I like that idea! Gonna buy a bunch of those, amplify their signal and spread them throughout the city I live in. That will ensure that there's not going to be a single crappy autonomous car being beta-tested in my vicinity!
Another idea would be to just throw them right in front of an autonomous vehicle at full speed. Let's test those brakes!
(sorry, but the original idea is just so ridiculous that I am incapable of responding in a non-sarcastic way to this...)
I imagine phones will serve that role eventually. GPS chip accuracy is improving constantly and could be accurate to within a foot in some phones in the next year [1]. Google Maps / Waze already do something similar with predicting traffic times based on phone data (and other sources). GPS accuracy currently may make an individual's location slightly harder, but path prediction may help. (And, of course there are privacy concerns to consider.)
So if you're homeless and can't afford a phone or if you forgot yours at home or if you got pickpocketed... you can expect to get hit by a self driving car?
That sounds like something that will immediately be abused for tracking people, and an over-reliance on it may make it more dangerous for people not carrying one (don't want to, can't afford, signal blocked by item/clothing, simply forget etc.).
Roads are generally marked, and often have elements embedded in the surface (e.g.
[1]). As self-driving cars become more prevalent, I don't see why you wouldn't adjust new/replaced markings to be something more readable by those vehicles. It obviously can't be the only signal used (because it's infeasible to change everything immediately, not all roads are marked, and wear/damage may make them unusable) but it may help improve reliability/accuracy.
> This is about as feasible as putting smart chips in all roads so that cars know where the lanes are.
Lanes are marked, usually. So why not embed something like an UV/IR-only color pigment in the lanes? Invisible so it doesn't affect human drivers but can easily be picked up by cameras.
About 3 years ago I started martial arts training. One of the first things I had to unlearn was shallow chest breathing. Imagine that, 40yrs old and having to relearn how to breathe properly. It took me probably close to 6 months to adjust.
Yeah, I was surprised how long it took me to realize the error in my breathing. In hindsight, my athletic life before 21 could have benefited greatly from breathing "right".
It's cash settled based off the price of an index, which makes it easier. They just defer to the folks making the index.
If it was physically settled you could squeeze the shorts by having a last-minute unilateral grant of a side-token to everyone who possesses the underlying. The shorts have to come up with the token or cover the contract - either way, you have people who are forced to buy it to cover contractual obligations, and you probably own the only exchange capable of making transactions with NewToken (and maybe also you pre-mined some of bonus tokens to sell?)
When its cash settled, this is much less of an issue. No market? No market price, so it doesn't get included in constructing the index.
Programmer's wife: "when you go to the store, can you buy a carton of milk and if they have eggs, get six."
He comes back with 6 cartons of milk. Wife: "why would you buy six cartons of milk?"
"Well, they had eggs"