Imagine you are following a pickup-truck and out of the back an obviously empty box floats out of the bed and lands directly in front of your car.
For a human its trivial to know the box is empty and its ok to hit it....does "AI" know that?
Multiply that case x1000 and you have the conditions self-driving cars will need to handle on a daily basis.
Humans make the wrong call on this sort of thing all the time. They also make stupid passes, yield the right of way at the wrong time, drive the wrong way down one way streets, cut each other off, fall asleep at the wheel, drive drunk, drive without their glasses on, get road rage, etc etc etc.
There is this sort of one-way lens when it comes to self driving cars. People want to throw up red flags about all things they might do wrong while ignoring the millions of stupid things that humans do to kill each other with cars every single day.
"It's ok if I get into an accident - it will be the other guy's fault" is only the right reasoning if you're talking on the individual level about about monetary costs of an accident only. If you're talking about injury, or if you're talking about the cost to society as a whole, they are bad consequences regardless of whose fault the accident is.
I think the actual answer is that self-driving cars will end up doing a good enough (i.e. at least human-level but not perfect) job of not wildly swerving or braking to avoid harmless objects like floating plastic bags that this won't be a concern.
> "It's ok if I get into an accident - it will be the other guy's fault"
Exactly. Most accidents take two people to happen, one who makes a mistake and at least one more who could have prevented the accident as well. For example, when right of way is ignored by someone in a left yield right situation, no accident happens if the one with right of way brakes in time. Or, if someone fails to merge in time and runs out of road, someone else can prevent an accident by braking a little.
This is a great anecdote that definitely needs a source to back it up.
Primarily, there are a significant number of single vehicle accidents caused by drivers jerking the wheel instead of acting in a calm manner.
Secondly, there are many cases where a box is not safe to ignore; that could mean it damaging a fog light, a large staple in it hitting a tire, or it getting stuck somewhere, temporary loss of traction or visibility.
In conclusion; anything on the road should be treated as something to avoid, but definitely something to avoid a high speed collision with.
Other Anecdotes to consider: The first model S firs was caused by a trailer hitch in the road. Hammer hit a model 3. Asphalt coming loose in slabs and hitting a driver. Mattresses and ice from the roof in front of you. Tldr; There are many accidents that do happen with human drivers.
I anecdotally question this based on both personal experience and stories I've heard. It seems like it would be a hard problem for both humans and AIs, however AIs have the edge in the long run due to sheer processing speed.
Also self-driving cars could have better sensors that don't have blind spots, and the multitasking ability to monitor all of them at once.
What happens to all these markings when it snows a couple centimeters?'
Fully self driving cars won't happen in our lifetime, probably not this century.