The two key aspects of an autonomous OS are perception and planning. Being able to "see" well enough during a flurry is a perception problem. Knowing whether to maneuver out of it or call for help after spinning out is a planning problem. There are many planning problems left to address and master before autonomous vehicles are ready for widespread adoption. Some planning problems are unique to specific intersections, and dedicated software has to be written just for that intersection, like the intersection of Market and Castro, in SF, for instance.

Can they perceive where on the road they should be located when the road is totally covered in snow and you can't see the pavement, let alone the line markets, possibly only tire tracks, if that?

Yes. An autonomous vehicle with lidar and maps can locate itself using any landmark, or series of landmarks it can see, it isn't limited to lane markings.

Just think, the remains of the last self-driving car will help the next self-driving car avoid the trap. But only if Google carefully catalogs it and no one moves the wreckage.

And if there are no landmarks, such as you're on a highway or rural area, not in a city?

Not a ditch, or a barbwire fence, or a telephone pole or a tree? I guess that may be tricky.

You can't reliably know the distance from pavement to any of those things unless you plan on indexing every physical object along every roadway.

I think the most likely scenario is self driving cars won't drive in those conditions, hopefully those conditions don't develop while you're on the roadways or you'll be parked somewhere cold.

They do index everything, the maps they rely on are lidar generated 3D point cloud fields that make a model of everything around the road, and are frequently updated.

Is "Market and Castro team" going to stay in existence indefinitely as the city of San Francisco modifies this intersection into the next century?

Will similar team exist for weird intersections in the middle of nowhere as well?

Will all these teams solve the problem of all the truck drivers rendered unemployed by "self-driving" vehicles?

Will all America's vehicles just wind-up instead being driven by tech support using joy sticks when the whole system goes south?

> Great strides is not 'perfected'

The goal isn't perfection. The goal is to be as good as humans.

Eg: An autonomous vehicle driving through snow backed by millions of miles of experience driving in snow is better than someone from the tropics driving through snow for the first time.

>> The goal is to be as good as humans.

Which particular humans?

>> An autonomous vehicle driving through snow [..] is better than someone from the tropics driving through snow for the first time

Better than the worst human we can imagine? Better than the average human? Better than the average human who drives on that road at that time of year?

The very best limo driver seems like a good human to emulate.

Autonomous vehicles (rightly so) will be held to a higher standard than humans