact, attempts at etiquette invariably muddle things, as when some well-intentioned idiot with the right of way waves to another driver to go first.

Manners: That way madness lies.

A decade from now, things might be different. Assisted- and automated-driving technologies—onboard systems that steer and navigate, maintain safe following distances, avoid collisions and react more quickly than a human driver ever could—are working their way toward the mass market.

These technologies will, in essence, change the status of the person in the left-front seat, from driver-operator to passenger-occupant, or perhaps something even more passive and disengaged, client-fare.

How will unoccupied drivers interact now that their attention isn’t rigidly fixed on the road? Automated driving would seem to promise a new social space of some sort, and that will require new conventions of mannerly behavior: etiquette.

So let’s start with the trivial. Any behavior that was disagreeable before, when drivers could only catch fleeting glances of each other, is even more censured. Nose-picking, for example. Drivers should not floss, dig in their ears or otherwise groom like a monkey in plain sight of other motorists.