You're missing the context of this thread. The software in the Uber car has a clear failure condition. That has nothing to do with whether it's possible to infer such vector collisions without jerky driving, which is the point I'm addressing.

The question was why the car doesn’t brake early. “Because scanning every few milliseconds” is not an answer. Scanning frequency is irrelevant to the fact that emergency braking is not a reasonable strategy in general.

Safe driving often does require slowing down in the face of insufficient information. If a human driver sees an inattentive pedestrian about to intersect traffic, they will slow down. “Drive until collision is unavoidable” is a failing strategy.

And anyway, jerky driving is a symptom of late braking, not early braking.

> And anyway, jerky driving is a symptom of late braking, not early braking.

I see it as more than just jerkyness, I see a massive safety issue in traffic. If your autonomous car is slamming on the brakes spontaneously there's a lot more opportunities for other drivers to plow into you from behind.

> The question was why the car doesn’t brake early.

No it's not, the issue was jerky driving.

> “Drive until collision is unavoidable” is a failing strategy.

No kidding.