This is an interesting piece of futurology and fun to think about. In the author's world where self-driving cars dominate the road, however, I think we'd also have to imagine other networked infrastructure. For example, the pedestrian might well have an implant/augmented reality/wrist notification that would inform them of when it was safe to cross the street. The crosswalk may well be networked and know when it was safe to switch to the Walk sign. It's easy to imagine horror scenarios with self-driving vehicles but it's equally easy to imagine countless improvements that could be made to other everyday objects if they were working in concert with the driving network. What we're looking at is not a one-off invention that will make getting to work easier, but a fundamental shift in how to imagine transportation.