n 1909, when horseless carriages were all the rage, a magazine called Country Life in America advised new drivers on “the ­ethics of good roadmanship.” Motorists, it urged, should go slow to avoid spooking the animals pulling other vehicles.

Today we face a similar anxious transition with the advent of driverless carriages, and that quaint term, roadmanship, is back in circulation. A new Rand Corporation report, commissioned by Uber, revives the notion as a basis for long-­overdue safety standards in autonomous vehicles…

So what does roadmanship mean today? According to Rand, it’s the ability to “play well with others”—things like reading the subtle cues that human drivers give one another, or noticing that a child on the sidewalk is bouncing a ball. The challenge will be quantifying such behavior, which people just do naturally, and teaching a machine to replicate it.
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