[hnick]

An autonomous car should have a better reaction time than a human. If we have 100% autonomous cars, and a traffic light turns green, we should be able to avoid (or reduce) the ripple effect where cars down the line don't even start moving until a while later. They can all move at roughly the same time (and none of these cars will be reading their phones).

Likewise they will react more predictably. We won't have an idiot cutting lanes, or tapping his brakes since he can't maintain a constant speed. Apparently most traffic issues are caused by a few bad actors having an over-sized effect.

So I think even with more cars, we can get better flow, which is what traffic is all about. But it will be difficult or impossible with humans in the mix. I'm pretty sure many drivers will try to bully the safer driving autonomous cars if they can.