Cogs can think.

Traffic jams are a major problem in The Netherlands. For about 5-6 hours a day, our entire country is stuck in one big gridlock, and this is of course extremely damaging to not only the economy, but also the environment. Countless solutions have been proposed and tried, but nothing has so far worked.

As far as I am concerned, there is only one solution. Right now, cars are all individual tiny metal boxes, they are not connected to other cars on the road, they live on islands, completely unaware of what the cars around them are doing. What leads to traffic jams are people having trouble with merging lanes, on and off ramps, and unnecessary braking. If all cars on the highway did 120 kph standard, there would be no traffic jams.

So, the obvious solution is to automate everything. Design a system where cars are no longer at the whim of the drivers (and trust me, 90% of the people cannot drive), but in fact rely on computers and satnav systems to guide them to their destinations. If every car has a computer designed to let cars run at the maximum allowed speed, traffic jams would still be there, but they’d be moving at 120 kph, and hence it will look like a traffic jam on a still photo, but in fact all the cars are automagically kept at a safe distance while moving at the maximum speed.

There, another problem solved.