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And yet - if there are human drivers, even if 4 cars hit the intersection at the same time, eventually someone will go first. It might be comical for a few moments, but eventually things work out.

With self-driving cars, you could end up in a deadlock and no one would get anywhere...

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As self-driving cars take off, they'll start to form a mesh network and communicate. This four way stop scenario is solved in an instant.

And when the grid is fully automated, they'll be a huge decrease in four way stops (and any slowdown/stop inefficiencies in general).

I imagine it should be trivial to work out an algorithm to break the deadlock. We have plenty of software systems, that needs to deal with similar problems.

From other articles I've seen this is something that's already been dealt with. One of the problems they had early on was all-way stops where human drivers were so aggressive that the self driving car would never get its turn to go, instead getting skipped by humans that just went when it hesitated for an instant.

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