Berkeley duo's plan to solve traffic jams: hyper-fast lanes for self-driving cars

Anthony Barrs and Baiyu Chen's Hyperlane system proposes clusters of self-driving cars zipping past local traffic at 100mph, controlled by a central computer

These days there are so many self-driving cars coming down the pipeline it seems inevitable they'll soon be stuck in a robot traffic jam - just like the human-piloted cars of today. Well, not if Anthony Barrs and Baiyu Chen get their way.

The two graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley, have devised a system that would have tightly-packed clusters of autonomous vehicles zipping past local traffic at speeds of more than 100mph, all on existing roadways. They call it Hyperlane, and it works a lot like high-speed toll lanes already do, only with a central computer controlling everything.