This is a great point. Additionally, in a world where there are many competitors with self-driving cars, I can't imagine roads not having and API of sorts to simplify the work cars have to do. Instead of painted line markers, why not IR beacons or something similar. Could be the same for road work signs or temporary barriers.
This issue brings up a larger point that many in the tech world have ignored for awhile. Now that end to end encryption is easily accessible by everyone, how do the authorities figure out beforehand when a terrorist attack will take place? The answer is not banning encryption technologies or giving authorities a 'key' as the FBI director has proposed. But now authorities have a very difficult problem on their hands. Encryption can't be contained, and the authorities need to figure out how to still catch the bad guys.
The company I work for does something similar. Everyone at the same level gets the same salary, with percentage variations based on geography. It completely removes the competitive and secretive nature I've seen elsewhere. And it also pushes each individual to live up to their title due to the extra transparency.
Interesting read. Most blog posts I've seen about the CAP theorem have an academic feel, this one is more approachable. Really, the CAP triangle is outdated. The trade off in a distributed system is between consistency and availability - you choose partition tolerance when you have nodes networked together.