These days, you’d have to be mentally unstable to attempt to run across a freeway. If you attempted it today, even if you are an expert Frogger player, your life expectancy would be measured in seconds. But how does this change in an autopilot rich future? If you’re an asshat, and you wanted to, you could just run across the road, safe in the knowledge that the cars would stop (or swerve) to avoid hitting you.
There’s a compelling reason you don’t attempt to cross busy roads today, whenever and wherever you want; Death! Restrictions aren’t necessary because, well, you’d be insane.
However, in the future, someone walking down the street and spotting their friend on the other side of the road, rather than wave, shout, or find a cross-walk, could simply just step out into the street. With magic suddenness, the traffic would stop for them, just like the Red Sea parted for Moses.
The disruption of this sudden stop would send compression waves through the rest of the traffic playing havoc with what, otherwise, would be fast flowing traffic.