Humans are very good at estimating distance from a combination parallax visual cues and experience. We don't need to have seen a specific model of car before to judge how far away it is with a high level of accuracy.
And humans aren't good at estimating distance. They're good at estimating relative distance which is different. Some people claim we need LIDAR because cameras can't give us accurate depth information but humans don't use accurate depth information.
Are you saying these systems need to have seen a specific model of car in the past before they can determine its distance? Certainly I've seen systems that do not require that information.
Personally, I view each additional layer (network, someone else's data center, machine learning) to be something that can fail and put people in danger. Assurance via local brute force is much more reassuring for me.
Machine learning is great at complex algorithms if done well.