[notatoad]

keeping up with maintenance is probably the most important thing towards making either self-driving or human driven cars safe. faded, worn, or poorly-visible road markings and signage has got to be a huge challenge. Signage and marking is already very well standardized and optimized for low ambiguity.

making anything special is probably just going to make things more difficult - the cars have to be able to drive anywhere, regardless of whether the road has the correct markings or not.

[salman89]

I'll argue that signage and marking is already very well standardize and optimized for low ambiguity for human vision, but we are able to build things that humans cannot see but technology can.

The cars do have to be able to drive anywhere, but that doesn't mean we cannot improve quality of service in other areas. Suppose we can build roads where self driving cars can safely travel 100mph+ due to special infrastructure - I do see that as a big benefit.

[Maxious]

Some people are using LiDAR/computer vision to decide where maintenance is needed http://www.nicta.com.au/media/previous_releases3/2012_media_...