As a pedestrian, eye contact is very important to my interaction with drivers. If cars become truly driverless, will we then see psople behind the driver's seat reading books? Will pedestrians fall out of the habit of establishing eye contact with drivers? Might there be a way for cars to signal that they're "looking at" a pedestrian?<p>(Half joke: What if all driverless cars had to have a red "cyclon eye" in the middle of the front of the car?)
I have always described self driving cars as the ultimate test of the the Trolley problem [1]. Does a self driving car have an obligation to protect the occupant at the risk of pedestrians? vice versa? What if the pedestrian or occupant is a Google executive?<p>EDIT: Apparently MIT has turned this whole line of thinking into an app where they collect a consensus on what a machine should decide: <a href="http://moralmachine.mit.edu/" rel="nofollow">http://moralmachine.mit.edu/</a><p>1. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem</a>
Cars have body language. Small moves are useful, such as edging towards the side of a lane to indicate a turn. Edging towards a crosswalk where pedestrians are crossing against a signal will probably be necessary in some cities.
Google already does some of this. This is probably more useful than adding indicators and signs.