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Every time I'm waiting to move past a red light, I wonder what the gains would be if all the dopes in front of me (and piloting my car, and the ones behind me) accelerated more-or-less in concert. It is very, very annoying to wait for the "wave" of moving to work its way back, once you become aware of it...

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There would still be some slack in the movement, we could just reduce it substantially. Couple auto car pilots with electric drive trains that provide dependable and fast acceleration...that slack could be very small indeed!

But then, if all your cars were controlled automatically, why would you even need to stop. They could mostly just slow down and hit the lights when they were always green! Perfect synchronization!

Or have no traffic lights and the cars intersecting detect and adjust speed accordingly/create gaps/etc (would look/be scary but it'd work).

The wave exists because you need following distance to drive safely.

Also, because people have relatively slow reactions. A computer could do much better, of course, and still preserve a reasonable amount of safety.

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