> People who have the choice between "no car" and "self driving car that sometimes refuses to start because of the weather" will still prefer the latter, as long as it's not too frequent in their climate.

This. As an anecdote, my grandmother still drives, but does not drive at night, or in bad weather.

No, no. It's not about refusing to start or anything like that.

In places that have winter it's not some roads. It's all roads. The surfaces will be completely covered for months. There will not be reliably or static visual indicators. People will park haphazardly and arbitrarily. People will act like people and form new arbitrary lanes to drive in. Parking lots will be free for alls. This is not something that only occurs during snow events. It's a multi-month permanent thing.

Interpreting this all and driving safely requires an general understanding of the environment and human behavior that machines just won't have for a very long time. It's hard enough for humans.

I live in a place that has a month of snow or so each year. But we also have snow plows and road salt, so the time roads are actually covered in snow are limited unless you are in the middle of nowhere.

Of course there are places where it's worse, and the US tends to have more extreme winters because of their unique geography (no mountain ranges that block wind from the North, combined with a huge land mass in the North). But that's the exception, most inhabited places have very managable winters.

Ok. I am talking specifically about Minnesota, Wisconsin, (upper) Michigan, (northern) Iowa, North and South Dakota. These are not desolate places in the middle of nowhere. They are very inhabited. I specifically live in a state university city. These places have well established snow infrastructure. And what I said before is still true.

The winter I describe does exist. It exists for many tens of millions of people in the USA in many states.