While it may be of some academic interest, the idea of having autonomous cars read the symbols and waypoints that humans read in order to navigate remains one of the dumbest ideas I have ever heard.

Just like airplanes, these machines can navigate using their own language, and we need to make our roads accommodate that language, just as the skyways and air traffic standards do. Standards for roadways (even construction zones) can be defined for machine driving capabilities, and any infrared sensor can detect an object that will potentially be a life-risking hazard.

I know I’m being too brief and simple with these statements, but the path being followed is wrong if the goal is a public autonomous ground transportation system.

http://news.mit.edu/2019/human-reasoning-ai-driverless-car-navigation-0523