Turn Your Self-Driving Car into a Time Machine

First there is the promise of more time on this planet, given the overwhelmingly superior safety record of a driverless car compared with a human-driven one. Then there is all the time you get when you're not the one driving—hands free from the wheel, eyes free from the road—and you are instead able to read a book, enjoy a beer, practice an instrument, knit a tea cozy, or, you know, just chill out. And finally there's the actual transit time saved, countless human commutes made smoother in a world where robot cars communicate with one another constantly, establishing smooth and freely flowing traffic patterns.

But there's another way that self-driving cars might change our relationship with time, and it starts with the maps that are needed to make driverless cars work in the first place.