Comment by CrimpCity

This is true but the gains are surprisingly limited. From Algorithmic game theory there’s the concept of “the price of anarchy” it measures the gap between cooperation (a centrally designed or coordinated solution) and competition (where each participant is independently trying to maximize the outcome for themselves). Selfish routing basically what we have now has price of 4/3. This means the greedy status quo is only 33% worse than perfect coordination.

I’ll quote from one of my favorite books Algorithms to Live By:

“It’s true that self-driving cars should reduce the number of road accidents and may be able to drive more closely together, both of which would speed up traffic. But from a congestion standpoint, the fact that the price of anarchy is only 4/3 as congested as perfect coordination means that perfectly coordinated commutes will only be 3/4 as congested as they are now.”