Caltech Center for Neuromorphic Systems Engineering is attempting to apply swarm intelligence principles to problems of building automated vehicles/highways:

A specific biologically inspired approach that seems well optimized for understanding collective phenomena (like automobile traffic) is Swarm Intelligence. Swarm Intelligence provides a framework in which autonomy, emergence, and distributed robustness replace centralized control. This is analogous to comparing flocking birds to a complex man-made air-traffic control system that results in countless flight delays and lost luggage. To implement the principle of Swarm Intelligence, an evolutionary approach is used here to explore the traffic situations and optimize the control system in simulation.