Why Your Autonomous Car Might Come With Its Own Drone

This year, Co.Design asked a handful of design firms to take on the moral dilemma of self-driving car decision-making: What does a car do when it has to choose between saving its passenger and saving a pedestrian? Their solutions included smart roads, flying airbags, and air traffic control-style systems. But the San Francisco-based design firm Box Clever is focusing on safety first. The studio imagines creating a new layer of public infrastructure in the form of security drones that can warn self-driving cars of things they can't see. Combined with the use of smart materials in cars themselves that can better absorb the impact of crashes, the studio's vision doesn't just apply to a world of autonomy–it could help make our streets safer for pedestrians right now.