Ever been cut up in heavy traffic and wish you could send the driver a giant poop emoji to express your feelings? That could soon be a thing, according to a report in the Financial Times.
Drive.ai, a Silicon Valley company which aims to retrofit existing vehicles with autonomous technology, is designing a new roof-mounted emoji display in California.
The display features front and rear screens which allows drivers to communicate with others around them, in order to improve safety and better express the drivers’ intentions.
Out with the horn, in with the poop face?
Drive.ai's display can also show text as well as emojis, and the company also announced plans for a deep learning algorithm which could be used in driverless cars to display signs with no driver input.
The company claims that the car horn has become obsolete in the modern era, with the single tone able to be interpreted as anything from a polite nudge to an angry exclamation.
However, critics of the emoji display claim that drivers could make use of aggressive emojis or text to intimidate other motorists, cause annoyance and provoke road rage incidents.