There are always those who will seek out the cloud to any silver lining. For news organizations like ABC, bad news sells (or delivers clicks). For consulting firms like KMPG, bad news is the is the very raison d'etre of their existence. So sure, you get stories like this, predicting grim effects of autonomous vehicles that do not even exist yet. I note that the associated ABC News story cites lots of vague projections about increasing passenger-miles of travel, but no studies or information of any kind about actual congestion. Even if the travel projections are correct, there's nothing in the story to justify the ominous headline. In other words, nothing to see here folks move right along.

Note that Carl Zimmer wrote about this exact research in greater detail about a year and a half ago in Discover magazine. Take a look: http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jul/aliens-among-us/ The story even includes the line about "life as we don't know it"!