Self-driving cars will need smarter roads

One way to speed up the adoption of self-driving cars is to provide them with automated high-speed lanes where they can drive past conventional vehicles without colliding with human-driven cars.

Why it matters: With all the billions that companies are spending on developing automated vehicles, very little has been done to prepare US roads for these future vehicles, trucks and buses. This is starting to change as business and government leaders turn their attention to new digital infrastructure projects.

Most recently, funding has been opened to build the country's first network of connected and automated vehicles (CAV).

CAV corridors will have roadside sensors to communicate with modem-equipped vehicles, informing them of road conditions ahead, such as bad weather, road repairs, or even potholes that pop up unexpectedly during rush hour.

All investors of the company are interested in the future of roads. These include an infrastructure company, a car manufacturer, a freight logistics service provider and a toll road operator.

Self-driving cars: smart roads are getting more attention:

Companies are working on a variety of technologies, including systems that warn cars of pedestrians (and vice versa) or use artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to better manage traffic.

The Safe Streets and Roads for All Program will fund road projects to reduce the number of road traffic deaths by 40,000 per year.

CAV corridors will initially be available to a variety of vehicles, but will eventually be limited to partially or fully automated vehicles.

Those with Level 2 Driving Assistance Systems will allow drivers to take their hands off the wheel and not look at the road while driving down this corridor. (This is not yet the case on modern highways.)

In the future, fully autonomous cars, trucks and buses will move at a constant speed along CAV corridors without human intervention.

Corridors will have dynamic pricing based on time of day or use case, and motorists will be billed monthly.