[tobyjsullivan]

You are giving way too much credit to autonomous vehicles in this theory. Line colours are standard throughout all of North America (that I’ve seen so far). Yellow means what it means. This carpool line experiment would have been confusing to any driver seeing it for the first time.

Imagine a tourist on that highway for the first time, at 3am, when there’s no traffic. Can they use that lane? Can they pull a sneaky u-turn and start driving the opposite direction?

What if I’m driving down the highway, effectively on mental autopilot, and suddenly become aware that I’m on the “wrong” side of the yellow line? How would I be likely to react?

The opportunities for misunderstanding by normal humans seem plenty.