"Nothing about our current world has been designed for lidar and radar. It was designed for binocular vision."

Really? Was the world designed for binocular vision, or is it just three dimensional?

Having more sensors, especially when they have different failure modes seems like the only possible way to create a reliable system. LIDAR isn't super dense, but generally has accurate returns. Binocular vision sucks on untextured objects, like the side of a white truck in the fatal Model S collision. Why wouldn't you want the crutch of both types of measurement?

No it wouldn't. The whole problem with avoiding stationary objects is that they are _everywhere_. Do you really think radar and vision didn't "see" the barrier? Should it have known that it was in it's path? For sure. But that has nothing to do with sensors. Stationary objects are in our paths constantly while we drive, but we tend not to hit them because they are usually only temporarily so. At 80 mph the difference between a parked car being in our path and not, at the stopping distance of over 300 feet, is only a degree or two of wheel turn. We have enough information. Acting on it appropriately every single second of operation is the problem.

> Really? Was the world designed for binocular vision...

Yes. That's why we have road signs, stripes on the road, reflectors, lights on cars, lights hung over the road which light up in different colors to indicate right of way, etc. LIDAR is useless with all of the most important signals on our roads.

Ermm, actually yes, in the sense that anything human made was designed for and by those with binocular vision themselves.

What human has advantage of is utilizing knowledge in unrelated domain to another domain.

Evolution suggests that you can, in fact, create systems that are more intelligent than what came before them.

Does binocular vision even matter at such distances (i.e. beyond a few meters)? I thought it was only effective for relatively close objects.

Back-of-the-envelope calculation: assuming 1920x1080 camera sensors with a 90-degree horizontal field of view, each pixel covers a visual angle of approximately 0.001 radians. If you have two cameras separated by 5 feet horizontally, and your measurements are accurate to within a pixel, then you can measure the distance to an object 500 feet away with roughly 10% accuracy. That's a reasonably conservative following distance at typical highway speeds.

And that's just from a single parallax measurement. By using other visual cues (e.g. apparent size of an object whose physical dimensions are known) and averaging measurements across multiple frames, you can get a more accurate measurement.

I found a page [1] that summarizes the level of visual acuity required to obtain a driver's license in each US state. It appears that all states will potentially issue a license to someone with vision in only one eye. Some states impose additional conditions, such as requiring a favorable report from an ophthalmologist, limiting the maximum speed, or restricting the driver to vehicles with outside rear-view mirrors (to compensate for the loss of peripheral vision on one side).

[1]: http://lowvision.preventblindness.org/daily-living-2/state-v...

Infrared transparency? Radar cross section? There are so many ways. Sensor doesn't just mean "webcam".